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Friends United Meeting |
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January/February 2001
Christ's Jubilee Challenge
By Peter Blood-Patterson
Reflecting since late last year on the spiritual meaning of the end of the millennium, I wasn't coming up with much. I was intrigued by the ideas put forth by Jubilee 2000, a movement using the end of the millennium as an opportunity for challenging developed nations to forgive the crushing debts of poorer countries. Beyond that, most of the thoughts I had heard seemed to fall into the category of "media hype" rather than serious reflection.
But, I was carried deeper in this inward journey in an unexpected way. My wife, Annie, and I received an invitation from New Zealand Yearly Meeting for six weeks of music ministry last winter. After flying for 13 hours across the Pacific, our New Zealand Quaker hostess arranged for us to spend a few days at a retreat house built by Friends on an island across the bay from Auckland.
Amid family preparations for a very different Christmas far from home, I discovered a stack of back issues of the New Zealand Friend. Skimming through these as preparation for our work among Friends, I came across an extraordinary article "Quakers, Jesus, & the Theology of Prison Abolition" by Llewelyn Richards who zeroed in on what was perhaps Jesus' first act of public ministry, recorded in Luke 4:17-18. In this passage (long a favorite of mine), Jesus was asked to read scripture during Sabbath services in his hometown synagogue of Nazareth. Unrolling the scroll, he read from Isaiah 61:1-2: "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 announce pardon for prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind; to set free the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's amnesty."
This last phrase is also translated as "time of God's favor" or the "Jubilee Year." One translation has Jesus announcing "This is God's year to act!" Jesus then rolls up the scroll, hands it back and states: "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." Although those present at the service are at first impressed by the authority with which Jesus speaks, they quickly become angry with him. Luke reports Jesus was fortunate to escape with his life. Richards went on to challenge Friends to use the ending millennium as an opportunity to re-examine deeply our attitudes toward prisons and prisoners.
Reading this article struck me deeply. What was Jesus talking about in announcing the good news of Jubilee was fulfilled that very day? I knew Jubilee had something to do with forgiveness and new beginnings. Reading through Leviticus 25, I discovered these rules were all based firmly on the idea that everything and everyone belongs to God: the land, homes and other property, wealth and the Hebrew people themselves. Based on this understanding, however far we might stray from our roots in God, it is critical we return from time to time to our beginning state of belonging to God.
When Christ unrolled Isaiah in that synagogue 2000 years ago, it wasn't the official Jubilee year of the Hebrew community. What Christ was saying is: "This is my challenge, my invitation to you right now, today!" In His promise to be with us always, to the end of time, He challenges us to live this good news every year, not just every 50th year or even every 1000th year. Here, at the very outset of his ministry to this world, Jesus was saying: "What my messiahship is about is a radical new beginning, a fresh start, a change that will turn the world upside down." Surely, this provides a key to what this new millennium is about--far beyond the specific issue of forgiving Third World debt!
Our economic system creates things we treasure and rely upon. It is hard to imagine the upheaval that would be created in our economy and social life if those old Jubilee rules (forgiveness of debts, reversal of property sales back to original owners, leaving land fallow for a year, release of prisoners) were put into effect today. But our economic system also creates inconceivable inequities among us, leaving some people in enormous wealth and others in utter poverty. I hear Christ challenging us to remember every human being is a member of God's family and deserves to be given a fresh chance to start over without crippling burdens from the past of debt or lack of economic resources. How can Christ's good news extend even to those in prisons or in a state of slavery due to the economic, political, gender or ethnic status they find themselves in? To all of these He offers a fresh new beginning under His reign.
Such powerful, disturbing messages raise fear in me of trying to put them into practice today. Listening to a call to prophetic witness to my society on these issues, I could easily face the same hostility and resistance from today's "powers that be" as Christ did in Nazareth. Closer to home, I know I have to face resistance to this Jubilee message in my own heart.
When I returned from New Zealand, I was laid off from my well-paying, secure (I thought!) job as a hospital administrator. I struggled with whether to rush into another job of this kind. After prayer and discussion, it felt scary but right, to try and cut way back on our family expenditures and see if we could make it on my wife's much lower salary from a Friends School. We were not really using the top floor of our large old farmhouse and found a college student to rent it. It left us a bit cramped, but not nearly as cramped as many families around the world.
Annie acknowledged ways in which she had come to use shopping as recreation or even therapy, and expressed readiness to find other outlets. My seven-year-old has difficulty understanding why we are much less ready and able to buy him as many of the toys he wants as before. In my new, unfamiliar role as primary homemaker, I threw myself into ways we could save money. But I too can easily give way to spending money on non-essentials. There are so many "things" we own I am attached to; it is hard to hold them up to Christ's challenge and know what is right.
I am trying to practice radical reformation here within my family and in the ways I spend my time each day. What does it mean for me to give all back to God, to make a Jubilee new beginning in my daily life? To make a fresh Jubilee beginning in my response to my seven-year-old who struggles with the emotional and behavioral challenges of ADHD, to my 14-year-old as he embarks on adolescence, or in my marriage?
I struggle with ways to establish balance and rhythm in my day-to-day life as I embrace each day as a new beginning in Christ. Our monthly meeting has always been helpful in supporting us when we feel called to carry our ministry around the world. It is harder to ask for help and support when we are struggling with more mundane challenges, such as how to make ends meet or how to achieve peace with God each day. We still have a long way to go--and yet I know we have many partners available in this journey to faithfulness.
Christ invites us to start over each year as if we are all of equal value to God, as we were when God first created us. Only by taking this challenge to heart as a faith community and as a nation can we begin to find the courage and vision to discover how we can respond to Christ's invitation this millennial year--and every year to come.
Peter Blood-Patterson was born in Oskaloosa, Iowa, and is now a member of Middletown (Pennsylvania) Meeting. He is a nurse/family therapist/retreat leader/teacher/songleader/homemaker. He is currently working on a sequel to his songbook Rise Up Singing and a revised edition of Pete Seeger's autobiography. Last winter he spent seven weeks traveling in New Zealand and Hawaii with his wife, Annie, and family under a minute of religious concern from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.
Copyright (c) 2001 Friends United Meeting
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