Jubilee

Today we are looking at a bit of an extended passage of scripture from an often-ignored book of the Bible that talks about a rather strange ritual that was part of the Old Testament law of the Israelites. It has to do with the observance of a holy period of time called the year of jubilee. We find this in Leviticus 25. A little surrounding context for the instructions in this passage. Leviticus is the middle of what is known as the Pentateuch, the Law of Moses, or the Torah. It is what shows up in our Bibles as the first five books of the Old Testament; Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

The book of Leviticus is so names because it is mostly filled with instructions for the Levites. Remember that there are twelve tribes of Israel. Upon entering the land of Canaan, eleven of those tribes were each given a geographic territory to be the homeland of their family. The tribe of Levi was set apart as the people who would function as the religious priests for all the Israelite people; so, the Levites did not receive a territory in Israel to be their particular homeland. Instead, the Levites were given priestly cities scattered all throughout the territory of Israel. The book of Leviticus in the Old Testament is largely filled, then, with instructions for how the Levite people were supposed to carry out their duties as priests of all the people spread all throughout the nation of Israel. Chapter 25 comes near the end of the book of Leviticus. This chapter is preceded by things like instructions for all the different religious feasts and festivals. And it is followed by final remarks about obedience to the law and consequences for disobedience.

What we find in Leviticus 25 is an expansion of a pattern that we have already seen as part of ongoing life for God’s people. It is an expansion of what we refer to as sabbath. Here is what Leviticus 25 has to say about sabbath. I am going to skip around a bit and not read all 55 verses in this chapter.

Leviticus 25:1–24 NIV

1 The Lord said to Moses at Mount Sinai, 2 “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘When you enter the land I am going to give you, the land itself must observe a sabbath to the Lord. 3 For six years sow your fields, and for six years prune your vineyards and gather their crops. 4 But in the seventh year the land is to have a year of sabbath rest, a sabbath to the Lord. Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards. 5 Do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land is to have a year of rest. 6 Whatever the land yields during the sabbath year will be food for you—for yourself, your male and female servants, and the hired worker and temporary resident who live among you, 7 as well as for your livestock and the wild animals in your land. Whatever the land produces may be eaten. 8 “ ‘Count off seven sabbath years—seven times seven years—so that the seven sabbath years amount to a period of forty-nine years. 9 Then have the trumpet sounded everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement sound the trumpet throughout your land. 10 Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each of you is to return to your family property and to your own clan. 11 The fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; do not sow and do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the untended vines. 12 For it is a jubilee and is to be holy for you; eat only what is taken directly from the fields. 13 “ ‘In this Year of Jubilee everyone is to return to their own property. 14 “ ‘If you sell land to any of your own people or buy land from them, do not take advantage of each other. 15 You are to buy from your own people on the basis of the number of years since the Jubilee. And they are to sell to you on the basis of the number of years left for harvesting crops. 16 When the years are many, you are to increase the price, and when the years are few, you are to decrease the price, because what is really being sold to you is the number of crops. 17 Do not take advantage of each other, but fear your God. I am the Lord your God. 18 “ ‘Follow my decrees and be careful to obey my laws, and you will live safely in the land. 19 Then the land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and live there in safety. 20 You may ask, “What will we eat in the seventh year if we do not plant or harvest our crops?” 21 I will send you such a blessing in the sixth year that the land will yield enough for three years. 22 While you plant during the eighth year, you will eat from the old crop and will continue to eat from it until the harvest of the ninth year comes in. 23 “ ‘The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers. 24 Throughout the land that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land.

In verses 25 and following there is a list of all the detailed rules for how every Israelite person is supposed to go back and return to their ancestral lands. This includes all the detailed rules for returning land ownership back to the families to whom the land was originally given. And it would also be common in that time for people to sell themselves into servitude in order to survive when poverty or hard times fell upon them. But in the year of jubilee all indentured servants among the Israelite people were to be set free in order to go back and take possession of their original lands. And there is verse-after-verse in this chapter about the ways those debts of servitude were supposed to be settled and paid off so that every Israelite person would be redeemed from bondage in the year of jubilee. Then, chapter 25 closes this way; I’ll pick it up at verse 54.

