Year of Jubilee

Sermons

Year of Jubilee

Jubilee isn’t just an old term; it’s today’s good news for everyone.

When they asked Jesus why he had come, he told them over and over again that he'd come to declare the kingdom of God. All the things that he said were about the kingdom. His parables were about the kingdom. When he taught us to pray, he taught us to pray "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name," praying for the kingdom to come on earth. On earth. That's a big emphasis, isn't it? For the kingdom of God to come on earth as it is in heaven. The last thing he said to his disciples before he ascended into heaven concerned the kingdom of God.

There are many images of the kingdom that come through Scripture, but none is more pronounced to me than this one—the concept of the jubilee.

The kingdom of God is a jubilee. That term comes out of Leviticus 25.

Moses tells the people they are to observe the seventh day: "Remember the seventh day to keep it holy."

Secondly, they are to observe the seventh year. If you were a farmer, you divided up your land into seven sections. Each year you gave one section of land a year off to rejuvenate. It is the concept of environmental responsibility. If you're not an environmentalist, you've missed out on a dimension of the Christian faith, for God calls us to take care of the earth, to give the earth a chance to come back to its full glory. You must be an environmentalist if you're going to follow the full teaching of God.

We have the concept of the seventh year in academia. I'm a college teacher, so every seven years they give me a year off to come back to life. I know you're saying, "It's a ; you don't deserve it." Well, you don't have to teach your kids. You don't know what it's like to pour out your heart for truth—truth rent from existential suffering, truth rent from painful despair, and after you've poured your heart out for truth, bled and suffered for truth, some kid in the last row raises his hand and says, "Do we have to know this for the final?" Seven years of that, you need a year off. So there's the seventh day, the seventh year.

How does Leviticus 25 define the jubilee?

Then there's this: In Leviticus 25 there's the fiftieth year, the year of the jubilee. Sabbath is not just a day. The concept of Sabbath includes the seventh day, seventh year, fiftieth year. In the fiftieth year, says Leviticus 25 these are the things that are supposed to happen:

All debts are cancelled. You look like the kind of group that would think that was good news.

All prisoners are set free. I know some of you get nervous at that point. You say, "I don't mind the debt thing. Maybe that's a good thing. But prisoners set free? Murderers, rapists on the streets? That scares me." Don't get nervous. I have read the Old Testament. The only thing they put you in jail for in those days was debt. Everything else, they killed you. That's right. I'm looking at you in the second row. Yeah, you. Have you ever talked back to your mother or father ever, ever once? Yes, I picked out somebody who was obviously guilty. I just knew it. I don't like to say this, but in biblical times if you talked back to your parents, you know what would have happened? You would have been stoned. I knew there would be somebody here that would say, "Stoned? Whoa." No, in those days getting stoned meant having rocks thrown at you. Rocks thrown at you. That's what it means.

All land is given back to those who originally possessed it, a redistribution of the land. All of this, of course, was good news for the poor. The jubilee was a new start for poor people. For those who had lost out in life's race, it was a chance to get a new beginning, a point of hope. The year of the jubilee.

Was the jubilee observed?

Even though Moses commanded that the jubilee be observed, this should be noted: Never once did the Jews observe a jubilee. It was commanded but they never did it. Why? Sometimes religious institutions may be controlled by rich people. In any event, it never happened.

But Isaiah 61 says this: "When the Messiah comes, the Messiah will declare the jubilee." You will know he is the Messiah by virtue of the fact that he does declare the jubilee. The prophet Isaiah said:

The Messiah will declare to the people "The Spirit of the Lord is upon. He has called upon me to bring good news to the poor, sight to the blind, deliverance to the captives, deliverance to the oppressed. He has called upon me to declare the acceptable year of our Lord."

That's the year of jubilee.

Now let's move to the fourth chapter of Luke. Jesus returns to his hometown, Nazareth. The synagogue is full. Mary undoubtedly has rounded up the crowd. You know how mothers are. "Hey, my son is going to be down at the central synagogue tonight. He's really a spellbinder. You won't want to miss it." The place is packed. Jesus stands up. He asks for the Scriptures. He takes the scrolls. He opens the Bible to Isaiah 61. Have you got the setting? Every Jew knows the Scripture. They know that whoever declares the Jubilee is simultaneously declaring himself to be the Messiah. You can imagine the drama as Jesus reads, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has called upon me to declare good news to the poor, sight to the blind, deliverance to the captives, deliverance to the oppressed. He has called upon me to declare the acceptable year of our Lord."

