And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan.
Every fifty years, this law says, the whole economic and social order gets reset. Debts forgiven. Land returned to the families who'd originally held it. People who'd sold themselves into servitude to survive get to go home free. Whatever had been lost, however it had been lost, came back.
That's a wildly disruptive idea if you think about who it would have actually affected — the people who'd accumulated land and wealth over decades would have to give it back, on a schedule, whether they wanted to or not. This wasn't charity offered voluntarily. It was built into the calendar as something owed, structurally guaranteed rather than left to the mercy of whoever happened to be generous that year.
Centuries later, Jesus stood up in a synagogue and read words about proclaiming liberty, applying them to himself. If you've ever felt like whatever you've lost — dignity, security, a version of your life you can't get back — is permanently gone, this old law at least raises the possibility that loss doesn't always get the final word.
What have you assumed is permanently lost that this idea of jubilee might invite you to reconsider?
A short video on this is coming soon — for now, read on.