“Jubilee”

Mark 2:13-3:6

A Sermon Preached by The Rev. Douglas M. Donley

September 22, 2002

University Baptist Church

Minneapolis, MN

 

I stand here today looking at a number images.  In front of all of us is the peace pole which was returned to us this week and which will be re-installed on the lawn on the church on Wednesday.  Behind this pole which reads “May Peace Prevail on the Earth” is the cross.  The cross is God’s way of saying that the cycle of violence must stop.  It is the ultimate symbol of peace and yet it has been used too often to justify violence.  So we have symbols that push us and pull us toward the best and worst parts of religion.  And it is there, at that crossroads that Jesus encounters us and encourages us to look with new eyes for the continuing breakthrough of God.

Jesus had a lot of fun with the Bible.  He also had a lot of fun with the people who were so thrilled by the Bible that they had lost a sense of God's grace.  We have that kind of fun when we study the Bible.  I want to have that kind of fun today.

Jesus came at a time when there was a great deal of confusion in the Middle East.  Five centuries earlier, the Jewish people were sent into exile in Babylon, had their temple burned to the ground and their leaders executed.  Fifty years later, they returned to the Holy Land, rebuilt the old temple and tried to make a go of it as the people of God.  The problem was, other countries got stronger and stronger and continually fought against the existence of the Jewish State.  In order to maintain their identity against pursuing outsiders, they wrote some of their most restrictive scriptures.  Most scholars believe Leviticus was written during this time.

By the time Jesus was walking the earth, the Roman Empire had taken control of the Holy Land.  The power-mongering and paranoid King Herod was in charge, and moneychangers were alive and well in the temple.  All of what it meant to be distinct as people of YHWH was disappearing.  It was a confusing time. 

Enter the Pharisees. 

They were actually a reform movement which tried to reestablish right relationship with God. The Pharisees were the privileged people.  They were the elite of Israel.  And they were generally sincere in their piety.  The Pharisees told people who was good and bad.  It united the community and staved off many a poor people’s revolt.  The Romans loved the Pharisees.  If you can get people passionately arguing religion, you can get away with murder.  And the Romans did.  Does any of this sound familiar? 

The Pharisees sought to save the day through restoring “traditional values”.  They believed that the rule of Torah was not enough.  They believed that the oral tradition and commentary written alongside Torah was the true way to live as God’s chosen people. So they put new rules upon the people in order to make them better Jews.  They emphasized no work on the Sabbath.  They were very interested in fasting and prayer.  They were earnest and righteous in their religion. 

They saw themselves as better than the scribes and better than the priests.  They were interested in protecting the orthodoxy of the Jewish people.  That is why they were so shocked that Jesus snubbed them.  If anyone was a true reformer, they reasoned, they got on the Pharisee bandwagon. 

Jesus loved to take a law from the Old Testament, twist it and turn it inside out and give it all new meaning, or at least break away all of its restrictiveness put on it by people wanting to maintain their own control of others.  And people, poor people--especially the disempowered loved him for it. You see, when he did this, he set people free from the scriptural laws and set them free to embrace the breakthrough of God.

Nowhere is the breakthrough of God from the restrictiveness of the human misapplication of the law more evident than in the twisted laws having to do with the Sabbath. 

God said in Exodus 20, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.  Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath to YHWH your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your manservant, or your maidservant, or your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates." (Exodus 20:8-10)  Resting and giving thanks to God is very important.

The problem with this is that it got taken to extremes.  Folks felt they had to define "work".  And since Exodus 20 says "no work", then the violators must be punished.  The law as it evolved became more important than compassion.  Numbers 15:32-36 tells this story:

...they found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath.  They brought him to Moses and all the congregation.  They put him in custody.  And the LORD said to Moses, 'The man shall be put to death...' And all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death..."

Forget that Exodus 20 also says, "Thou shalt not kill."

Jesus knew this story and he liberated us from the vengefulness of the Bible's laws.  He reinterpreted the Bible to be on behalf of the common people.  I like to think he had fun doing it, especially when the Pharisees confronted him.  He could argue scripture with the best and worst of them.  And the people, who loved seeing the Pharisees stumble and squirm for once, were instant Jesus fans.

Jesus and his disciples were hungry as they were walking one Sabbath day.  The disciples plucked off the grain heads so they could eat.  The Pharisees, who were looking for a way to trap Jesus didn't let this one pass them by.  "Hey, you guys are breaking the Sabbath laws," they whined.  Jesus was ready for this one.  Jesus quoted I Samuel 21:1-6.

I like the way George Williamson, Pastor of First Baptist Church of Granville, Ohio puts it:

"For a time, David was a guerilla fighter in insurrection against King Saul.  Jesus probably identified with this period in David's life, thought of himself as an insurrectionist against the religious establishment.  The story has a tongue-in-cheek quality to it, odd for the Bible.  David and his band of insurrectionists ran out of food and were hungry.  David sneaks up on a synagogue in his camouflage greens.  The priest is there.  David says, "Give me some food!" 

The priest says he can't, that the only food he's got is communion bread, already consecrated for Sabbath.  David says, "Give it to me anyway, got to have it."

The priest of course is terrified.  By now David has quite a reputation.  He's looking for some way he can legitimate giving this armed brute his consecrated bread so he can go home and hide in his bed.  He says, I kid you not, that only people who are abstaining from sex are allowed to eat consecrated bread.  David, I kid you not, swears that anybody who plays soldier with him has to abstain from sex.  Can you imagine?  So with the deal cut, the priest tosses him the holy food and gets the hell out of there."

