Category: Jubilee

Peaceable politics and the story of Jesus (Peace and the Bible #11)

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 6 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—December 18, 2023

In my blog series on “Peace and the Bible,” I am showing just how political the concerns of the Bible are. Most people I know find it easier to see that in the Old Testament than the New. In the second half the series, I will argue that the New Testament presents a kind of political philosophy. This philosophy has at its core a commitment to pacifism, a commitment based on the centrality of Jesus Christ to the Big Story the Bible tells. Christians have tended to miss the social implications of the New Testament part of the story because of assumptions about both politics and Jesus.

Politics have been seen as directly tied to running governments and the necessary use of violence. Jesus indeed did not talk about running governments or using violence. However, if we define politics more broadly as the way human beings order their lives together in social groups, perhaps Jesus and the rest of the New Testament were engaging in political behavior. Once we think of politics in this wider sense, we will be more open to recognizing that Jesus indeed was interested in politics—and, actually, very little else. When Jesus spoke of the “Kingdom of God,” perhaps what he had in mind was not some other-worldly existence but a reimagining of politics in this life—in line with the political dynamics in his Bible (what we call the Old Testament). The notion that Jesus spoke only of the personal sphere actually has little support in the texts.

If Jesus did indeed care about politics, then that Christians understand him to be the model human being and the definitive revelation of God would seem to require them to take seriously Jesus’s political witness. If we do take the story of Jesus seriously as an account of a peaceable way of ordering our social lives, our other question will be how relevant that account should be for our present-day political convictions and practices.

Who was Jesus?

At the very beginning of the story of Jesus in Luke’s gospel—the song of Mary in 1:46-55 upon her learning of the child she will bear—we learn that this child will address social reality. He will challenge the power elite of his world and lift up those at the bottom of the social ladder. This child, we are told, will bring succor to those who desire the “consolation of Israel.” Those who seek freedom from the cultural domination of one great empire after another that had been imposed upon Jesus’s people for six centuries will find comfort. From the beginning, the story presents this child in social and political terms.

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To turn from the abyss toward Jubilee [Jesus story #4]

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 4 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—April 15, 2021

There is a saying, attributed to the 18th-century writer Samuel Johnson, that nothing so concentrates the mind as the prospect of the gallows. I have found that for me, nothing so concentrates the mind quite like having grandchildren. Learning to know Elias and Marja, the future becomes less abstract. The question of where we are going becomes more intense. As the folksinger Jim Page asks, “Whose world is this? What kind of world will our children receive, after all is said and done? What kind of creed have we come to believe, that they may never receive one? What kind of creed are we to believe, if they are to receive one?” Indeed.

When I ask the question Why do we pay attention to Jesus? I don’t think we can hope (or should hope) to find just one answer. Lots of us have lots of reasons. One reason, maybe, for paying attention to Jesus is that in him we find hope, we find a “creed,” a belief, that might guide our future so that our children and their children might have a world. Let’s start by reading several brief texts from the Bible as a guide as we think: What is our hope? What’s it based on? What kind of “creed” do we need to believe in to have a “world”?

For six years you shall sow your land and gather its yield; but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, so that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the wild animals may eat. You shall do the same with your vineyard, and with your olive orchard. Six days you shall do your work, but in the seventh day you shall rest, so that your ox and your donkey may have relief, and your homeborn servant and the alien may be refreshed. Be attentive to all that I have said to you. Do not invoke the names of other gods; do not let them be heard on your lips. Exodus 23:10-13

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, who has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn—to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. For I the Lord love justice and hate wrongdoing. Their descendants shall be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples. For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.Isaiah 61:1-11

I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mixed with fire, and those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name, standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands. And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb: “Great and amazing are your deeds, Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, King of the nations! Lord, who will not fear and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your judgments have been revealed!” Revelation 15:2-4

Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day. He stood up to read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah: “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.” He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Luke 4:16-21

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Are we in debt to God?

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 6 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—October 10, 2016

[This post is adapted from a sermon preached at Shalom Mennonite Congregation, the first in a series on salvation and human flourishing.]

My agenda here is to talk about Jubilee. I believe that Jubilee is a central theme throughout the entire Bible, even if the term itself isn’t used very often. A key text is Luke 4, which tells of when Jesus opens his public ministry with words that would have associated him with the Old Testament’s year of Jubilee—which is one of three levels of Sabbath regulations in the book of Leviticus.

Sabbath theology

There is the Sabbath day, the seventh day, a day of rest—which when first instituted was radical for the Hebrew people who had recently been liberated from slavery where there was no rest. Every seventh day should be a time to stop, to recuperate, and to remember how God, in God’s mercy, had given them freedom.

Then there is the Sabbath year, the seventh year. During the Sabbath year, the land was to be allowed to rest, to not be cultivated but to recuperate. The Sabbath year was also a time for the forgiveness of debts, including the release from service for indentured servants, temporary “slaves,” you could say, who worked for others to pay off their debts. Part of the idea here, too, was the reminder of God as a God of mercy and generosity; and part of the idea as well was to prevent a long term separation between various classes of people—no indefinite indebtedness, no separation of the wealthy from the poor, of debtors from debtees.

Then the third level was the year of Jubilee. Here, after 7 sets of 7 years, the 50th year, land was to be returned to those who had originally owned it. There was to be a redistribution—or, we could say, an end to the redistribution—of the land. Instead of being redistributed to the big landowners, it goes back to those who first owned it. It would be as if in the United States all the wealth that has been redistributed from the lower and middle classes to the 1% would be returned every 50 years.

The year of Jubilee was a profound statement about God’s intentions for the community and, more than that, even, a profound statement about the character of God. Prevent having a few push the many off the land; have a society that cares for the vulnerable. Continue reading “Are we in debt to God?” →