The parable of the redwoods
Texts: Luke 18:1-8; Romans 5:1-11
This sermon was preached at the Ravenswood Covenant Church in Chicago.
I am fascinated by trees. When I was in elementary school, I was a member of the National Arbor Day Foundation. You would get a certain number of tree seedlings with your membership, but you could order anything else that you wanted out of a catalog. The trees came in the mail, amazingly enough, with little gel capsules around the roots to keep them hydrated and alive.
I was fortunate to live on 2 ½ acres of wooded property in the foothills of the Cascade mountains in Washington state. Our woods were dominated by Douglas fir trees, many of them about 100 years old and about 100 feet tall.
I mostly planted my trees in the clearing where the woods had been cut down to build our house. I also gathered Douglas fir seedlings that had “volunteered” along the road and planted those in the woods to fill in areas that I thought needed more trees — what I referred to ambitiously as my “reforestation plan.”
But it turns out that for as much as I loved trees, my mom preferred sun over shade. So my reforestation program was routinely scaled back. Even so, I persisted in planting trees.
I was reminded recently of my childhood fascination with trees when I was out at Mission Springs, the Covenant Church’s camp in the mountains between San Jose and Santa Cruz, California. The camp’s property has a beautiful forest filled with redwood trees and many hiking trails.
Redwoods are symbols of strength and resilience and perseverance. They are known for growing to be absolutely enormous. The National Parks Service reports that there are thousands of redwood trees that are 3,000 or possibly even 4,000 years old.
Think about that. There are trees living on earth that are older than our Holy Scriptures, that are older than the Christian faith. What endurance it must take for a tree, or any organism really, to be able to live that long! If Jesus had walked and taught along the hills of our Pacific Coast instead of the Holy Land, we would surely have a parable about redwood trees in the Bible.
The average lifespan of a redwood is 500 to 700 years old, and they can grow upwards to 400 feet tall. That is taller than the Water Tower in Chicago and about as tall as the Wrigley Building.
The Douglas fir trees I grew up with also can grow to be that tall. In order to live that long and grow that big, they need to be persistent. They need to endure droughts and fires and infestations of bugs and in our own time, pollution and rising temperatures.
These trees can grow around and over obstacles, like rocks, and pavement, and fences, and electrical wires, and even other trees. Of course, lots of trees grow around obstacles. But redwoods turn this act of resiliency into an abstract artform, in the style of a Doctor Seuss illustration or as though Salvador Dali had drawn them. They look as though they have melted over these other objects, like Dali’s famous melting watches, if you’ve seen his painting called the “Persistence of Memory.”
They also send up shoots like crazy. If a tree falls down, or is cut down, new shoots will grow from the stump. “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots,” is what we read and sing about during Advent (Isaiah 11). Prophets like Isaiah had to keep reminding the people of Israel to wait for the coming “Day of the Lord.”
Persistence means to continue for an unusually long time, to never cease. Why do we pray? And what do we pray for and how often? The main idea in this parable is that we should pray always and that we should pray for the kingdom of God.
Luke seems to break the rule of parables by giving us the moral of the story at the beginning. The gospel writer cuts to the chase: “Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.” But the story is not that simple at all.
Among the various names that have been given to it over the centuries is the title: “the parable of the unjust judge.” We know this cannot be an image for God, because God is just.
This judge is not just, which is the height of irony. The purpose of any legal system is to administer justice, to see to it that laws are followed fairly, and to not preference anyone, certainly not one’s own relatives or friends (which is called nepotism or cronyism).
Many of us have seen a classical statue of the goddess of justice, blindfolded, holding scales and a sword. Justice is supposed to be non-partisan and not self-interested.
This judge does not care about justice for its own sake, and also does not seem concerned that he even has a reputation for being unjust.
This rings many bells, does it not? Do we know of any former Chicago aldermen or Illinois governors or representatives who have looked after their own interests, perhaps in neglecting the work of the people, while padding their own pockets? Politicians who have made elections about themselves and their own vindication, rather than about compromises and solutions that will serve everyone’s need for justice?
The founders of our country, schooled in the Enlightenment, assumed that people would always be tempted to give into their worst instincts, and to look after their own interests. And so they anticipated this when they drafted our founding documents.
In our republic, we need checks and balances to harness the power of self-interest, but keep it under control, so that the majority does not take advantage of the minority. At least this is the ideal, one that is actually in jeopardy in our own time.
However, God’s kingdom is not built on self-interest, at all, but on the perfect, self-sacrificing justice of Jesus. God’s kingdom demands justice for widows and orphans and immigrants. God’s kingdom does not neglect the marginalized. God even seems to be most concerned about them.
We can phrase this positively by saying that: God is justice. We can also assert this negatively: God is not injustice. Wherever justice is being administered, God is in it. Wherever injustice is being perpetrated, God is not behind it.
When we see justice carried out anywhere, whether in big and small ways, especially when it is for the underdog, we catch a glimpse of the face of Jesus, the ultimate judge, the just judge. This is good news.
Yet, the notion of Jesus returning at the end of the age to rule as judge over everyone is not an appealing idea to most people, to be honest. I think this is because we, as Christians, have failed to equate the last judgment with justice.
Jesus, as judge, will grant justice when he returns. His judgment is justice. If we, like the widow, have been denied justice, we should be overjoyed at the idea of Christ’s return.
However, if we, like the unjust judge, have been looking to our own interests, and only administering justice when the plaintiff has become obnoxious, then we should be concerned.
In classic artistic renderings of the last judgment, Jesus is sometimes portrayed seated like a Roman emperor, but with fingers raised in blessing and holding a bible or an orb, a symbol of his reign over the entire world, as Christ Pantocrator.
Jesus, unlike the goddess justice, is not blindfolded. Jesus knows who we are and what we have done, all of our merits and shortcomings. Yes, this is a moment for fear and trembling, but ultimately this should be a relief. We are known, we are seen, and we are loved. He has called us friends. In Romans, Paul reminds us that “God shows no partiality” (2:11). Matthew phrases it this way: “God sends rain on the just and the unjust” (5:45).
Here in our passage from Romans we are told that we receive access to God’s grace through faith. We are justified by faith, made at peace with Christ, and through Christ can obtain grace (Romans 5:1-2). God is no longer our legal opponent; God has become our advocate.
The parable of the unjust judge is in stark contrast with God’s impartiality. Christ will return to grant justice, and is not like the rulers, and politicians and judges of this world, all of whom, even the good ones, have missed the mark. This is good news.
Even an unjust judge will occasionally get it right, and grant justice to a plaintiff who persists in bringing her case before him. How much more will God grant justice to those whom God knows and loves and calls friends? This is the type of parable we are dealing with here, a “how much more?” comparison.
God is impartial, but that does not mean that God is impersonal. Faith is what allows us to know God, by trusting in God’s promises. Those who come to God in faith will be heard, and that faith will justify them before God, and they will receive grace.
This is where the widow can offer us some indication of how we are to persist in prayer, albeit indirectly. The secret is that she is desperate and ultimately dependent on the outcome of her case. This is not a hobby for her. She is fully invested.
While scripture is overwhelmingly supportive of widows and orphans and immigrants, the ancient world was not. Widows were left vulnerable, and this is why there are so many repeated exhortations by the Hebrew prophets for us to not forget to care for the widows and these other vulnerable groups. The prophets needed to say it because the people weren’t doing it.
What do we know about this widow? What is her claim? We might sympathize with her, and probably are supposed to. But we have no idea what the claim is that she is bringing to the judge.
When a woman’s husband died she would likely move in with relatives, where she would take on a subservient role in that new household. If she had no relatives, then she would be destitute.
Her legal claim is almost certainly about property that she feels she is entitled to. Her persistence makes it clear that she is desperate. Does she have hungry children at home, unsuitable living accommodations, or unpaid expenses? Is someone in her family seriously ill? Is she being abused in the household where she has been taken in, and may be working as a slave? Is someone in that household putting pressure on her to collect property that she is owed so that the money can be handed over to them instead?
The widow’s case is neutral, as far as the parable is concerned. The prophets speak a word in favor of widows, but the justice system of her day would have been stacked against her. It is possible that her case is without merit, legally speaking. In this context, she is remarkable simply for raising her voice to advocate for herself against her opponent.