Shock. They know what he's just done. He sits down. The Scripture says the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were upon him. You bet they were. They knew what he had done. He had declared the jubilee, and the Messiah was supposed to do that. They were staring at him and he says, "This day this Scripture is fulfilled in your eyes." Whoa. It's as though he's saying, "In case you didn't get it, folks, I'm it."

The crowd is irate. They nudge each other and say, "Who does he think he is? Isn't this Joseph's boy? Isn't this Mary's son?" They rise up. They grab him. They drag him out of the synagogue to the edge of the town to a cliff. They are going to throw him over the cliff, and there is a scene that makes John Wayne look like a wimp.

He whips around on the crowd. This mob is about to cast him over the edge of the cliff and destroy him. I remember as a kid singing an old hymn "He could have called ten thousand angels." I mean, we're dealing with the Son of God here. He had power to do that. He could have snapped his fingers and ten thousand angels would have showed up. (They are lucky they had Jesus and not me, because if I could have called ten thousand angels, I would have called them. They would have showed up with submachine guns to blow those suckers away once and for all. I wouldn't put up with that stuff.) Jesus doesn't do that. He faces down the mob. The Bible says, "He walked straight at them." He walked straight at the mob pressing him over the cliff. What was it in his bearing? What radiated from his person? All we know is that the crowd divides and he strides through the midst of them, and no one lays a hand on him. Oh, wow. My Jesus.

In Christ, "jubilee" is alive and well today.

It's good news for the poor, who represent Christ.

The Jubilee. It comes with good news for the poor. When you become a Christian, when Jesus invades you and possesses you, when Jesus isn't just a construct in history but a Person you've invited into the depths of your being and he's a living reality in you, you will have a heart for the poor. Caring about the poor is an inevitable result. That is why this church is so committed to extension ministries. Those of you who aren't involved with the poor, you need to connect with the ministries of this church that are doing that, because the more you connect with the poor the more you connect with Jesus. For I, like St. Francis of Assisi, believe that Jesus comes through the poor to us. He uses the poor sacramentally. Whoa, sacrament. What do you mean?

Whenever I use the word sacrament, all the Catholics get happy because they believe that in Holy Communion the bread sacramentally becomes the flesh of Jesus, the wine is miraculously turned into the blood of Jesus. It means there is a literal eating of the flesh and drinking of the blood of Christ. At the other end of the line are people like me. I'm Baptist. We believe that the bread stays bread, and Baptists believe that the wine is turned into grape juice. That's Baptist theology.

In the middle are Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians, especially the Episcopalians and the Lutherans, they believe that the bread stays bread and the wine stays wine. But they believe that coming through the elements is the presence of Christ. So while they are still bread and wine, something comes through the elements. You experience Jesus in the bread and wine. I don't know whether they're right, but I do know this: That what they say about bread and wine is what St. Francis says about the poor. I believe them. I believe that when you embrace the poor Jesus comes to you through them, because he says so.

I'm walking down Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. There's a dirty, filthy bum, covered with soot from head to toe, covered with filth. He had a huge beard. I'll not forget the beard. It was a gigantic beard with rotted food stuck in it. He was a filthy, despicable. He held a cup of McDonald's coffee, and mumbled as he walked along the street. He spotted me. He said, "Hey, Mister. You want some of my coffee?" I knew I should take some to be nice, and I did. I gave it back to him and said, "You're being pretty generous giving away your coffee this morning. What's gotten into you that you're giving away your coffee all of a sudden?" He said, "Well, the coffee was especially delicious this morning, and I figured if God gives you something good you ought to share it with people."

I figured this is the perfect set up. He's got me. I said, "Is there anything I can give you in return?" I'm sure he's going to hit me for five dollars. He said, "Yeah, you can give me a hug." I was hoping for the five dollars. He put his arms around me. I put my arms around him. And I realized something. He wasn't going to let me go. He was holding onto me. Here I am an establishment guy, and this bum is hanging on me. He's hugging me. He's not going to let me go. People are passing on the street. They're staring at me. I'm embarrassed. But little by little my embarrassment turned to awe. I heard a voice echoing down the corridors of time saying, I was hungry. Did you feed me? I was naked. Did you clothe me? I was sick. Did you care for me? I was the bum you met on Chestnut Street. Did you hug me? For if you did it unto the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you did it to me. And if you failed to do it unto the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you failed to do it unto me. That's what it says almost word for word in the Matthew 25. When we do it to the poor, Jesus meets us there. Jesus comes through the poor and touches us and blesses us.

If you want to feel the presence of Jesus, and you can, there are many avenues that you can take. But one of them is to go among the poor, for Jesus has a strange way of staring back at you every time you look into the eyes of someone in desperate need.

