As the churches opened their new year last Advent, Pope John Paul II opened the Jubilee door in St. Peter’s Basilica, announcing a year long observance of Jubilee. During this year, we Christians will attempt to appropriate and internalize this special gift we have received from our Jewish forbearers. If our observance is to be more that just entertaining an interesting quaint idea, a slogan on a billboard, a new program or homiletic theme, it must take deep root within us; it must become an intense commitment to restoring community, restoring creation, restoring relationships. It has something to do with what we believe about time.

In the recent Christian-Jewish Collegiuum held in Albuquerque Rabbi Paul Citrin reminded the participants to take note of this matter of time. Jubilee, he said, is the Sabbath year of Sabbath years, all of which are built on the weekly observance of Sabbath. Without a foundation of fully participating in the intent of Sabbath, Jubilee observance will remain flimsy at best. In other words how we value time will inevitably shape how we appropriate Jubilee.

A significant debate got launched about halfway back in this past millennium and went to the heart of core beliefs about the intrinsic value of life. The mercantile and banking classes of Europe were discovering a more lucrative way of making money on loans. Instead of just charging interest on the amount, they started charging interest on the time until the loan was paid off. Church leaders argued against this new practice because, they said, time was a gift from God and not something humans could negotiate. Thomas Chobham, a Catholic scholar said “The usurer sells nothing to the borrower that belongs to him. He sells only time which belongs to God. He has no right to make a profit from selling someone else’s property.”1 The merchants disagreed, arguing time is money and it was the only way to secure their investments. The Church lost that debate and the commercial quantification of time headed into the DNA of the human race.

This changing of years, centuries, millenniums offers us another chance to reclaim the gift of life-including time. Many churches have joined together to set aside the year 2000 as a Year of Jubilee. For some it means an emphasis on the oppression of debt faced by third world countries. For others it means a recasting of values which have become so encrusted by consumerism; for yet others it also means an inner renewal centered in a deeper faith and more sustained commitment to peace, justice and the care of creation.

Much is being written and said about observing this Jubilee. For myself, in preparation to enter a year of Jubilee, I have found it important to carry with me a Jubilee Prayer and a Jubilee Canticle. I share this with you because this Jubilee, unlike other observances of it in the past, is so ecumenical. The Christian family rarely has the opportunity to explore together a spirituality so widely shared, a spirituality that is intensely personal yet with global consequences, especially as we stand on this boundary between years, centuries, millenniums; this time and place demands a soul stretching response.

I am discovering how Psalm 23 can be a Jubilee Canticle, a song we sing to bring consciousness of Jubilee into our hearts and imaginations. Psalm 23 has universal recognition and regular liturgical use, making it accessible for nurturing a commitment to be Jubilee.

The opening verses signal the radical Jubilee claim: The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. “Wanting” is at the very heart of our consumer mania; “wanting more” drives our compulsive accumulations far beyond what is necessary to sustain sufficient existence; “wanting now” drives us deeper into debt and intensifies stress wondering how to get out. “Wanting” fills our days and weeks, leaving little time for a Sabbath rest. Wanting more drives our insatiable appetites to deplete the earth’s storehouse in order to satisfy these hungers. Jubilee discernment begins, as the Canticle suggests, with taking seriously the distinction between what I need and what I want.

He maketh me lie down in green pastures, he leadeth me beside still waters, he restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in paths of righteousness for his names sake. Giving the land a Sabbath rest, letting it lie fallow for a year, letting it rejuvenate its own creativity, deciding what really belongs to whom and giving it back, letting forgiveness in, all this is at the heart of the Leviticus Jubilee instruction. Could we not receive the same Jubilee ourselves, in our relationships, in our spirits, receiving a Sabbath fallowness by lying down in the exuberant, fecund abundance God wants to give?

In this time-place of resting, I find my life-breath being restored, the motivating power to will the well-being of all creation, from the human to each life form, and the earth itself. Here in this time-place of resting I rediscover the maps for walking life-giving paths in relationship with God, with one another, with the whole inhabited earth, a path marked by loving justice and mercy. That, the prophet Micah said, is all God finally requires of us. No time for it right now? When will there ever be time?

