The Jubilee Faith: A Rural Ethic for the Millennium by Brother David Andrews, CSC, JD Executive Director, National Catholic Rural Life Conference © 1998 The Jubilee Tradition was a vehicle for communal conversion -- religious, social, economic, and ecological. The Israelites were an agrarian people. From the Garden of Eden to Golgotha, rural settings and agricultural images fill the Scriptures. The followers of Moses were a mixture of stock-breeders (sheep, cattle, and goats), small gardeners, and fishermen. The initial experience of God by the Hebrew people is that god is the one who hears the cry of the poor. "I have seen the affliction of my people." During a time of political threat, in the seventh and eighth centuries, the scribes gathered together the stories of Israel's heritage as a rural people in The Jubilee Tradition. The Jubilee Tradition was gathered to help Israel's people remember their heritage as a people because they were threatened with the possible loss of their land and their way of life. In Leviticus chapters 25-27, Yahweh is the one who owns the land. Leviticus 26: 11-13 states: "I will set my dwelling among you, and will not disdain you, Ever present in your midst, I will be your God, and you will be my people. For it is I, the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of the Egyptians and freed you from their slavery, breaking the yoke they had laid upon you and letting you walk erect." This walking of God in the land recalls the "walking" of God in the garden of the first peasant farmers (Gen. 3:8), Adam and Eve. Like Eden, the land is God's sanctuary. Here Yahweh is not an absentee landowner who resides in heaven and visits from above or locates the divine name at a particular shrine; Yahweh dwells in the land, walks through it, and celebrates its Sabbath. The jubilee of the land is related to freedom from slavery in Egypt, the Exodus experience. The goal of the exodus act is not only to bring the people to the land of Cana (Lv. 25:38) but also to enable them to "walk erect" (Lv. 26:13) as free, independent people in their landowner's sanctuary. The Jubilee Tradition extends the notion of the Sabbath, the call of God to the ecological, social, political, and religious organization of Israelite society. The consciousness of God's presence shaped a people's culture and attitude. The Jubilee Tradition included these elements: 1) Let the soil lie fallow 2) Forgive debts 3) Return of family property 4) Liberate the prisoners The Jubilee Year mandated an ecological liberation. During the sabbatical year, every seven years and at the peak of the Jubilee (the Great Jubilee) after seven sequences of seven years (50 years), the land was to lie fallow. You were not to exhaust creation. Creation was a gift from God. You had a responsibility for the ecology, for the environment, which is given into human hands for service, not for exploitation. And so in the 50th year you did nothing with the land - you let it lie fallow that it might renew itself, recreate itself. Let it be restored, go back to its original richness, fallowness, creativity. The fallowness of the land was a challenge to human creativity, too. God's rest, human rest, nature's rest were the fertile grounds for creativity, inventiveness, thoughtful meditation, meditative loving. The rabbis mandated that in the fallow year, all of the fences in the land were taken down and whatever grew by itself, whether apples or pears or cereals was open was open for anyone who was hungry to come and take. As the Bible says: "The stranger and alien have free access. For unto me the land is given. You are here as settlers, not alternate owners of the land." And in that country, at the height of the observance of the Jubilee Year, no one ever went hungry. The land was open to anyone. In the marketplace was a bin set out with food so that anyone who passed through the village would have food to eat. Any sojourner was provided with two meals a day. Along with care for creation, provision was made for care for the community. An active notion existed that Yahweh's society needed solidarity; people needed to be bonded with mutual care, social love, and needed to treat each other with the dignity due a priestly people. A focus was on the community's good, social well-being prevailed over individualistic greed. The Jubilee Tradition also claimed an economic and political liberation. Those who were in debt had their debts canceled. Land, ceded in debt, was restored to its original owner. This way, wide distribution of the land ownership was ensured. The people had learned of the dangers of highly concentrated land ownership in Egypt. All of the land was returned to its original owners so that the disparity of wealth with an overabundance of property in the hands of a few. Poverty within Israel would be alleviated by providing as many as possible the means of sustenance from the land. The Jubilee Tradition also provided that all the prisoners of the society would go free. The slaves would have been collected during the fifty years - from border skirmishes and incursions. No human being was allowed to be a slave forever to another - all slaves were allowed to return to their homes so that they could reconstitute their dignity as a free people. The Jubilee Tradition was a vehicle for communal conversion - the religious, social, economic, and ecological conversion of the community, it was the expression of a religious and cultural ideal. In Luke's Gospel, most especially, the Jubilee Tradition articulates the mission and goal of Jesus. In the synagogue, in the town of Nazareth, Jesus expresses his mission: God has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim release to captives; the recovery of sight to the blind, to proclaim the acceptable Year of Yahweh." The Jubilee notice matched Jesus' understanding of the Kingdom as similar to Israel's understanding of the Jubilee. Jesus was the bearer of a new vision of human, social, economic, political and ecological relationships. Earliest Christianity began as a renewal movement within Judaism. The Jesus movement was fostered by tax collectors, fishermen, poor and marginalized persons. They became the authorities of local communities. It began in the countryside, a Galilean movement. We hear a great deal about farmers, fishermen, winegrowers and shepherds. The Jesus movement was found in the small towns and villages, in the rural communities around Galilee. At the heart of the Jubilee Tradition is an agrarian culture. Land stewardship, issues of credit and debt, concern for families and strangers, these are familiar issues to rural peoples. What values and meanings inform our deepest longings? Are the answers to those questions consistent with God's transcendental call to us ... to be beautiful, truthful, good and holy? Whatever we think of the Millennium, it is hard not to think of the Jubilee Tradition of Israel and its religious and ethical character as relevant to rural life. The National Catholic Rural Life Conference is a membership organization grounded in a spiritual tradition which brings together the Church, care for creation and care for community. The NCRLC fosters programs of direct service and systemic change. As an educator in the faith, the NCRLC seeks to relate religion to the rural world; develops support services for rural pastoral ministers; serves as a prophetic voice and as a catalyst and convener for social justice. National Catholic Rural Life Conference 4625 Beaver Avenue Des Moines, IA 50310-2199 Phone: (515) 270-2634 Fax: (515) 270-9447 ncrlc@aol.com