Of all the things that the Bible talks about, it talks about the poor most of all. There are 2,000 verses in Scripture that say we should respond to the needs of the poor. There are many ways of doing it. You see, the Talmud, which is a commentary on the Torah, says there are three ways of helping the poor:

One is to create jobs for them, because then the poor escape their poverty with their dignity intact; then to pretend to create jobs for the poor. You create work for them. The third is to give the poor money, but never tell them where it came from.

That's why I get a little uptight with youth groups who want to deliver fruit baskets and toys to poor families and then stand around and sing Christmas carols to them. You say, "Don't you think that's a good idea?" Oh, the food and the toys, that's in the realm of good ideas. But do you have to stand around and sing Christmas carols? Don't you realize you've diminished the dignity of people? Sneak the stuff on the back steps. Run away. Leave it there. Call them on the telephone. Say, "There's stuff on the back steps. It's for you. This is God," and hang up. The Bible says that the God who sees what you do in secret will reward you openly. When you do your giving, he says, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Don't diminish people's dignity. The lowest form of charity is when you give people stuff and you expect them to say, "Oh, we're so grateful. We think we'll become Christians too." Come on. It's not right. Give out of love.

[At Eastern College] we've instituted a new graduate program that trains a new generation of missionaries who will go into urban communities specifically to utilize urban churches. I mean, here's an urban church. It sits on the corner doing nothing from Sunday to Sunday. They are old bastions of Christianity that are almost dead. They've got space in the building you can have four or five small micro industries. Like what? We have one business where we recharge cartridges for laser printers. Big business. Rebuilding generators and alternators for automobiles.

You say, "What are you telling me?" Jubilee is good news for the poor. When there were no hospitals, who created the hospitals? The people of God, the church. When there were no schools, who created the schools? The people of God, the church. When there were no recreational facilities, who put up the YMCAs? The church. If you go into the slums of America's cities and ask the poor, "What do you need?" They're going to tell you, "We need jobs." It's not enough to set up a basketball court to play ball until two in the morning. If they need jobs, we've got to create jobs.

We bring together young people in small groups, and they are able to do things that they would have never dreamed of doing people of God delivering them from poverty not for today, not for tomorrow. You see, that's what's wrong with the welfare system. We try to help people out of poverty, but we destroyed their dignity. Isn't it better to create jobs for people in the name of Jesus Christ? That's what the gospel is about—bringing good news to the poor.

Another thing: Sight to the blind. Jubilee has a dimension of healing. The jubilee of God, the kingdom of God is not only where the poor are delivered from their poverty, but where the sick find healing. Now, I don't understand the healing thing. I don't understand why some people get healed and some people don't. I pray for people. I asked Mother Teresa once about this. "How do you explain these things, that some people who are so godly and pray so hard get sick and die, and other people who don't deserve to get healed do?" I'll never forget her answer. She said, "When I see him, he's got a lot of explaining to do." That's probably why she lasted so long. Can you imagine? "God, I think it's time for Mother Teresa to die." "Not yet. I don't think I can handle it right now." I don't understand healing, but I've gotten into the healing thing.

I have a friend who is Pentecostal. He got on me. He said, "You know, Jesus said the ministry of the church should be to preach, to teach and to heal. Now, you preach and you teach, but you don't do any healing stuff." I had to be honest. I said, "I tried but not much happens." He said, "Well, you preach and not much happens. It hasn't stopped you." So I started to do it. I started to go to church services and carry a little vial of oil. I do like it says in the Book of James—the oil on the head, the hands, the whole bit. Is there a great healing ministry? Not really. But some wonderful things do happen.

I was in a church in Oregon not too long ago, and I prayed for a man who had cancer. In the middle of the week I got a telephone call, and it was his wife. And she said, "You prayed for my husband. He had cancer." I said, "Had?" Whoa, I thought, it's happened. She said, "He died." I felt terrible. She said,

Don't feel bad. When he came into that church that Sunday he was filled with anger. He knew he was going to be dead in a short period of time, and he hated God. F years old. He wanted to see his children grow up and his grandchildren grow up, and he was angry that this God did not take away his sickness and heal him. He would lie in bed and curse God. The more his anger grew towards God the more miserable he was to everybody around him. It was an awful thing to be in his presence. And you prayed for him, and when he left that church a peace had come over him and a joy had come into him. And, Tony, the last three days have been the best days of our lives. We've sung. We've laughed. We've read Scripture. We prayed. Oh, they've been wonderful days. And I called to thank you for laying your hands on him and praying for healing.