Leviticus 25:54–55 NIV

54 “ ‘Even if someone is not redeemed in any of these ways, they and their children are to be released in the Year of Jubilee, 55 for the Israelites belong to me as servants. They are my servants, whom I brought out of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.

Sabbath

pattern started in creation, manna in the desert, 10 Commandments

The idea of sabbath is nothing new to us. It goes all the way back to the creation in Genesis 1. Genesis speaks of God creating for six days and then resting the seventh day. In Exodus, after God frees his people from slavery in Egypt and leads them into the wilderness, manna is provided for six days for the people. But on the seventh day the pattern of manna rests and the people live on the double portion God provided the day before. Later, at Mount Sinai, God gives the Ten Commandments to Moses with instructions to observe a day of rest every seventh day. Technically the sabbath is supposed to be the seventh day of the week, which is Saturday. For many centuries now, most Christians practice a day of rest on Sunday—the day of the week on which Jesus rose from the grave. Our practice has made the celebration of resurrection day the more appropriate day of the week in which to rest from all other activity so that we can set aside a day that is holy to God, a day set by itself as a day of worship. The specific day of the week is not the important thing. What is important is the pattern. God set a pattern in place in his creation which includes a regular interval at which all his creation is allowed to rest.

sabbath day (7th), sabbath year (7th), jubilee (after 7 sabbaths)

This whole sabbath rest is extended in Leviticus 25. Not only is there one day of rest every seven days. Now there is a whole year of rest every seven years. The sabbath year is set aside as an entire farming season in which all the agricultural fields are left fallow. That is, there is no working the farmland. There is no plowing, no planting, no weeding, no tending, no harvesting. During that sabbath year, the land itself is allowed to rest. The people are allowed to gather and eat whatever grows on its own, but it is not to be harvested and stored up as a crop.

not only rest, but also reset (restore, redeem) for land and people

And then we throw on top of all that the year of jubilee. Now there is yet another layer of rest built into this pattern of sabbath. Sabbath year happens every seven years. After seven of those sabbath years happen—a total time period of 49 years—the fiftieth year is marked as the year of jubilee. Jubilee takes the pattern of sabbath to its furthest point. Once again the land is given rest as fields again remain fallow for a growing season. It is sort of a reset mode for the environment. It’s God’s way of pressing the “restore to factory default” button on the land itself. And jubilee adds a reset button not just for the land, but also for society—for the Israelite people. All the people of Israel, no matter who they are or where their lives and families have gone, they all go back to where they came from in the year of jubilee. Anyone who lost everything they had, including their own freedom, was redeemed and restored when jubilee happened. Any disproportionate imbalance in which a small handful of super wealthy people hold a vast majority of all the farming land is returned to its original placement among the families of Israel. Once every fifty years, this jubilee restoration would take place.

sabbath is reminder that all creation belongs to God

We should not just see jubilee as a social safety net program which enacts a redistribution of wealth. There is more going on here; it is part of the pattern of sabbath. Look at the language God puts around it. The land is given rest as a reminder that it does not belong to the people, it belongs to God. The people are redeemed and set free as a reminder that they are not indebted in servitude to one another, they are servants of God.

The pattern of rest serves as a reminder that we are not the owners of this world. We are the stewards. We are the caretakers appointed by God as the ones to tend and nurture and develop this world which belongs to him. The pattern of rest reminds us that we live as servants of God. Sure, we have jobs in which we are accountable to supervisors and bosses. But we work using the skills and abilities which God has given to each one of us. The pattern of rest reminds us that it is God who provides for his people and for his creation. It is God who redeems and restores, who makes all things new, who sets all things right again.

