Jesus is the Jubilee

Well done, Governor Katie Hobbs!

Jesus began his public ministry this way:

And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and he went to the synagogue, as was his custom, on the sabbath day. And he stood up to read; and there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found the place where it was written,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
And he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Lk 4:16–21)

The Scripture he is quoting is Isaiah 61:1–2, in which the prophet is (as is the custom with Hebrew prophets) both looking backward to Israel’s past (particularly to the Exodus) and forward to Israel’s messianic future. The past, in this case, is the proclamation of an ideal that Israel never lived out: namely, the Jubilee.

The intention of the Jubilee was to extend the liberty Israel experienced in the Exodus into her future. It was a sort of Great Reset Button in which slave were to be set free, debts cancelled, and the cobwebs and encroaching structures of sin that tend to accrue as a civilization gets set in its ways got smashed and everybody got a fresh start.

“And you shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall be to you forty-nine years. Then you shall send abroad the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the day of atonement you shall send abroad the trumpet throughout all your land. And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants; it shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his family. A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be to you; in it you shall neither sow, nor reap what grows of itself, nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you; you shall eat what it yields out of the field.
“In this year of jubilee each of you shall return to his property. And if you sell to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor, you shall not wrong one another. According to the number of years after the jubilee, you shall buy from your neighbor, and according to the number of years for crops he shall sell to you. If the years are many you shall increase the price, and if the years are few you shall diminish the price, for it is the number of the crops that he is selling to you. You shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God; for I am the LORD your God.
“Therefore you shall do my statutes, and keep my ordinances and perform them; so you will dwell in the land securely. The land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill, and dwell in it securely. And if you say, ‘What shall we eat in the seventh year, if we may not sow or gather in our crop?’ I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, so that it will bring forth fruit for three years. When you sow in the eighth year, you will be eating old produce; until the ninth year, when its produce comes in, you shall eat the old. The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with me. And in all the country you possess, you shall grant a redemption of the land.
“If your brother becomes poor, and sells part of his property, then his next of kin shall come and redeem what his brother has sold. If a man has no one to redeem it, and then himself becomes prosperous and finds sufficient means to redeem it, let him reckon the years since he sold it and pay back the overpayment to the man to whom he sold it; and he shall return to his property. But if he has not sufficient means to get it back for himself, then what he sold shall remain in the hand of him who bought it until the year of jubilee; in the jubilee it shall be released, and he shall return to his property.
“If a man sells a dwelling house in a walled city, he may redeem it within a whole year after its sale; for a full year he shall have the right of redemption. If it is not redeemed within a full year, then the house that is in the walled city shall be made sure in perpetuity to him who bought it, throughout his generations; it shall not be released in the jubilee. But the houses of the villages which have no wall around them shall be reckoned with the fields of the country; they may be redeemed, and they shall be released in the jubilee. Nevertheless the cities of the Levites, the houses in the cities of their possession, the Levites may redeem at any time. And if one of the Levites does not exercise his right of redemption, then the house that was sold in a city of their possession shall be released in the jubilee; for the houses in the cities of the Levites are their possession among the sons of Israel. But the fields of common land belonging to their cities may not be sold; for that is their perpetual possession.
“And if your brother becomes poor, and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall maintain him; as a stranger and a sojourner he shall live with you. Take no interest from him or increase, but fear your God; that your brother may live beside you. You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit. I am the LORD your God, who brought you forth out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God.
“And if your brother becomes poor beside you, and sells himself to you, you shall not make him serve as a slave: he shall be with you as a hired servant and as a sojourner. He shall serve with you until the year of the jubilee; then he shall go out from you, he and his children with him, and go back to his own family, and return to the possession of his fathers. For they are my servants, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves. You shall not rule over him with harshness, but shall fear your God. As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are round about you. You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their families that are with you, who have been born in your land; and they may be your property. You may bequeath them to your sons after you, to inherit as a possession for ever; you may make slaves of them, but over your brethren the sons of Israel you shall not rule, one over another, with harshness.
“If a stranger or sojourner with you becomes rich, and your brother beside him becomes poor and sells himself to the stranger or sojourner with you, or to a member of the stranger’s family, then after he is sold he may be redeemed; one of his brothers may redeem him, or his uncle, or his cousin may redeem him, or a near kinsman belonging to his family may redeem him; or if he grows rich he may redeem himself. He shall reckon with him who bought him from the year when he sold himself to him until the year of jubilee, and the price of his release shall be according to the number of years; the time he was with his owner shall be rated as the time of a hired servant. If there are still many years, according to them he shall refund out of the price paid for him the price for his redemption. If there remain but a few years until the year of jubilee, he shall make a reckoning with him; according to the years of service due from him he shall refund the money for his redemption. As a servant hired year by year shall he be with him; he shall not rule with harshness over him in your sight. And if he is not redeemed by these means, then he shall be released in the year of jubilee, he and his children with him. For to me the sons of Israel are servants, they are my servants whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God. (Le 25:8–55)

In Trump’s Amerikkka, any such proposal would be shouted down as Communist, utopian, woke, and every other swear word the orcs in his Cult have been taught to bray. In ancient Israel, being as how Leviticus was the word of God, the children of Israel dealt with the problem of the Jubilee by the more polite expedient of just never getting around to celebrating it. But the Jubilee continued to haunt their consciences and prophets like Isaiah continued to look for it to be celebrated. Indeed, some saw the calamities that befell disobedient Israel as a sort of fulfilment of the Jubilee, with Israel being forced by the conquering Babylonians to make the land lie fallow as a sort of back payment punishment for their refusal to do so in celebration of the Jubilee for many centuries.

But in addition to the backward look to the law of Moses that Israel had ignored, there was also an aspect of the Jubilee celebration that looked forward to the coming Messianic Age. It is this Jesus alludes to when he reads from Isaiah.

The thing is: Jesus did not mean that it was now a Year of Jubilee. He meant he was the Year of Jubilee, just as he was the Temple (John 2:19), the Passover Lamb (John 1:36), the Manna (John 6), and the Rock that gave Israel water in the desert (John 7:37–38).

We are to imitate him by the power of the Spirit and cancel debts as well, especially the debts others owe us by their sins against us.

And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against any one; so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.” (Mk 11:25)

And to those looking for way to minimize or whittle down the radicality of his demand…

Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.

“Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began the reckoning, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents; and as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him the lord of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But that same servant, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ He refused and went and put him in prison till he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me; and should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord delivered him to the jailers, till he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” (Mt 18:21–35)

The irony, of course, of our time is that Christians eager to avoid living this command concretely love to spiritualize parables into the ether rather than put them into concrete practice. But Jesus doesn’t mean “Keep it all ethereal and spiritual and don’t talk about forgiving actual monetary debts.” It means monetary debts are the very lowest and simplest and most basic forms of debt we should start with forgiving: kindergarten stuff. If we strangle people who owe us money, how can we hope to expect to receive forgiveness of the debt we owe him who paid in blood for our souls?

So again I say, “Well done, Governor Katie Hobbs!