The Jubilee, as described in the Bible, was a celebration that Israel was to observe every fifty years. As TRACI reaches a similar milestone, it is appropriate to look back on the Old Testament festival of the Jubilee and draw lessons from it.
Festivals and celebrations are meant to draw our attention to issues and principles in order to impress these on our lives even after the festival is over. Global “days” for instance, are meant to bring awareness, initiate discussion, change perceptions and bring transformation. Women’s Day was put forward to advocate for fair and equal pay for women workers and to end gender discrimination against women. Mental Health Day programmes aim to increase people’s acceptance and reduce discrimination against the mentally ill.
Scripture describes the festival Jubilee principles that God wanted Israel to inculcate among them even after the Jubilee year ended. These were the principles of liberty, equality, rest and renewal.
The first two intertwined principles were liberation resulting in liberty to be practiced with equality – liberty to each of the inhabitants of the land (Leviticus 25). This freedom was to be social: those enslaved were to be released to return home as free people; and economic: all were to have their land or property returned to them, and debts were to be cancelled (Deuteronomy 15: 1-6 , the practice every seven years, including the Jubilee). This practice, if carried out faithfully, could not but result in the regular equalization and re-distribution of wealth, status, property and perceived worth of each Israelite. These radical principles can baffle citizens of the extremely unequal and oppressive world of the twenty-first century.
The other two principles, likewise, were intertwined – rest and renewal. The rest was to be universal – the land, people (including immigrants) and animals were to desist from agricultural work. The land, as in every sabbath year, was to lie fallow; only what it produced of itself could be eaten, and also left for the poor, and for wild animals to freely eat (Exodus 23: 10-11). The temptation to overwork the land to harvest and gain more and more was to be overcome, and instead, with this regular cycle of cultivation and rest, and renewal, every sixth year the land would produce a bumper harvest for the next few years. Even so, reduced consumption and a return to simplicity would have been inevitable. The Israelites’ individual as well as communal dependence and trust in God would have to increase. Their acceptance of their creatureliness, their affinity to other humans, and to the animals of the earth, and to the earth itself, would be emphasized as they all together looked to God to feed them through the rested earth.
Jubilee principes for the twenty-first century church and nations
Christians are generally comfortable with Jubilee principles as metaphors for the ‘spiritual’ side of life. For instance, Christians can resonate with the idea of freedom, for in Christ, all are free indeed, free from the law of sin and death (Romans 8: 1). It is no coincidence, also, surely, that the Jubilee year was to be proclaimed on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 25: 9) looking forward to Christ.
Christians know too, that all are equal in the body of Christ – all classes, genders, communities (Galatians 3: 28). All have a right to know Christ and are members of His body.
Christians can recognize the principle of rest and renewal – both as a spiritual metaphor for salvation – resting from our work and entering into the sabbath rest of God in trust and obedience (Hebrews 4: 3, 9-11) and being renewed as new creatures in Christ (II Corinthians 5: 17) as well as the need for regular rest and renewal as creatures with bodies bound to the earth.
What Christians are perhaps not so comfortable with is the ‘secular’ side of the Jubilee principles – so that here, as in other places, there is evidence of an artificial sacred-secular divide.
For while spiritual freedom in Christ and equality in Christ is real, this cannot be divorced from the need for Christians to advocate for economic and social freedom and equality as a desirable, even if not a completely attainable goal for human society; that was certainly a part of the Old Testament Jubilee. At the very least, Christians should completely rid themselves individually and as churches, of class, wealth, caste and gender bias, setting an example in harmonious and loving equality among themselves, and advocating it for others. At the very least, Christians should be completely on board with movements seeking to reduce wealth inequality, foster greater social and economic equality and active affirmation of otherwise less privileged groups like Dalits, women and tribals.
Similarly, the Jubilee principle of rest and renewal has to be expressed in an active concern for the earth, keeping it clean and using it sustainably and wisely; in a willingness to reduce consumption and share time, resources and community with the poor and oppressed, including migrants. Contrary to Jubilee principles are the constant over-striving at work, for production of goods and wealth, exploiting the earth’s resources in a constant competitive striving for glitz, glamour, convenience and self-indulgence while ignoring damage to the earth, or the needs of the workers, or a fervent nationalism that de-humanizes “others”.
With this very transformative pattern given by God, Christians should be in the lead in advocating for freedom and equality of all, before God and in human society, and in working in principles of rest and renewal for the earth and all its people into our systems.
JUBILEE (A Series on Jubilee as TRACI Celebrates 50 years, 1975-2025)
Dr. Jamila Koshy is a Psychiatrist by practice.
She has contributed to many books and journals. Her books include “Side by Side” (SAIACS Press), “Talking Families,” “Should I Care?” (ISPCK, Delhi). She is also a Board member of TRACI.