Was Jesus serious?

I was sitting in Barnes and Nobles yesterday when I read this,

“…Jubilee acts are not simply to be expected in the future, they are to be given as a concrete expression by the people of God in the present…what had been expected in the future can now be experienced in the present because we are now living in the new age,… characterized by Jubilee activity in the believers.”

WOW!!! I have been preaching the Kingdom of God can start in this life for a while now, but does that include the Jubilee? I would say that I have started to become a little more liberal in my theology, but not this liberal. Yet, I found myself asking, “what would it look life if the church, the new Israel, took God’s words about practicing the year of jubilee to heart?

I know that at this point my blog could tail spin in a variety of different directions and/or opinions, but what if someone tried living the Jubilee year in 2011? Where and how would one start? Would 6 years of preparation be needed? As I thought about this a light bulb went off. A new movement, started by Morgan Spurlock with his documentary Super Size Me, has moved into the theological world. That is, documenting trying a hypothesis out. A.J. Jacobs wrote about his experience of living biblically for one year. Most recently this trend is being continued by Rachel Held Evans by taking Jacobs principal of living biblically for one year, but for woman. During his book Jacobs shares his struggles with abiding by all the Biblical rules as he attempts to suceed with one year of biblical living. In the end, through submission he acknowledges how the Sabbath (one of the most difficult items of biblical living for him) turns out to be a blessing. I know from reading Evan’s blog that she is facing her own struggles.

From reading Jacobs, and assuming the constraints from Evans, I am not expecting them to incorporate an entire year to Jubilee. How could they? Living biblically for one year is tough enough. Let alone the Jubilee year only comes along once every seven years. Therefore, I had an idea. A book chronicling one year in which someone, probably not me, lives out the Jubilee year.

Before you think I am off my rocker and think the Jubilee year was only for ancient Israel I challenge you to read John Howard Yoder’s book The Politics of Jesus. In this book, particularly chapter 3, Yoder makes a pretty convincing argument that Jesus announced a time of Jubilee, and this announcement of the Jubilee is what constitutes the Kingdom of God. When I combine Yoder’s beliefs with my own, which the Kingdom of God is at hand, right now, today…I run into problems. The Jubilee year is impractical. We don’t have records of the Jews actually enacting it so why should I. In fact one of the chief Pharisees Hillel found a way around it. He created something called the prosboul. Why? Because the Jubilee year is impractical and un real!! But does all that really mean that it is not what Jesus called us to? Forgiving debtors...sins and monetary items?

As I trailed off in these thoughts and implications I came across another blog. I realized that I often like to read what Jesus said through my personal lens. I like to take the hard stuff Jesus says and read through a spirituality lens. I don’t want to read it as what it means in the here and now. This all leads me to ask what would it mean for me (or someone out there) to live a year in the year of the Lord, the year of Jubilee? What would be year and life look like by leaving the soil fallow, the remission of debts, the liberation of slaves, and returning to each individual what is their family’s property? How would I even start the last one? Return my home to the previous owner, the original landowner, the Native Americans, and if I could not decide whom the land/home properly belonged to would I leave it vacant for whoever wanted it?

This is one of those times when the followers of Jesus said…his teachings are too hard and left him.