Jesus said, basically, "I can quote scripture just as well as you, maybe even better.  And since David worked and ate on the Sabbath, so can I."  I bet he and the disciples laughed at their astonished faces when he finally said, "the Sabbath was made for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath" 

The Pharisees were beside themselves with fury and they followed him to the synagogue.  There, the tunes changed from laughter to pain.  A man entered the synagogue with a withered hand.  The people (the masses) saw someone like themselves.  They knew what it was like to be outcast, to be unclean, to be less than healthy and thereby less than human in the eyes of the leadership.  They and Jesus had compassion on the man with the withered hand. 

Jesus asked the Pharisees and all the people watching, "Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?"  And they could not or would not answer him.  Remember the Numbers passage?  It was all right to kill. 

Matthew's version of this same story has Jesus saying "suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and lift it out?  A human being is more valuable than a sheep!  Hello, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath."  Jesus healed him.  But not without letting everyone know that this state of confusion about the Sabbath was a form of evil.  The Sabbath was made for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath.  Therefore, do good, save life.  Ignoring the good for the sake of the law is a contradiction to the law's purpose. 

It was the authorities' desire to keep more true to the law than to do good to their fellow human beings.  That's what infuriated Jesus so much. 

You see, the Sabbath if a gift and when it is used right, it makes the world safe and saves us all. 

Jesus sought to expand the concept of Sabbath and restore the ancient practice of jubilee.  Jubilee is Sabbath done right. 

When Sabbath is done right, not only are people healed, but so is the community.

 A weekly Sabbath rest isn’t enough to restore community, although it certainly helps.  But over time, sometimes grudges get built up, sometimes debts become oppressive, sometimes greed and evil creep in and the whole community gets out of whack.  People can’t take a day off.  People who don’t get rest stop living in a sense of hope.  They accumulate more and more debt and there is simply no way to pay it off.  The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.  It’s a vicious cycle, which only a radical intervention can fix. 

The radical intervention is called the year of Jubilee.  Leviticus 25 states that every seven years of seven years or every 49 years, a Sabbath year will be declared—a Sabbath year of rest for the community.  All debts will be forgiven.  All land given as payment of debt will be restored.  No crops will grow, so the land can rest.  All wealth will be redistributed, and community will be restored. We pray every week, forgive us our debts.  This is jubilee language.

It sounds like a good idea.  Unless you are one of the people with land; unless you have lived high on the hog for 49 years; unless you are not ready or willing to lay aside that burden, that grievance, you are not ready to forgive.  Then it sounds like a bad idea. 

Then concept of jubilee is the biblical reminder that land belongs to God and that the human family is one.  As Ched Myers put it, Jubliee “served as an archetypal reminder that the purpose of economic organization was to guarantee enough for everyone, not surplus accumulation by the few.  Human attempts to control the forces of production are to be regularly interrupted by prescribed Sabbath rest (once a week and once every seven years) for both the land and human labor.”(Myers, 1997:24)  

This is where Sabbaticals come from.  It is to make sure that land and property are redistributed and that no one becomes a slave

We now enter into a new chapter of Jesus ministry.  He has already called the first of the disciples in chapter one.  He has begun his ministry of healing in chapters one and two—a ministry that will continue throughout the rest of the story of Mark.  But we remember that his healing is also distinct because while he heals people of their diseases, he also calls into question the systems of oppression that keep them poor, sick, and excluded from the community.  Too often, organized religion is on the side of the oppressor, not the oppressed.  Organized religion maintains the status quo.  Organized religion, with its emphasis on personal sin and personal responsibility lets unjust economic systems off the hook.  Organized religion, as Marx said, becomes the opiate of the people.  Jesus sought to liberate us from oppressive religion.  He wants us to set things right.  Maybe we need to listen to Jesus a bit more closely.

Setting things right is the good news of the gospel.  It is what the reign of God is all about.

It’s so hard to talk about jubilee these days.  Sure, we would all love to be free of debt.  Sure we would all love to have a level playing field, but we live in a land and in a political climate where we have no real interest in loving our enemies and praying for those who persecute us.  If we are to believe our national leaders and the opinion polls, this new method of first-strike is the way to go.  Bush even went so far as to say that the cold war tactic of deterrence is obsolete.  We can stop at nothing less than world dominance.  I think the book of Revelation said something about being wary of the empire that rules this world.

When he was candidate for president, Mr. Bush said his greatest philosopher was Jesus Christ.  I’m not sure this is what Jesus would have done.

Ched Myers said, “Those who think the status quo is “healthy” (because they benefit from it) will not respond to Jesus’ “good news”; but the socially outcast and indebted will.”(Myers, 1997:23)

            In this climate of war preparation and demonization of our enemies in the name of Christianity, we need to look again at Jesus’ words to those in positions of domination.  He says that good news will happen when we break free of those systems that enslave people.  When we take Sabbath seriously.  When we speak the truth to power.  Maybe the person who returned our peace pole was right when she or he said, “This pole is returned to bring us a new vision that fosters peace for all, where we don’t seek oil for blood, where politics is the people, not money!”

            As we seek to follow this Jesus who eats with tax collectors and the poor at the same time, who calls people clean even in violation of religious authority, who redefines community by calling us all into God’s family, maybe we can re-envision our own roles as disciples.  Maybe we can find our own voices that might speak the truth to power.  Maybe we can be renewed, re-empowered and recreated as we seek to live in this very fragile world.

            For Jesus calls us to jubilee.  Jesus calls us to se the captives free.

            To restore the ancient ruins.

            To bring recovery of sight to the blind and to let the oppressed go free.

            That is the Jesus we follow.

            That is the vision for a new day.

            That is the good news.  Amen.