These patterns of sabbath were not just days and years set aside to check off a list of religious observance. They were regular reminders of our place in the rhythm of God’s creation. Jesus had to remind people of this as well. Jesus stirred up trouble among the religious leaders in many ways. But most often it seemed that Jesus was getting in trouble for breaking sabbath regulations. That was because the religious leaders of Jesus’ day had lost sight of the pattern of sabbath rest. They had reduced sabbath to nothing more than a set of religious rules to follow. Jesus reminded them that the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath. In other words, this pattern of rest is given by God for our benefit. It is a reminder of our place in the rhythm and pattern of God’s creation. And Jesus himself invites people to come to him as a part of that pattern of rest. He says in Matthew 11:

Matthew 11:28–30 NIV

28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Using this time as sabbath

When there is a break in the normal everyday pattern of busyness of our lives, that break comes with a reminder that it is God who provides. And we are certainly living in a world right now which has inserted a break into our normal everyday pattern.

My family moved from Colorado to Michigan right in the middle of winter. This means we bought a house and moved in without really knowing what the yard around the house was like. So, while we looked it over in those first months waiting for spring to arrive, we had thoughts about where we might like to try a garden, what kind of flowers or plants might be good for the front along the driveway, or around the mailbox, or by the front porch. We noted things like an overgrown shrub too close to the house that just needed to be pulled out.

But as that first spring came around, we made a choice. Since we had very little idea of what might already be in the yard of this house, we thought that for the first year we will not touch anything. Who knows what kinds of flowers might spring up from bulbs that were already in the ground? What kind of leaves and flowering buds will come out on that overgrown shrub? How will we know what might already be there waiting to grow if we barge in and dig it all up before it can simply go its own way? That first year in the house was a year in which we let everything in the yard lie fallow. Instead of digging it all up, let’s let it rest and see what happens to appear on its own.

Alright, I admit it was not as though this unbelievable botanical garden sprang to life. By the next year we did pull shrubs and clear a garden. But some of what came up on its own we kept just the way it is. It took a season of backing away and allowing the yard to go its own way for us to figure that out, to see what areas really did, in fact, need work; and to see what areas would bloom and grow without me meddling in the way or digging up what was already there. It took a pattern of sabbath to clearly see what was already provided—already given, and what actually needed work—needed improvement.

do I dig up the soil of my soul on my own without ever allowing what God has already planted to grow and bloom?

Sabbath does that. The pattern of sabbath rest can show us what has already been provided. Because sometimes you and I have this habit of digging up the soil of our souls on our own without ever allowing what God has already planted to grow and bloom on its own. Sometimes you and I have the habit of taking over the entire landscape of our spiritual ground with our own gardening plan before we ever see what God might be sowing and planting within us. The pattern of sabbath helps us see this. It helps us see again that we belong to God and that God is the one who provides. It helps us see again that our world belongs to God and that we are simply the caretakers of what God has made. It helps us see again that God is the one who is actually in control of things and that we are his children, followers of Jesus.

let the spiritual ground of my life lie fallow for a season

This time that our world is in right now of addressing and holding back a public health crisis is time that is necessary to slow the spread of disease. On the one hand, we are doing our part together as a society to protect those in our communities who are especially vulnerable. And it may feel like we are losing a lot along the way—businesses that are lost, friends that we cannot visit, places we cannot go. On the other hand, could it be possible for us to also take a lesson during this time? Might we also be able to sense a sabbath pattern right now? Could there be a time here in which we allow the ground of our lives to lie fallow for a season?

As we go into another week of isolation and social distancing, remember this week all the ways that God continues to provide for you, for us, for his people, for his world. Remember this week all the ways you have been blessed by God, even if these are not the blessings we might have chosen or hoped for on our own. Remember this week that our savior Jesus calls us to a pattern of sabbath that is not a tedious religious checklist of dos and don’ts, but an invitation to find rest for your soul. Take some sabbath rest; allow the pattern—the time, the place—for God to restore your soul.