“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors”
One of the most imaginative elements of the Jubilee in the Book of Leviticus is the canceling of debts, or the reordering of economic life. This involved not only money but more importantly the liberation of people who had been sold into enslavement as payment of debt. It may seem like a distant practice but as Maria Harris in “Proclaim Justice” reminds us : “And if as a parent, you have sold your child for a stipulated sum, and a specified number of years, you are released, as are your children – a situation that is starkly real today for those desperately poor parents in Southeast Asia and elsewhere who regularly sell their children into prostitution or forced labor. ‘When the Jubilee comes’, says Leviticus 25:54, ‘they and their children with them shall go free’”.
I remember a conversation with a credit card company about a debt that had persisted throughout our time as a family in Seminary. We missed a minimum payment and set ourselves back. I calculated how much we had actually paid on this debt over time, and realized it was double the credit limit, and even now with the missed month we remained just at the threshold. I asked if there was any opportunity to lower the interest rate and was told “yes”. “But”, said the credit card company representative “that’s for people with good credit” (ie. Not for folk who have just missed one out of dozens of on time payments). Fortunately, they did not suggest I offer them one of my children.
In our use of the Lord’s Prayer, we prefer to use the word trespass or sin rather than debt. Our economic selves are sacrosanct, untouchable. The economic system is so complex and literally robotic. We are a long way in the Church from the days when we would discuss the issue of usury, or interest, as a moral question. And we are all dependent on things out of the control of the average person, embedded in electronic markets.
So how do we relate to the Jubilee concept of cancellation of debts? Harris points out that it is founded on the idea of letting the land lie fallow. It is also based on a fundamental belief. She quotes the Psalmist who proclaims that “The earth is the Lord and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it” (Ps 24:1) Again, we ask, how do we even relate to such a conviction?
Around Lambeth 1998, and 2008, the matter of international debt, especially of smaller countries to larger ones, provoked some resolutions calling for governments to engage in debt forgiveness. Some countries literally pay sixty percent of their GDP on debt interest alone, robbing them from their ability to provide education or health services or even develop jobs for their young populations. Continuing to call for a reappraisal of global economic indebtedness remains on the Church’s docket. It goes alongside our concern for socially responsible investments.
There are debts of which we have closer control. “An easier situation may be debts owed to us by family members – the brother-in-law who borrowed seven hundred dollars in 1966 for a new car and still hasn’t paid it back should be forgiven not so much for his sake as for ours. Hanging onto resentment for many years over this or similar unpaid debts probably does more violence to the lender than the borrower and is certainly not in the spirit of Jubilee forgiveness” (Harris p.43)
In the book of Revelation, chapter 22:2, there is a vision of heaven which includes the planting of a tree by the river of life, whose “leaves are for the healing of the nations”. I am fascinated by this image. We recall how the prophet Samuel begged the people of Israel not to set up a king like other nations had, and God responded that it was God who was being rejected not the prophet. “Nations would war against nations”, Jesus warned about the last days. And here in the central square of heaven is a tree for the nations’ healing. The Jubilee call for cancelation of debts is part of that healing process.
Jubilee continues to tell us that we can and should allow one another to start over. It is the divine reset button.
I am not sure whether I understood this correctly, but at a wedding of a couple of which one was a Native American, I thought I learned that it was native tradition to share one’s debts as a community. I remember us laughing about their offering of their electric bill or their credit card bill for guests to pay off as a wedding present. You sense however that such a notion is not far from the heart of God who asks us to forgive as God forgives us. Dare we bring it out of our inner actions and thoughts only, and play with how it might impact our outer relations, including our economic ones?
What debts do you have the power to cancel?
— Bishop Alan
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