The Hopes and Fears of All the Years: Day Six
The Work of Jubilee
Yes, if Jesus was to preach like he preached in Galilee,
They would lay Jesus Christ in his grave.
- Woody Guthrie, They Laid Jesus Christ in His Grave
Text: Isaiah 61
The Prophets believed they knew what had gotten Judah into the trouble that led to their defeat and exile in Babylon, and they weren’t shy about saying so. The nation of Judah, the Prophets said, had failed to uphold justice, to protect the vulnerable, and practice Jubilee. As a result, they believed, God had sent them out of the land, refusing to tolerate the injustice they perpetuated.
Jubilee is perhaps the most progressive societal idea that’s never been tried, and it’s found in Leviticus 25. Here’s the gist of the plan: Every fiftieth year there would be a societal reset that prevented the gap between the rich and the poor, and rampant injustice, from getting an unstoppable head of steam. Included in the proclamation of Jubilee is:
Liberation proclaimed throughout the land.
All debts are forgiven.
Any land that had been sold must be returned to its original families.1
Indentured servants are released.
Even land rests—there was to be no sowing or harvesting. Creation, too, benefits from Jubilee.
Brilliant, right? Again, the problem is not that Jubilee was tried and it failed to solve the injustice of society. The problem is that it has never really been tried.
When the Jewish community returned to the land after the Exile, the Prophets understood that, to avoid another disaster like they had just experienced, things had to be different this time. They had to take seriously this idea of Jubilee.
That’s what Isaiah 61 is doing. This figure, the identity of whom is debated among scholars, announces that they have been anointed by God to proclaim Jubilee, the result of which would not be just a reset, but the dawning of a brand new age, a new kind of world.2 That looks practically like:
Good news announced to the oppressed.
Binding up the broken hearted.
Liberation for captives/prisoners.
The dawning of “The Year of the LORD’s favor.” A time of renewal, restoration, and recalibration.
All of this, the Prophet was convicted, would be the right medicine for all of their societal ills and injustices. It should not surprise us, then, that Jesus was pulled toward this text to explain the Kingdom of God movement he was leading. This was not a vision of pie-in-the-sky-someday-when-you-die, but a concrete, practical, political, and economic plan to cultivate a just society. It was about daily bread and forgiven debts, but not just metaphorical bread or the forgiveness of trespasses. When Jesus taught his disciples the prayer we call The Lord’s Prayer or the Our Father, he was addressing the real, pressing needs of his community. Food for today and a solution for the indebtedness that threatened so many in his community were central to the struggle for survival.
In Luke 4 Jesus read this same text from Isaiah 61 and announced that his movement was the fulfillment of this prophetic dream. Not on a spiritual level, mind, you. It’s always interesting that folks who think they take all of Scripture literally somehow end up reading texts like this as if they are focused on spiritual matters, not the liberation of actual bodies and a transformation of how we live together. Jesus meant it, I think, in real, tangible ways, not as kind of spiritual escapism that ignores the problems of the world and offers platitudes and the promise of a better situation after we die.
This is why I began with the quote from the Woody Guthrie song, They Laid Jesus Christ in His Grave. The song ends by suggesting—this is my paraphrase—that if Jesus were to show up today and say these kinds of things in New York, Nashville, Washington, D.C., or Los Angeles, we would treat him the same way the rulers treated him when he first said them in Galilee and Jerusalem.
The Gospel is not primarily a message about another time and place. It is Good News for this world. It is an announcement that we have options; we can choose to live together differently, in more human and just ways that allow all of us to flourish, not just a few.
Several years ago, at the church I pastored before GracePointe, we did some painting. When we had a fresh coat or two on the walls, I decided to ask an artist in the community if she would do some stenciling for us. On the wall right outside the sanctuary, so that everyone would see it as they left the Sunday gatherings, I asked her to put this passage from Isaiah 61 / Luke 4. But, I did make a small change. I asked her to make the language corporate, not individual, as a way of reminding us that this work has never been Jesus’s do to alone. It’s our work, too. So, on that wall as we left worship each week we saw these words:
The spirit of the Lord God is upon us
because the Lord has anointed us;
God has sent us to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives
and release to the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
That’s not just Jesus’s job, back then.
It’s also our job, right here and right now.
Reflection:
What would Jubilee look like today in practice?
Why do we resist it?
How can we begin to make it so?
The loss of land in ancient Israel and Judah was a big deal, and usually connected to debt. When you put your ancestral land up as collateral, then default on the repayment, the land would have been confiscated. Jubilee ensures that this wasn’t a permanent loss, because land was central to both identity/family and the ability to provide basic necessities.
Two things. First, a majority of scholars understand this figure to be a Prophet, while others interpret them to be either a Priest or the rightful Davidic King. Second, the verb “to anoint" here is the root of the noun that is translated as “Messiah” (anointed one).