How long can we continue to push God’s promise of justice into the future?
by Russell Rathbun
Old Testament Reading: Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
For Sunday, Dec. 11 , 2011: Year B—Advent 3
Jesus quotes this Isaiah text in Luke 4:16 as sort of his mission statement. And it seems like really Good News. The Lord has anointed Jesus to bring this good news the oppressed, the brokenhearted, the captives, and the prisoners. The year of the Lord’s favor has arrived.
Reset Button
Jesus via Isaiah is referencing Leviticus 25’s description of the Year of Jubilee. This is commanded to take place every fiftieth year. During this amazing year, justice and equanimity is supposed to reign. All debts are forgiven; the captives go free; the prisoners are released; and nobody does any work.
The Year of Jubilee was designed to be a sort of social reset button. It is a control against the amassing of wealth and power—an acknowledgement of and correction to our tendencies toward corruption. When too much is controlled by too few, it usually turns out very bad for the many.
Push the Button or Push it Off?
This does seem like good news, like miraculous news.
The only problem is that there is no record of it ever happening. Perhaps it is because the few with the wealth and power where the ones responsible for declaring the Year of Jubilee.
When Jesus proclaims the coming of Jubilee with his coming, it seems like a radical, resurrecting of the concept. It is a promise of relief sorely needed in occupied Palestine, where the religious leaders practiced the rule of oppression as well as Rome. But it never happened.
So now when we preach on this text, whether from Isaiah or as quoted by Jesus in Luke, we sort of have to explain that it doesn’t mean now, or really. It is something that will happen in the fullness of time or something that happens spiritually, but not physically in the real world. Unless, of course, we can figure out how to push the reset button.
The Hardest Question
It is clear in Leviticus that the Year of Jubilee was meant to be an actual realignment of wealth and power. Chapter 25 gives detailed instruction regarding land, debt, slaves, prisoners and all kinds of other very concrete real world things. It is sort of disheartening to have to repurpose an actual jubilee as a spiritual—someday—jubilee.
How long can we continue to push into the future God’s promise of justice for the oppressed before it becomes meaningless?
Russell Rathbun is a preacher at House of Mercy in St. Paul, Minnesota, the author of Midrash on the Juanitos (Cathedral Hill Press, 2010) and the curator of The Hardest Question.
