The Persistent Widow Crashes Joe Biden's Climate Summit (Luke 18:1-8)
Climate Bible Study: April 2021
Avenge me of mine adversary (anonymous), contracted by Pacific Press Publishing Company (1900)
The Honorable Benjamin Netanyahu is one of 40 heads of state invited to attend the virtual Leaders Summit on Climate, April 22-23, hosted by US President Joe Biden. If Prime Minister Netanyahu cannot attend, then what constitutes the modern, political state of Israel might want to send the “Persistent Widow” of Luke 18:1-8 instead. The judges of the Earth would get an earful, I’m sure. (Click here to read Luke 18:1-8 NLT for yourself.)
So much of our understanding of Scripture, or of our application of Scripture to an issue like climate change, is based on the “frame” we give to a particular passage. For example, the reason we read this parable of Jesus as instruction about prayer is because Luke tells us to read it that way: “One day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they should always pray and never give up.” Luke the author likes to do this: explain things first before we hear from Jesus directly. Maybe it is the physician or historian in him. But what if this parable is about more than just prayer? Or what if it is about a particular kind of prayer?
An equally influential frame is the subtitle that editors of the various Bible translations attach to the parable. In this case, “The Parable of the Persistent Widow” seems to be the most popular subheading for Luke 18:1-8. But if you read the parable, I’m not convinced at all that she is the main character. Jesus begins with the judge, quotes the judge at length, and even summarizes his parable with, “Learn a lesson from this unjust judge.” Even if we focus in on the Persistent Widow, why should we let the editors narrow our understanding of her to just two of their interpretations: 1) that the most important fact about her is she is a widow; and 2) that her most important quality is persistence? What if there is more at work in this woman’s story?
I grew up with the frames of The Parable of the Persistent Widow and when I began my own journey of intercessory prayer for climate action, I likely still thought of prayer as a “means to get a desired outcome” by “wearing down” God, or at least by impressing him with my persistence. I don’t think I was a particularly nagging child, but I could too easily imagine my adult prayer life having devolved to something like, “Please, God, reduce GHG emissions, or otherwise gimme X,Y, or Z. Please God. Please God. Pleeeeeeeze.” But this parable is about justice. It features a judge whom Jesus himself calls “unjust.” The widow’s request is “Give me justice.” The judge makes the promise that she will get justice. And Jesus declares of his Father and ours: “God will surely give justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night.” If we are going to inject climate change into this prayer parable in order to better learn how to intercede for climate action, then we should explore climate intercession that:
can be a cry for justice that goes out day and night,
is felt from deeply vulnerable places similar to widowhood in Jesus’s day; and,
finds its hope in what Jesus says of God: “I tell you, he will grant justice to them quickly!”
Precisely because I, in my privilege, can’t relate to the widow in her vulnerability, I tend to latch on to her persistence and think that that is what I should bring to my climate intercession. And yet, when Jesus wonders about the faith that he will find when the Son of Man returns, that faith is not in how God will surely answer my prayer so long as I keep at it and don’t give up. Instead, the faith that God is looking for, at least in this parable, is the conviction that God does hear prayers for justice and is inclined to respond surely and quickly to those cries. In other words, he is NOT like earthly judges. Most of the forty nations invited to the Leaders Summit on Climate--including the one I was born in (USA), the one I currently live in (Canada), and the one I served in as a missionary (India)—are from the list of top emitters. They represent the earthly, unjust judges for whom the summit is another opportunity for us to knock on their door and demand, “Give us justice in this dispute with our enemies.” But in my position, the use of the us- (or we-pronoun) feels out of step with this parable. Instead, I feel I should go through the list of invitees and seek out those who are, in essence, the “widows” due to their climate vulnerability. For instance, President David Kabua of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, will be representing a nation of “widows,” as will President Félix Tshisekedi (Democratic Republic of the Congo) or President Iván Duque Márquez (Colombia).
If I help amplify their voices in front of the unjust judges, that is good and often effective activism. This however is a parable about prayer, or so Luke tells us. How do I turn the cries of President Kabua, et.al. into intercessory prayers for justice to a God who has promised to take prayers about injustice seriously? Simple, it seems to me: we just need to make sure God hears them. I intend to try something different as an exercise on the day after the Leaders Summit, and if you aren’t afraid of a little extra internet research, I invite you to join me. I am going to find a transcript of remarks made by someone like the President of the Marshall Islands, and the next day, alone in my prayer closet (cf. Matthew 6), I’m going to read out loud to God the entirety of the President’s statement. I will preface my remarks with something like, “Oh just Judge of the universe, hear what the suffering and oppressed cry out day and night to earthly judges who have proven so unlike you. Indeed, you are different than these others. You have promised to hear and respond, and to respond quickly. Hear now, of God, how President Kabua summarizes his people’s cry for justice. . .”
You can find a list of the 40 speech givers on the White House invitation linked here. Choose one who spoke just like a widow would before unjust judges. Also on the invitation are the six key themes of the summit, which leads us to another piece of fruitful work that we climate interecessors, informed by Luke 18:1-8, can do. The first stated theme of the summit reads: “Galvanizing efforts by the world’s major economies to reduce emissions during this critical decade to keep a limit to warming of 1.5 degree Celsius within reach.” Now, there is no explicit reference to justice in that theme as stated unless you do the research and learn how unjust it is settle for a 2.0 degree Celsius target in the Paris Agreement and not strive for the 1.5 degree target. Jesus’s parable encourages us to dig deeply into climate change themes until we uncover that point of injustice, and then, it is in the injustice that we bring to God’s attention. For instance, here is another key theme of the Leaders Summit: “The economic benefits of climate action, with a strong emphasis on job creation, and the importance of ensuring all communities and workers benefit from the transition to a new clean energy economy.” What do you imagine are the justice implications of such a theme? Where might strategies of job creation or a new clean energy economy go wrong for the world’s vulnerable? It turns out that climate intercession is a lot of hard work. Usually our brains tire out before our knees do.
You are very dear to God,
Lowell Bliss
On behalf of the Climate Intercessors leadership team