It’s frightening to go in this direction, to let go of the pleasures promised by an entertainment culture, the strength promised by amassing even more goods which requires squandering precious resources and robbing our progeny of their inheritance, the self-assurance predicted to be around the corner when the very next “want” is secured; it scarey to take up our baptismal vocation of exercising our imagination to repair the world, to be the rebuilder of the Shalom Highway. It can be like a valley whose shadows seem dark as death, for there is nothing quite as death-like as relinquishing the demand to spend more time on securing more goods or more prestige-as if time were really ours to spend. If I am going to go into this Jubilee spirituality I want to know I’m not alone in this adventure, that companionship and guidance will be given. The Canticle reassures: Even though I walk through the darkest valley, Thou art with me, Thy rod and Thy staff comfort me.

And now I am put to the test: do I really believe that in the midst of the struggle for justice, in the search for peace, in completely trusting redemptive, reconciling love which desires the well-being of everyone I meet, in the very midst of all this a table is being set where I am a welcomed guest treated with an undeserved grace-filled anointing and a cup of transformative healing is filled to over flowing: thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies; thou annointest my head with oil; my cup overflows. Can I trust that, really believe that?

The Canticle responds and concludes with similar assurances Paul glimpsed in his letter to the Christian in Rome:

For I am convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt, that neither life nor death, angels, principalities, the vastness or interiority of the universe, nothing in all creation can ever separate us from God. (Romans 8. 38-39)

Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.

This Jubilee Canticle awakens a yearning in me, a yearning to dare a future justice for all humankind, to imagine an encompassing healing peace for all creation, a yearning not only for its fulfillment but for a participation in reaching towards it, a yearning which also considers how I have prevented its realization. The Canticle awakens a Jubilee yearning, which means setting aside other yearnings, other voices, other wants. No easy task, by any means!

In addition to the Jubilee Canticle I am discovering a Jubilee Prayer that guides my pilgrimage.

Recall with me that moment when the disciples came to Jesus requesting guidance for praying. He responded with something like: “When you carry on the deepest, most intimate conversation you can have with God, it sounds like this:

“Our Father . . . In this very special place of God conversation I am immediately confronted with how inclusive I will consider the family to be. The first act of violence is to distinguish myself or my circle from the “dangerous strangers,” the lethal enemies. And once having made that separation, I can justify any act of redemptive violence, began to imitate the apparent powerfulness of protecting and revenging. At the outset, this Jubilee prayer makes my boundary making very clear. It calls me to consider over and again how the lethal other, how nature, how the stranger is created in the image of God and valued by the heart of God. Will I now follow the path of Cain who kills his brother or listen to Jesus admonishing Peter “Put the sword away?”

Hallowed . . . Now I must not only name who is in the circle but what is sacred. Until I do I cannot go much further. Is life sacred? Is the dignity of the other sacred? Is the land a sacred trust? Are even the more insignificant species sacred? The smaller a sacred circle I create, the larger the circle of violence and abuse I can tolerate and endorse.

Your persuasive influence, your intentions for creation be realized . . . Is this what I am willing to happen? Am I ready to let God’s persuasive presence and intentions influence how I will be in any given situation. We know what God intends “do justice, love compassion and walk in humility with God.” I don’t need to keep avoiding that intention by wondering “What is God ‘s will?”

Daily bread . . . is for everyone. How am I working for the equitable distribution of the essential resources to ensure the quality of life for everyone, or at least within my sphere of influence? In so doing we also reduce the pressure to resort to violence to make things even, settling things out.

Forgive us our debts . . . I admit I prefer this way of translating what Jesus was saying, even though most folk use the word ‘trespass’ and some use ‘sin’. Debts puts me into the center of seeking justice, jubilee justice. It puts me into the center cause for violence for it clearly asks: “Is retribution or restoration my primary value? Is revenge or forgiveness my primary mode for relationships? Is conquest or reconciliation my primary life goal? It is at this point that this prayer conversation with God now brings my life into sharp focus and clear choice.

No wonder Jesus warns not to trivialize the choice: lead us not . . . into the trivialization of this whole conversation, this Jubilee moment. And the final plea: Deliver us from evil . . . take us out of every strategy we have created to maim creation and one another.

These are the Jubilee threads the prayer weaves:

inclusiveness

sacredness

intentionality

equitable reciprocity

economic justice

forgiveness and reconciliation

“No” to violence in whatever form, whatever reason

Canticle and Prayer. Perhaps Isaiah is right: Those who sing and weave the Jubilee shall renew their strength they shall mount up and soar on wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. And all creation shall join in the joy of Jubilee.

1Summa Confessorum, p.505 as quoted by Jeremy Rifkin

[From Richard Rohr’s journal, ‘Radical Grace’ sometime in 2000]

http://www.cacradicalgrace.org/rg-jubilee.shtml