By Bishop Ann Svennungsen
If you google “images for Jubilee,” you get balloons and party hats, streamers and fireworks. Jubilee means party!
Scripture describes something more nuanced. Depending on where you sit, Jubilee can feel like good news or bad news, liberation or loss. It’s a radical reordering of things.
Scripture’s Jubilee includes forgiving of debts, restoration of land, and liberation for the oppressed and imprisoned. You might not be so happy if you were the one required to relinquish your land or forfeit the repayment you expected.
As far as I know, Jesus spoke only once about Jubilee, calling it “the year of the Lord’s favor.” But, what a statement he makes. Jesus quotes from the scroll of Isaiah:
The Spirit is upon me to preach good news to the poor…
To set at liberty those who are oppressed.
To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
What is more, Jesus says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Those gathered in Nazareth weren’t sure if Jesus’ message was good news or bad. It might topple the status quo, which might mean a loss for them. Eventually, they run Jesus out of town, attempting to throw him off a cliff.
Though Jesus escaped, those in charge of the status quo eventually found a way to silence this Jubilee proclaimer – using a cross not a cliff.
BUT, THE JUBILEE PROCLAMATION doesn’t end on the cross. In Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, God ushers in a renewed Jubilee that extends to all – as far as the ends of the earth. This Jubilee is captured in the closing words of Luke’s Gospel. “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”
The Jubilee of the resurrection is forgiveness of sin – liberation from the bondage of unrighteousness. It’s the Jubilee of Justification; a setting free through the repentance and forgiveness.
“Scripture’s Jubilee includes forgiving of debts, restoration of land, and liberation for the oppressed and imprisoned.”
Oh, that doesn’t mean the jubilee in Isaiah is replaced by the jubilee of justification. On the contrary! It is part of one beautifully woven history of salvation. At the end of Luke, Jesus confirms that, “everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled (which includes Isaiah’s Jubilee).”
The church is part of that fulfillment. You and I are partners with the God of Jubilee. We’ve been justified by grace through Christ’s death and resurrection. Secure in that identity, we live and proclaim Jubilee to the ends of the earth – forgiveness of sin, good news to the poor, release to the captives, and liberty for the oppressed.