Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
Today’s Isaiah passage might be familiar to some of you. Jesus read from this part of Isaiah in the synagogue of his hometown, then told all who were listening that this scripture had been fulfilled in their hearing. This particular passage was important enough that Jesus was run out of his hometown over his interpretation of it. I think that fact alone is enough to encourage us to spend a little time with these words, to ponder and listen closely to them.
The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he 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 and provide for all who mourn.
Yes, please. This is what we need, Lord, this is what we are praying for one another, for ourselves, for this broken and beautiful world. A year of the Lord’s favor, a year of jubilee, could not begin soon enough.
The Jubilee, the year of the Lord’s favor, is more than an anniversary or a celebration, although it definitely warrants celebrating. In Leviticus, which Isaiah is referencing here, the Jubilee is an intentional overturning of the status quo, a turning upside down of the economic hierarchy and a turning rightside up of the world. Captives were to be released to their loved ones without prejudice. Debtors were forgiven their debts, and indentured servants were freed and released from the unpaid debts that landed them in that position. Families were to be allowed to return to their ancestral lands, a great reshuffling of homeplaces to ensure that those who had been forced by circumstances to sell some or all of their family lands would be able to reclaim them. Descendants of those who had been forced to cede lands and possessions during conflicts were to be welcomed and given the chance to buy back what had been lost, without interest or exorbitant markups. The demands of the Jubilee are matter-of-fact, detailed, specific, and logistical, and yet all aspects of the Jubilee spring from the joy of liberation, the memory of God’s people freed from bondage in Egypt. So that they would never be enslaved again, the people of God were to live within a cycle of redemption- there would always be an ending to even the most difficult personal circumstances. Every fifty years, the world would be set right and the playing field leveled for everyone.
The Jubilee is in many ways aspirational. It is fair to say that debt forgiveness, even in explicitly Christian nations, does not sweep the world every 50 years. The doors of prisons do not automatically unlock every 50 years, and entire families do not move back to their homeplaces every half-century. This is certainly not the way we have structured our economy here in the US, although as someone who deals with both student loan debt and medical debt because of choices I had to make as a teenager, I often daydream about how such a Jubilee might impact my own life. But the lesson remains vivid and deeply relevant to the state of our world and our faith. Sometimes, we need God to help us turn everything upside down, and in the process find ourselves finally right-side up.
This is what the prophet is proclaiming to the people of God in this chapter of Isaiah, a people newly returned to their decimated homeland after decades in exile and diaspora. An action of God, an intervention into the world as it is and a reshaping into the world as it should be, as it can be. The good news of God brings liberty for those held captive by unjust systems and greed. The good news of God is a comfort to those who mourn and relief for the indebted. The good news of God gives strength and healing to the brokenhearted. The good news of God turns everything upside down, and the people of God rejoice.
The prophet paints us a picture of an active and involved God, a God who plants the seeds of righteousness and tends the shoots of salvation. This God does not intervene in our lives with a sword, but with garden gloves and a shovel, sowing among us good seed and enriching our soil and ensuring that we have the nourishment and water and sunshine that we need to grow into oaks of righteousness and praise. God intervenes by clothing our very bodies with salvation, wrapping our fragile humanity in eternal love. Our only response to such tender care is to rejoice, to practice joy, to participate in the jubilee.
For centuries, the third Sunday of Advent has been marked with a pink candle, setting it apart from the other three weeks of the season. This Sunday is in many places called Gaudete (Gaw-deh-tay), Latin for Rejoice. This is Joy Sunday, a perfect day to meditate on the principles of Jubilee. The connection between Joy and Jubilee is simple- they are two spiritual practices that lead to one another in an endless and sacred loop. True joy spurs action for the sake of others, and Jubilee action inspires and cultivates joy. In order to know the depths of God’s joy, we must practice jubilee.
Jubilee has come to mean celebration, rejoicing, a party. And isn’t that just what we are preparing ourselves for, as we walk the road of Advent? Christmas is nothing if not a raucous party in an upside down world. The incarnation is nothing if not God’s jubilee, embodied and enfleshed. Jesus’s coming into the world is an anointing of humanity, his Gospel a message first for the oppressed and the brokenhearted and ultimately for all. As we count down the days in this final week, as we turn our attention to the star and the story that changed everything, let us not forget what this good news really means. Our Christmas is not just happy, or merry, these fickle emotions of ours that come and go. Christmas is a jubilee, a resetting of how we tell time, a chance to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and actually live as if it is one. God will show up in the debts we forgive, because Jesus was born for the debtors. God will show up in the shackles we break, because Jesus was born for those in bondage. God will show up in the way we show up for displaced and exiled people, because Jesus became one of them. God will show up for all of us, not because of anything we did or did not do, but simply because God desires to be close to us. This is the Gospel, the good news that has been fulfilled in our hearing. Amen.
Mother A Writes 