The Jubilee That Never Was

We still have never celebrated Jubilee. Not once. Not in Ancient Israel.

Not in Rome.

Not in Geneva.

Not in America.

Christian Nationalists want us to believe the Old Testament Law is about a jealous, power-hungry god cruelly punishing anyone who crosses him or doesn’t offer up the soul-destroying sacrifices he demands.

But Jesus tells us that His yoke is easy, His burden is light. He tells us He came to set the captives free. He does not demand human sacrifice like the other gods. He only asks that we die to our need to rule over and hurt others, and instead follow Him and His ways. He asks that we agree with Him about what good and evil even are. And in that sense, the Old Testament Law actually gives us a starting point for what a civilization based on His ethic would look like.

1. It looks like those who have enough intentionally and freely share their excess with anyone around them that need it, including immigrants, the homeless, and more.

“When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God.” - Leviticus 9:19

“If any of your fellow Israelites become poor and are unable to support themselves among you, help them as you would a foreigner and stranger, so they can continue to live among you. Do not take interest or any profit from them, but fear your God, so that they may continue to live among you.” - Leviticus 25:35-36

"If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday." - Isaiah 58 (just read the whole chapter!)

2. It looks like practicing hospitality toward whoever is in your land. It looks like loving immigrants as you love yourself. It looks like providing a clear path to citizenship and a secure place in society. "When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God." - Leviticus 19:33-34 "Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow. Then all the people shall say, ‘Amen!'" - Deuteronomy 27:19 "You shall allot [the land] as an inheritance for yourselves and for the foreigners who reside among you and have begotten children among you. They shall be to you as citizens of Israel; with you they shall be allotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel." - Ezekiel 47:22

3. It looks like ROBUST maternal care and rest that extends to ALL women, regardless of whether they have borne living children from their bodies or not.

There's too much data here to synthesize in a blog post, but a significant portion of OT Law is around mandating rest periods for mothers and nursing mothers AND menstruating women regardless of age or reproductive status. Check out some of our Instagram highlights on this for more - we're starting to turn those into more accessible, sourced versions.

4. It looks like justice being served. It looks like fair trials, and restitution and restoration. True healing from the harm. "For this is what the Sovereign, YHWH, says: ‘Enough, you princes of Israel! Stop your violence and oppression and do what is just and right. Quit robbing and cheating my people out of their land. Stop expelling them from their homes, says the Sovereign, YHWH." - Ezekiel 45:9

"Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice, who makes his neighbor serve him for nothing and does not give him his wages, who says, ‘I will build myself a great house with spacious upper rooms,’ [...] Did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Is not this to know me? declares the Lord. But you have eyes and heart only for your dishonest gain, for shedding innocent blood, and for practicing oppression and violence." - Jeremiah 22:13-17

"Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow." - Isaiah 1:17

5. It looks like never charging interest, lending freely, and forgiving debts.

"At the end of every seven years you shall grant a release [of all debt]. And this is the manner of the release: every creditor shall release what he has lent to his neighbor. He shall not exact it of his neighbor, his brother, because the Lord's Jubilee [year of favor] has been proclaimed." - Deuteronomy 15:1-2

"If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner [meaning Israel gave full support to certain immigrants and political refugees], and he shall live with you. Take no interest from him or profit, 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." - Leviticus 25:35-37

"[T]here will be no poor among you [...] if only you will strictly obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all this commandment that I command you today." - Deuteronomy 15

6. It looks like freeing slaves and setting captives free, and giving them complete equality. "[W]hen you let [the enslaved person] go free from you, you shall not let him go empty-handed. You shall furnish him liberally out of your flock, out of your threshing floor, and out of your winepress. As the Lord your God has blessed you, you shall give to him." - Deuteronomy 15:13

"He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has broken faith with her. If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter. If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money." - Exodus 21:8-11 "You shall not give up to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you." - Deuteronomy 23:15"Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death." - Exodus 21:16

What we just read is not the Old Testament Law ethos that has captured the heart of American Christianity. What we just read is complicated, to be sure. OT Law wasn't written to us, to our culture, to our times, to our morés, or to our cosmology. And it allows for behaviors that are, frankly, monstrous and evil. (And the Bible isn't ignorant of this; these problems are specifically addressed, and in detail. We just never got taught those parts.) Which is why the book of Hebrews later tells us, "Jesus, our High Priest, has been given a ministry that is far superior to the old priesthood, for he is the one who mediates for us a far better covenant with God, based on better promises. If the first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no need for a second covenant to replace it."