And then she said something incredibly profound. Listen to it. She said, "He wasn't cured, but he was healed." Whoa, that's heavy.

Cures don't last very long. If you get there are people in this congregation I'm sure who can testify to God intervening in a time of sickness and delivering a it's only temporary. You're going to die anyway. I hate to break it to you. As my pastor says, "They're going to take you out to a church yard, and they're going to drop you in a hole and they're going to throw dirt in your face. And they're going to go back to the church and eat potato salad."

He raised up Lazarus from the dead. What happened to Lazarus? He died. Big deal. What did he get out of this? A few more years of taxes and here we go again. He feeds 5,000 on the hillside. Guess what they were the next day? None of his miracles except his own resurrection lasted. Cures are for time, but the healing of a heart and a soul under the power of the Holy Spirit, that's not for time. That's for eternity. People, if I have a choice between being cured and being healed, I'll take being healed any day of the week.

I believe in healing. I know people have a great healing ministry, but I'm a little suspicious of some of it. When Jesus healed people it wasn't he that healed. He said, "The work that I do I do not of myself. I do it in the name of the Father who sent me." The same Father who healed people 2,000 years ago is alive and well today, and we just don't know when he chooses to do his work among us in healing people who are sick.

Jubilee. It's the time when the poor are lifted up. It's a time when sicknesses are abolished, when the blind get their sight back. A jubilee is when the oppressed are delivered from their oppression. Ah, there's something we can all relate to.

Maybe you're not poor and maybe you're not sick, but I would dare say that all over this place there are people who feel oppressed. How many of us today would admit to feeling heaviness? There's some depression that is biophysical and needs to be addressed by a chemical means. Don't be one of those stupid people that the doctor gives medicine and say, "I don't take it. I'm Christian." Take the medicine. Some depressions are biophysical, but there are some depressions that are spiritual and psychological in nature, and Jesus can touch you tonight and lift the heaviness and take away the deadness of your soul. Oh, people, he can. He can.

Here is what you have to do. You have to connect with him.

The morning is what's important for me. No matter when I'm scheduled to get up, it is amazing. I've trained myself. I can set the alarm clock for six; I will get up at 5:30. I always get up a half hour before the thing goes off. In the stillness of the morning I pray, not with words. I am totally silent. In stillness I surrender to Jesus. For a half hour I say nothing. I surrender to Jesus.

Let me ask you. When was the last time you gave God five minutes of stillness, ten minutes of quietude? I'm serious. You say, "Well, I've read this book in my devotional time." You read. You talk. You read. You talk. No wonder the Bible says, Would you just be still. Just shut up, Campolo. Be still. Isaiah 30:15 it says, "In stillness you will receive your salvation. In quietude your deliverance." Read it. "Be still and know that I am God."

If you don't feel loved by God it's because you never give God a chance to love you. You got to be still and let him reach out and embrace you. In the stillness I say nothing. Sometimes I say his name over and again, like a lover should. "Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus." For a half hour I let him love me. I surrender to him. I yield to him.

Listen carefully to what I'm about to say. In that half hour I let him connect with me from the cross and cleanse me. You say, the cross occurred two thousand years ago. Indeed, it did. Jesus was a man, and as a human being he died 2,000 years ago on the cross. When he died there he took the punishment for my sins. I don't have to worry about Judgment Day. Jesus took the punishment. That's the basis of my forgiveness for sins on Judgment Day.

But let me tell you, people. Not only did Jesus forgive us through a cross 2,000 years ago, but he wants to do something to you here and now. Listen to the Bible. First John 1:9. In the morning when I do this, "If I confess my sins," says the Scripture 1 John 1:9, "he is faithful, he is just," if I name them, he will cleanse me. He will not only forgive me. He will forgive me and he will cleanse me. Like David said, "Cleanse me, oh God. See the dirt and the filth in my life and cleanse me." You're here and you know that your sins are forgiven. But be honest. Don't you need a cleansing? Isn't there stuff, filth in your life, sexual stuff, mean things, lies you've been living that have weighed you down and need to be cleansed?

Albert Einstein in his general theory of relativity points out that time is relative to motion. The faster we travel the more time is compressed. If I put you into a rocket and send you into outer space traveling at 170,000 miles a second and told you to come back in 10 years, when you came back you would be ten years older. The rest of us would be 20 years older. Traveling at that speed relative to us, our 20 years would be compressed into 10 years of your time. If we can get you traveling, according to Einstein, at 180,000 miles a second, our 20 years would be compressed into one day of your time. If we could get you traveling at 186,000 miles a second, the speed of light—now, we can't do that because as you approach the speed of light your physical mass increases in weight and size exponentially. So don't let anybody ever say you're fat. Just say, "I'm traveling too fast." But if we could get you traveling at the speed of light without disintegration, this is what would happen: Everything would be compressed into one eternal now. Everything would happen simultaneously. There would be no passage of time. At the speed of light, time ceases to exist.