Some interpreters of the parable have suggested that she is even acting shamelessly, perhaps like a protestor who has gotten carried away, banging on the door: “The more you try to silence me, the louder I will be…” She has broken decorum, or stalled Senate business with a filibuster, or created a spectacle.
The judge gives in to her because she is being obnoxious, as desperate people can be. He does not give in to her because of the merit of her case. We’ve heard the phrase “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.” And so the persistent widow gets justice.
The curious thing about both the widow and the judge is that neither of them are a perfect model for us. It’s the contrast that matters for the judge, and the persistence that matters for the widow.
We should be cultivating a life of endurance through persisting in prayer for the kingdom of God. Here Luke’s parable resonates with one of Paul’s most eloquent passages in Romans: “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (5:3-5).
The earnest and even desperate posture of prayer, in the face of adversity, cultivates the hope that we need in order to visualize and anticipate the kingdom of God.
Former North Park seminary professor Klyne Snodgrass, in his book about the parables of Jesus, “Stories with Intent,” emphasizes that this parable about the widow is primarily about anticipating the eschaton, the end, when the Son of Man will come.
We are used to hearing him referred to as the “Son of God,” yet he never refers to himself this way in Matthew, Mark, or Luke. He refers to himself with this curious name, instead, the “Son of Man.” The Common English Bible translates this as “the Human One.” This is also the same term used in the Book of Daniel.
Jesus knows his Hebrew Scriptures inside and out, and has connected himself with the vision of the prophet Daniel. Whatever sense of justice that Luke’s parable has for us, we can conclude that it has something also to do with Daniel’s vision for justice. The Human One ascends to God and is given the authority to judge the world after God has vanquished a monster that is oppressing the people of God. What is the monster that is oppressing us? Who is our opponent? Who is the widow’s opponent?
Luke ends Jesus’s parable with a question: “And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” The faithful are to persist in praying for the kingdom of God until it is fully realized, when the Son of Man comes to administer justice. The kingdom of God is an upside down kingdom where there ought to be justice now for the oppressed and the marginalized.
In Ephesians we are told to pray “in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere” (6:8). From James 5:16, we read that the “earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.” And from 1 Thessalonians 5:17: “Never stop praying.” Luke adds to these appeals to prayer by saying that we are not to lose heart in praying for the kingdom, for the coming of the Son of Man.
We are to not lose heart when we see vulnerable people suffering in conflicts in Gaza, or Sudan, or Ukraine, or Chicago. We are to persist in prayer, both for justice now, and at the end of the age.
I have to admit that prayer seems like a challenge nevertheless. One way that we can manage this challenge is to realize that we are not praying alone. This is the reason why, in the wisdom of our ancestors, we made weekly worship together a pattern for the life of faith. We come together to sing, to hear the word, and to pray with other people. Things we certainly could have done by ourselves at home. But to be in church is deliberately to do these things with other people, together.
Some of us are not very good at prayer and need help with it, quite simply. This, I would also suggest, is part of the secret of the long lives of redwood trees. They live so long and grow so tall because they are not solitary organisms, after all.
Redwood trees grow into one another, and become one symbiotic organism, sharing root systems and passing nutrients to one another. When they fall over, the shock waves are sent through the roots in a way that minimizes the risk that other trees will fall over. A fallen tree can become a nursing log, growing other trees in its decomposing trunk. Their resilience is dependent on drawing strength from one another.
In our era of intensified droughts and wildfires, we realize more and more that we need the trees, and the trees need us. This was poignantly illustrated in the photos of firefighters wrapping some of the biggest giant sequoias in California with blankets of aluminum-foil fabric to protect them from extreme fires.
We protect one another with our prayers. One of the things we can add to our prayer life is also to pray for selflessness, that our prayers are mostly about other people, on their behalf.
The judge acts out of self-interest. So does the widow, as far as we know. “How much more” will Jesus, the righteous judge, answer the persistent prayers of the faithful, praying selflessly for justice, for themselves and others? The answer is “infinitely more.”
We should pray always and we should pray for the kingdom of God. And we should grow together in prayer.