Jubilee – Why Wait?

The Westminster Shorter Catechism begins with the question: “What is the chief end of man?”  And the answer, written in 1640 by the religious leaders of the Reformation in England and Scotland is: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.”  “To glorify God and enjoy him forever.”   If we do nothing else in life… for, according to the dictates of our faith, nothing else is as important as this… we are to glorify God and enjoy him forever.  What a contrast that statement is to the painted portraits of religious leaders that I have seen coming out of the English Reformation!  Do any of them look like they are enjoying God?  Or even glorifying God?  Yet our Psalm today praises God and shares many of the reasons why we should praise and glorify God.  Listen, again, to this list:

· God is our hope

· God made heaven and earth

· God executes justice for the oppressed and gives food to the hungry.

· God sets the prisoner free and opens the eyes of the blind

· God lifts up those who are bowed down

· God watches over strangers and upholds the orphan and the widow.

· And, oh, by the way, God does this all the time… not just in a year of Jubilee.

And we are called to do the same.

In our Presbyterian Women’s Bible Studies, which began this week… and we invite you to join us on the first Thursday of each month… we are studying the idea of the year of Jubilee as it is introduced in the Gospel of Luke.  For it is in that Gospel that Jesus reads from the scroll of Isaiah to fellow Jews in his hometown of Nazareth these words: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."  Jesus then announces to his friends and neighbors that these words have been fulfilled in their hearing.  They, of course, have a difficult time believing his words because they know Jesus… he grew up in their small town.  They remember him as a boy, playing in the school yard with other children… or dealing with the awkward adolescent days of his youth.   But Jesus announces the purpose of his presence on earth… the hallmark of his ministry… and it is Jubilee.

            Jubilee is an ancient concept that predated Jesus’ birth by thousands of years.  Laid out in the book of Leviticus, the holy year of Jubilee was to be celebrated every fifty years… the culmination of seven cycles of seven Sabbath years.  As each person was directed to rest on the seventh day of the week, the land itself was to rest in the seventh year… with the land lying fallow for the year.  Then… on the Day of Atonement in the seventh month of the seventh year of a cycle of seven years… the people were to consecrate the fiftieth year as a year of Jubilee.  In that year, all people were to return to their ancestral lands… slaves were to be set free… debts were to be cancelled… no person was to cheat another in the transaction of business… and no one was to charge another interest.

            This directive came from the God of Abraham… the God of Isaac… and the God of Jacob… from the God who led them out of Egypt into the Promised Land… the God who divided all the land between the twelve tribes of Israel and gave it to them… in perpetuity.  The land was not theirs to dispose of as they chose… the land belonged… and still belongs… to God… and God’s people were merely the stewards of it… tenants… aliens, if you will, in the land… to protect it… and to preserve it for God.    If, for some reason, a child of God fell onto hard times and was forced to sell his portion of the land, those who purchased it were warned that their purchase was merely “rental” of the use of the land from that day forward until the next Year of Jubilee.  For, in the Year of Jubilee, all land was to be returned to those to whom God had given it… and all debts were to be cancelled… and ties of kinship were to be renewed… for, in doing this, individuals returned to their tribal lands… and the world would be restored to the perfection that God had created once again.

            So, what is this “Nazareth Manifesto” of Jesus?  It is his announcement that the world of his day was not as God intended it to be and that he, Jesus, would spend his life… and his ministry… restoring it to the “Garden of Eden” that it once was. Did he make this announcement during a Year of Jubilee?  No… and that was the point.  For the Jews, “Jubilee” came once every fifty years… if at all… but Jesus showed that it was not a once-in-a-lifetime event, but a way of doing ministry every day.  While God recognizes that we are human and that, through our own frailty, we will slide further and further from the perfection that God created… thus requiring a major adjustment every fifty years… God’s true desire is that we be perfect… as our heavenly Father is perfect… and that Jubilee be the standard of every day life… not a once-in-a-lifetime celebration.

So, Jesus announced that the purpose of his ministry was Jubilee: “to bring good news to the poor… to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind… to let the oppressed go free… to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”  Isn’t that the purpose of our ministry as well?   Are we not to follow him?   Did he not establish the church to carry on the ministry that he began in his lifetime?    Did he not usher in the Kingdom of God… and wouldn’t the Kingdom of God have all the hallmarks of God’s Year of Jubilee?   So, what are we waiting for… for someone to announce that it is the right year… the right time?   The whole point of Jesus’ “Nazareth Manifesto” is to tell us that this is the right year!  Today is the right time!  Jubilee is our purpose.  What are we waiting for?  Let us take our eyes off of ourselves and raise them to the heavens.  Let us glorify God and enjoy him forever!  Let us declare the year of the Lord’s favor… and usher in God’s Kingdom in this time… and in this place.  Praise God… this is our Jubilee!  Amen.

Psalm 146