"And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; you shall return every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family.You shall not sow, or reap the aftergrowth, or harvest the unpruned vines. For it is a jubilee;it shall be holy to you; When you make a sale to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor, you shall not cheat one another. If anyone of your kin falls into difficulty and sells a piece of property, then the next of kin shall come and redeem what the relative has sold. But if there is not sufficient means to recover it, what was sold shall remain with the purchaser until the year of jubilee; in the jubilee it shall be released and the property shall be returned." Leviticus 25, selected verses
I don’t often go to the book of Leviticus for inspiration. It is a complicated, time sensitive book of law that has been used, by Christians and others, to do some terrible harm toward one another. But the past few weeks I have been fascinated by the concept of ‘jubilee’ that is outlined in the 25th chapter of this ancient book. The ruling to the people of the time took into account that greed, oppression, hording, consumerism, and ownership would quite frankly always get humans into trouble…..God knew this and planned for it.
Jubilee provides for a time, every 50 years, for a release of all debts, setting the slaves free, letting the lands lie
fallow,
and the return of lands to their original (and rightful)
owners: all the farm lands that farmers had been forced to sell due to
debt. I think of it as a cultural ‘do-over’ or a true act of wiping the slate clean.
Last week I was riding in my car listening to the news. In five minutes of sound bites I heard of yet another person killed in Iraq pushing the American death count higher into the 4000’s;the figures reported for yet more and more foreclosures and loss of homes and pride;continually rising oil prices followed by gas prices with no end in sight and attention seemingly elsewhere; unemployment reports were high; food costs spiking due to oil prices; the ability to get college loans is on the decline; on and on. I felt my shoulders moving closer and closer to my ears as the stress of it all mounted.
That’s when I thought of ‘jubilee’, this principle the scriptures tell us was given to the Hebrew people as a gift to ensure they would continue to care for one another and the Earth in the ways in which God intended. Wouldn’t this be a good time for jubilee? Wouldn’t it be a perfect moment to stop the insanity and have a do-over? I truly believe that we have the creativity, the intelligence, the wisdom, to provide the change and possibility needed, the pull us back from the brink if only we’d take the time, the honesty and the intention to do so.
But Jubilee is not primarily head-work, it is heart-work. Jubilee is the recognition that we are all in this together and our interdependence is woven into the fabric of the Universe. When one part suffers, we all suffer. When one part rejoices, we all rejoice.The book of Leviticus is grounded in the premise that the Holy has ‘pitched a tent’ in our midst. Its laws and directives call us to live accordingly.
Today might just be the day to begin declaring a Jubilee. Perhaps if each of us forgave a debt, offered another a simple freedom, loved the land and cared for it with our heart, we might have a ‘trickle up’ effect that might have far reaching implications.
It couldn’t hurt.