When Grace staff met in retreat in December of 2024, each of us answered three questions; Where do you seek to see Grace going? Why does it matter? And where are we now? These same questions were later asked of the congregation at our Annual meeting Indaba, and your responses are forming a basis for the vestry’s mission strategy for this year.
One of the most unexpected answers to come from the staff retreat, which I did not see reflected anywhere in the congregational reports was a call for sabbath. Staff probably are adept at taking the pulse of a community because they interact with you in so many different ways. And they noticed the significance of creating a jubilee as part of our own triple jubilee.
The concept of Jubilee comes initially from the book of Leviticus, and in chapter 25 God addresses how Israel was to behave as a community. Just as God rested on the seventh day at creation, so it was not surprise that a sabbath or seventh day rest should be woven into the rhythm of the life of the Israelites. In Leviticus the concept of a sabbath day– originally from the Ten Commandments of Moses and Exodus fame – was expanded to address an agricultural norm that after six years of sowing and harvesting the land should be left fallow for the seventh year. During that time people were to live off the fruits already sown and growing at the edges of the fields.
The writer then expanded the notion to a period of seven times seven years – or a Jubilee sabbath- in which again the fields lay fallow, but also the people reset – cancel debts, return to their family homes, forgive hurts and feuds, and release slaves or people dependent upon them. They called this the year of the Jubilee, or the year of the Lord’s favor. Isaiah picked up the concept in chapter 61 of his prophecies, and more importantly Jesus chose it as a symbol for the launching of his own ministry.
In Luke 4: 16, we read “When he came to Nazareth, where he grew up, he went to the synagogue as was his custom. He stood up, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it is written: “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 directly linked his purpose with the ancient concept of Jubilee, a year of the Lord’s favor. Debts canceled, people restored, oppression lifted, and sight being made clear.
In celebrating 150 years of Grace, we are entering into a triple Jubilee, one of the staff said. “Doesn’t that call us to consider the precepts of Jubilee and how they fit into our work and ministry?” To think what it means to be a community of leveled relationships, working with a sense of enough or sufficiency, enjoying a year of the Lord’s favor1
So that is what I want to focus on this Lenten time of our 150th year. Each Saturday through Lent and up to Palms Saturday, I will offer a bog or reflection on the nature of Jubilee in the Saturday newsletter. It will be a blog style post, to which you are invited to share your own thoughts and even the actions you may have taken up in response to the weekly topic of Jubilee described.
The five foci of Jubilee as I see them are: the idea of fallow ground (how does rest or the idea of sufficiency or enough work for us?); forgiveness (who’s (what are our debts and who is indebted to us? What might canceling debts look like emotionally as well as literally?); declaring freedom (for whom and from whom; for what and from what?); returning home (recovering our roots, developing gratitude) and engaging celebration (how to live in the freedom of Jubilee spirit)
I am drawing from Maria Harris’s book “Proclaim Jubilee: a spirituality for the twenty first century”, which also contains further study questions, which I may or may not use. You might want to read along with me each week.
What strikes me the most is how God sought to develop community with natural “fire breaks’ or “reset systems”. These seem to be vital considerations as we crash into one another at so many levels in our current time. I think it is truly a Jubilee time for us at Grace. And so I ask where is God seeking to hit our reset buttons? How are we being asked to proclaim the Year of our Lord’s favor, and ours?
— Bishop Alan
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