OT Law was a stepping stone in God's guidance of His people toward full maturity. The Bible very carefully makes this plain; there are multiple books of the New Testament explicitly written to explain this, and yet evangelicals have lived in confusion over the purpose and function of the Law for Christians since there were folks around to call evangelical. Why?

------ Today, the American institutional church - I use this term to differentiate from the Church Universal - is more than complicit in the continued oppression of the "other." It's actively pushing for it.

Instead of welcoming immigrants who make their way here, we don’t pay fair wages, we mock and fear their newness, then criticize and rage when they can't assimilate. They come legally, and we complain that they don't speak our language yet. They cross the border in the night, and we complain that they are criminals. Our culture has created a locus of injustice because of its hatred of the stranger, and yet the American institutional church's calls, by and large, are for oppression to increase and intensify, not for the system that causes the oppression and enables criminality to be repaired.

Instead of giving women rest from the heavy burden they carry, we have actively maintained laws that trap them in unsafe situations, give them no help or compensation for raising the next generation, or pay them less then their male counterparts at their jobs. Then, we play around with denying them access to work they could get paid for.

Instead of demanding a system where money is lent freely and interest is never required, we operate in a capitalist system that demands payment for every aspect of human existence.

I'm not saying the American system should run on the Old Testament one (wouldn't that be ironic?). But I am saying that it's very odd that the American institutional church should so fiercely defend a system that has elements squarely opposed to how Israel functioned. Especially when there are such loud voices in its midst insisting that that's exactly what they're TRYING to do.

Our country denies essential things like shelter and food for people who cannot pay, while offering tax breaks to billionaires. Instead of freeing slaves both here and abroad, and engaging in the work of reconciliation, restitution, and restoration; instead of giving migrants seeking asylum full citizenship and representation, we demand they act like there was never any injustice. We accuse them of bitterness or being ’woke’ when they demand what the Bible requires Christians give.

Arguments will be made as to whether or not America ought to be doing these things or others. Those debates can and must be had, and Christians of good faith must participate in them - in good faith - because justice and the bodies of image bearers are at stake.

But one is led to ask: why aren't American evangelicals at least personally living in these ways? The stats are clear that they aren't, and regardless of the inevitable squalling about Christians giving large amounts of personal wealth, it doesn't answer for the apalling institutional inactivity of churches.

Evangelicals in America have never, when given the power and opportunity, chosen to set the captives free, to forgive debts, or to grant full citizenship and humanity to ALL their neighbors as required by Old Testament Law.

And this is why the Law cannot save us. If we could follow it, it would. 

But we can’t. Not because we are thoroughly and unadulteratedly wicked as individuals, but because we aren’t consistently and collectively good enough as individuals to sustain a genuinely good collective. We can’t get everybody on board for long enough; we can’t even get all Christians on board.

And this is why those who love the ways of Jesus have constant heartache. We see what could be. We see what is and the endless cycles of violence and pain it causes, and our hearts cry out.

Help. Make it stop. Protect us. Our hearts are shattered before the face of God.

But God’s hands are His church, and in America, her evangelical wing turns a blind eye. The evangelical institutional church stuffs her ears and turns the music up louder, calling us “wayward” and “dangerous.”

What hope do any of us have when the American church has forgotten who she belongs to? When she's forgotten who she even is? "The bride of Christ," the scriptures call her. But the American evangelical church doesn't want to be Christ's bride.

The American evangelical church thinks it's a patriarchal man. It thinks it's Christ's warlord, not His Beloved. It wants to be His avenger, not his strong ally. It wants to be His holy warrior, not His "Proverbs 31 woman."

(And considering how they speak of and treat women, it's not hard to understand why it's this way.)

The people who wrote the Bible tell us of their hope, given them by God, that a final battle is coming between those who love what is good, and those who seek to destroy them to preserve their own comfort. But this time, the innocent, the victims, the hungry, the rejected, the accused, the downtrodden WIN - because the Lord of All The Earth intervenes on their behalf.

And once that victory is secured, the spiritual world will reintegrate with ours. It’s illustrated in the image of a city coming down from heaven. This city is YHWH’s home, the one Jesus has been preparing for us.

God will once again, finally, live with humanity, and we'll finally have that Jubilee we tried to make happen all those years ago. We'll use all the flags and money for kindling at the hearth, and we'll laugh and feast over a shared table. There will be real justice, real catharsis. Everyone will have a home. There won't be any 'law,' because it'll be in our hearts to love each other by instinct.

And I personally believe that the most wonderful secret of all is that the Gospel -- the really-truly good news, not that zero-calorie "sparkling" stuff they expect us to swill and act like it's spiritual superfood -- the Gospel of "good news to the poor, sight to the blind, liberation to the captive" means that many of us have already started getting ready. Come with us.