The reason I take you through all of that is because I believe Jesus is not only a man who died in history. I believe he is God incarnate. As God he experiences time as though it is at the speed of light. That's why Jesus could say, Before Abraham was I am. He wasn't using poor grammar. He was telling the truth. Everything, because I am the Son of God, occurs in my eternal now. Everything is now. The name of God is "I Am that I Am." I am the Alpha, the Omega. I am the beginning and the end. With me time shall be no more. Time doesn't exist.

You know what that means? It means that when Jesus was hanging on the cross 2,000 years ago he was and he is simultaneous with you sitting here. Hear me. Jesus from Calvary is looking straight at you. Argue with me at all you want, but I tell you the truth. Jesus is focused on you this moment. He's staring at you this moment. He is God on the cross—nailed, spread eagle—and he's looking at you. That's why you need to do this. In stillness you need to surrender yourself and say, "Jesus, reach out from the cross and touch me. Put your arms around me."

Like a sponge he absorbs out of me in the stillness of the morning the dirt, the darkness, the filth, the sexual improprieties, the lies that I have lived, the ugliness. He absorbs it. The Bible doesn't only say he took the punishment for sin. It says that he who never sinned on the cross becomes sin. That's why you dare not sin that grace may abound, because even as you're sinning he's screaming in agony on the cross because he hates what he has to absorb out of you. But he'll do it because he loves you. He's like a magnet, and every dirty, filthy thing in your life is like an iron filing. On the cross he absorbs it. "Come unto me," he says, "all you that labor, you who are heavy laden, you who are depressed, you who are filthy, and I'll take it."

Oh, at the cross, the cross, the cross, at the cross. Jesus is a man who historically died for our sins but is a God who lives in an eternal now. He touches you from Calvary, and ah, in the stillness of the morning I lie there and let him touch me and cleanse me and purify me.

And here's what happens. The apostle Paul writes that sin is a lid upon the Holy Spirit. It quenches the dynamism that lives at the depths of your being. There is a dynamistic force in you called the Holy Spirit that is quenched. But as sin is absorbed by Jesus on the tree, that Spirit is released, and Jesus says that it will be in you like a fountain of living water. It will bubble up inside of you. You will radiate the ecstasy of God. Ah, people. How do you say no to a Jesus who wants to cleanse you and free up a Spirit that will explode inside of you and give you not only love like you've never known before, peace like you've never known before, but joy. Oh, the joy. And there's nothing that can take away that joy, not even the threat and the fear of death.

I went to my first black funeral when I was 16 years old. A friend of mine, Clarence, had died. The pastor was incredible. From the pulpit he talked about the resurrection in beautiful terms. He had us thrilled. He came off the pulpit, went to the family and comforted them from the fourteenth chapter of John. "Let not your heart be troubled," he said, "'You believe in God, believe also in me,' said Jesus. Clarence has gone to heavenly mansions."

The last thing he was the last 20 minutes he preached to the open casket. Now, that's drama. He yelled at the corpse. "Clarence! Clarence!" He said it with such authority. I would not have been surprised had there been an answer. He said, "Clarence, there were a lot of things we should have said to you that we never said to you. You got away too fast, Clarence. You got away too fast." He went down this litany of beautiful things that Clarence had done for people. When he finished (here's the drama part), he said, "That's it, Clarence. There's nothing more to say. When there's nothing more to say, there's only one thing to say. Good night. Good night, Clarence." He grabbed the lid of the casket and slammed it shut. "Good night, Clarence." Boom. Shock waves went over the congregation. As he lifted his head you could see there was this smile on his face. He said, "Good night, Clarence. Good night, Clarence, because I know, I know that God is going to give you a good morning." The choir stood and starting singing "On that great morning, we shall rise, we shall rise." We were dancing in the aisles and hugging each other. I knew the joy of the Lord, a joy that in the face of death laughs and sings and dances, for there is no sting to death.

Once the Holy Spirit cleanses you and releases the ecstasy of God within you, that's the jubilee—deliverance from oppression, a cleansing from sin, healing the sick, deliverance of the 's the whole gospel.

Tony Campolo is professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern College in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, and founder of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education/Tony Campolo Ministries. He is author of 28 books, including Revolution and Renewal: How Churches Are Saving Our Cities (Westminster/ John Knox, 2000).