Remember a few years ago when Bono (and others) pushed for world debt relief? Well, Bono is still pushing for it, and rightly so. This idea of debt relief was part of a bigger picture of the Hebrew year of Jubilee. It's all in Leviticus 25, read it if you never have...I guess you don't have to, but it is cool.
As I have studied the Lord's Prayer over the past few weeks, I came to this peculiar line about forgiving others. Jesus teaches us about forgiveness in many ways. In Matt 18, he teaches the parable of the unforgiving servant. A parable about forgiveness using a situation that was financially motivated. Which led me to read more about the Year of Jubilee. There are teachings there about land returning to it's original owner, freeing workers that were working to pay off debts, and how to decide on fair prices for land among other things. It's a very descriptive and thorough explanation. The real tragedy is that there's no conclusive evidence that it ever happened the way God layed it out.
To me though, it looks like an effort on God's part to make sure that we remember that the whole world is really God's and that we don't become so indebted to each other that those debts outweigh our 'indebtedness' to God. After all, no one is to during the Year of Jubilee either. God promises a bounty from the previous year that will supply the needs of the year everyone takes off!
Steering the car back onto the road...we get the whole debt thing, right? As in, most of us have some? And so it seems that relieving our indebtedness to each other begets a special kind of freedom; almost a restoration to an orginal form of living and a truer sense of what life is. As we show the same kind of mercy toward others that God has shown us we start to become the citizens of God's kingdom. In fact, Jesus starts this whole story with the familiar, "The Kingdom of God is like..."
Forgiveness isn't about living forgiven...is probably more about living together.
The beauty of the picture of the Year of Jubilee is just that. It's not the nuts and bolts of debt relief and real estate returned. It's the picture that I start to see in my mind of how we might be able to live together as a result of the living out of Jubilee. It's not about the fact that we don't have to pay our money to our debtors. It's about the freedom of being debt-free.
This is another time when I am sure that God isn't just fire insurance. I know that God's way is a step up from the normal that we find ourselves in. Oh, and by the way,
Jesus died and was resurrected during a Jubilee year...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Hi, I am a friend of Kylee!
This post really interested me because I was actually in the process of thinking about the idea of forgiveness for a blog posting. I was thinking about how with everything that happened in Amish Country recently (and I live in a town next to amish country in Ohio) how the Amish are currently praying for the guy who killed those girls and have even taken some of the donations they got and put it in a fund in his name. There were even Amish who attend his funeral. To me, this speaks so loudely and really makes me think that even though we can 100% bet that the Amish community is hurting and very sad by this situation that they still will forgive what has been done! If only that message could be spread farther.
I don't know what I would do if anyone intentional hurt someone I loved - I hope I could forgive, but I just don't know if I could - ecspecially that soon after!
So anyways, I just really liked what you said and the forgivenss part really made me think again! I am trying to be more open and forgiving and not so angry at times and it is nice to hear other people talk about these ideas!
So I never connected that Jesus' death and resurrection was during a Jubilee year. Nice. How appropriate.
Post a Comment