The Year of Jubilee

On Wednesday at Fellowship we discussed  The Year of the Sabbath and The Year of Jubilee, which God commands the Israelites to observe. The Year of the Sabbath was incredible - the Israelites are commanded to observe a solemn rest for an entire year. I've talked about rest before, and I think rest days are important, but it was so difficult for me to wrap my head around the idea of an entire year of rest.

Perhaps it is because I base my identity on so much of what I do.

Also the idea of trusting God becomes magnified when you consider an entire year of rest. A year of rest means no planting seed, no tending the fields and reaping the harvest. It means no working to earn money. The basic ways we conventionally find our security to support ourselves are prohibited, and God says instead that He will provide security for the Israelites, that the earth will give them everything they need, and that they will not want (The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want).

When God tells us to rest, He really asks us, 'Do you trust me?'

The Year of Jubilee also called for rest, but on top of that there was the incredible restoration of rights and justice that happened in that celebration. Debts were cancelled, family land was restored, and slaves were set free. God cared deeply that as a community, the Israelites dedicated time to enshrining social justice and rest as part of their worship of Him, as part of celebration - what gave them deep and satisfying joy. Mercy, generosity, righteousness, were not to be some sort of twisted competition to 'out-moral' each other, neither was it to be a grudging duty to avoid God's wrath, it was meant to be an outpouring of joy and celebration, where we find our truest happiness in our worship of God.

I was enraptured by the idea of the Year of Jubilee. I imagined it in my mind - how perfectly exciting, to be a slave and know that you would be free one day. How reassuring, to be someone trapped in poverty, to know that your rightful land would be restored to you, upon which you could then build a stable home and life. How humbling for a rich man, who had built up his life in receiving the interest from incurred debt, to have to let go of what is owed to him. Such a beautiful pictures of restoration and perfection.

The prophet Isaiah describes it in Isaiah 61 as the Year of the Lord's Favour:

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,

    because the Lord has anointed me

    to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

    to proclaim freedom for the captives

    and release from darkness for the prisoners,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor

    and the day of vengeance of our God,

to comfort all who mourn,

     and provide for those who grieve in Zion—

to bestow on them a crown of beauty

    instead of ashes,

the oil of joy

    instead of mourning,

and a garment of praise

    instead of a spirit of despair.

...

“For I, the Lord, love justice;

    I hate robbery and wrongdoing.

In my faithfulness I will reward my people

    and make an everlasting covenant with them.

Then I found out that the Year of Jubilee never happened. Not even once. The Israelites could not, as a national body, live out the social system that God had commanded them. And neither can our present day society. The perfect picture in my head of the Year of Jubilee was shattered. But then Caleb said something else, "That perfect picture of the Year of Jubilee is just that, a picture." The real jubilee was fulfilled somewhere else - or rather, in someone else. In Luke 4, Jesus took up the scroll and read out from Isaiah 61. And then he rolled up that scroll and said,

“Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Mind. Blown.

Jesus is the Jubilee. He is the restoration of justice. In his short time on earth he began that work, healing the sick, freeing the oppressed, and fighting injustice where he met it. And he promises eternal jubilee in heaven, where 'there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away'. The Jubilee didn't happen for the Israelites because that perfection could not operate in such an imperfect society, but it was fulfilled in the perfect person of Jesus, and remains a promise and a hope for us to reach forward to.

"Listen, Peter. When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia which has always been here and always be here: just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan's real world. You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy. All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Namia though the Door. And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream."