Jubilee

Each church season offers a unique “movement of the soul,” a particular way of growing in grace. The movement of the soul Epiphany offers is not something we do, but instead something we receive. In Epiphany, we receive a revelation of God’s character in the person of Jesus Christ. Do we see him clearly? Do we receive him? To that end…

As we heard from Luke 4 on Sunday, when Jesus returned to Nazareth early in his ministry, he read Isaiah 61 in his hometown synagogue, in front of people he had known since he was a toddler, and claimed that he was the fulfillment of this prophecy:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me…to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Michael reminded us on Sunday that this phrase is a reference to the Year of Jubilee. The Year of Jubilee, described in Leviticus 25, is ultimately a year of freedom—freedom from work, freedom from debt, freedom from loneliness. People who had been forced to move by the necessity of work were to return to their families. Indentured servants were set free of their debt and released. Land that had been sold because of poverty was returned to the original owner. Every 50 years, the books were wiped clean and everyone got to start over from scratch. Modern financiers would likely bristle at the concept, as would the speculators and investors who snatch up land and homes when poverty and taxes force families to sell. We don’t want to give up our wealth so that others have a chance to start over. Yet this is what the Year of Jubilee demanded, because God cares more about compassion than the accumulation of individual wealth.

Yet when we look deeper than finances, most of us likely realize that we desperately desire Jubilee in our own lives. After all, how much accumulated spiritual and relational debt do we all carry? How many wounds have we caused and how many wounds have been inflicted on us from which we long to be free? We are in debt, and hold the debt of others, every time forgiveness is withheld, confession not practiced, and the truth not acknowledged. Our families (and our society and our world!) bear the record of that debt in fractured relationships, rivalry, and distrust.

Christ comes to proclaim the Year of Jubilee for all who will listen and receive. In his life and death, debts are canceled and relationships restored. This is the king we follow; this is his character. May we be those who receive him!

Steven+