_____We recall today the Jubilee Tradition in Israel, appropriate as we experience the Great
Jubilee of the year 2,000. The Jubilee tradition celebrated God’s great deliverance of the
Hebrews from Egyptian slavery and set up a social, environmental and economic process
for avoiding such a slavery again: l.let the land lie fallow, every seven years. The earth
needs to be regenerated, it belongs to God, a sabboth for the land was proclaimed. 2.let the
farms given up in debt be given back in the 50th year, because God prefers widely
distributed land ownership to concentrations of power and wealth. 3.let those who are in
debt, have their debt forgiven. These methods were used to keep Israel as a renewed
people. When they strayed from such efforts they lost their sense of purpose. These
principles formed a web of activities in a economic, social, environmental vision for the
People of God.
_____Consider the structure of Egypt, its public order. Egypt was an imperial empire. Its
religion was focused on the cycle of the seasons with pharaoh as the absolute mediator
between the Gods and humanity. The Pharaoh, the manager of society was at the same time
the son of the Gods. The conversion of Israel from Egypt resulted in a community with a
distinct self-understanding from that of the Empire of Egypt. The love of God as the
unseen partner of Israel, stands in tension with a social order organized around the love and
fear of nature. God’s entry into human self-creation and cultural reproduction involves a
transformation out of Egypt into a new understanding of themselves--focused on land,
family, immediacy under God, trust in God, and strong reservations about centralized
bureaucracies and similar sources of power. The followers of Moses seen to have been a
mixture of stock-breeders (sheep, cattle, and goats), small gardeners, and fishermen,
including war captives or migrants from Canaan--who had been forced into harsh state
slavery in Egypt and then they turned to migration for survival. Once the followers of
Moses entered Canaan and joined with other peoples to form the larger community of
Israel--their earlier social form -- centered in families; became reformed in an expanded
social organization -- supportive of a pastoral life of settled farmers, craftsmen and women
--an expanded social structure of more and more inclusive tribal groupings--family, clan,
tribe--twelve tribes. They still maintained no standing army, no court bureaucracy, not
alien Gods, there was a sense of immediacy under God--as expressed in the Mosaic
Covenant; "I will be your God, if you will be my people." God abided in a tent, the ark of
the covenant. Israel’s social order was not just another instance of Near Eastern
civilization. Israel’s socio-cultural system was in reaction to those surrounding it. Israel
chose a course of decentralizing, non-stratifying development in deliberate contrast to its
immediate neighbors. The Mosaic covenant was a religious and political pact between an
outcast rural people who organized themselves politically and broke with an imperial
culture. The Mosaic covenant involved a rejection of the gods of Empire and of the
Empire’s form of social organization.
_____The social innovation of Moses and the corresponding novelty of a God aligned
with the marginal ones, the little ones, the poor, migrants, farmers and prisoners of war,
was abandoned in the Monarchic Israel. Listen to a part of that story, I am using the New
American Bible, I Samuel, Chapter 8.
1 Samuel 8: Establishment of the Monarchy in Israel

When the Philistines heard that the Israelites had gathered at Mispah, their lords went
against Israel. Hearing this, the Israelites became afraid of the Philistines and said to
Samuel, "Implore the Lord our God unceasingly for us, to save us from the clutches of the
Philistines." Samuel implored the Lord for Israel, and the Lord heard him.

Samuel judged Israel as long as he lived.

In his old age Samuel appointed his sons judges over Israel. "They did not follow his
example, but sought illicit gain and accepted bribes, perverting justice."

Therefore all the elders of Israel came in a body to Samuel at Ramah and said to him, "Now
that you are old, and your sons do not follow your example, appoint a king over us, as
other nations have, to judge us."

6.Samuel was displeased when they asked for a king to judge them. He prayed to the Lord,
however, who said in answer: "Grant the people’s every request. It is not you they reject,
they are rejecting me as their king." He told them: "The rights of the king who will rule will
be as follows: He will take your sons and assign them to his chariots and horses, and they
will run before his chariot. He will also appoint from among them his commanders of
groups of a thousand and a hundred soldiers. He will set them to do his plowing and his
harvesting, and to make his implements of war and use the equipment of his chariots. he
will use your daughters as ointment-makers, as cooks, and as bakers. He will take the best
of your vineyards, and give the revenue to his eunuchs and his slaves. he will take your
male and female servants, as well as your best oxen and your asses, and use them to do his
work. He will tithe your flocks and you yourselves will become his slaves. When this
takes place, you will complain against the king whom you have chosen, but on that day the
Lord will not answer you."


The rise of Saul and David involved a new covenant. The Davidic covenant: "I will be your
God forever." was used to provide a social function of legitimizing the Kingdom among a
resistant populous and had the political function of setting up a dynasty. The innovations
and inventiveness of David and Solomon, expressed in a temple bureaucracy, harem,
standing army, system of taxation, centralized control of the production process....embody
an imitation of the hierarchical bureaucratic and imperial consciousness and a radical
rejection of the rural communal consciousness of the Mosaic tradition. It was in response to
the threat of the Philistines that the elders of Israel approached the prophet Samuel--asking
out of fear that they anoint a leader like other nations--to make Israel a Kingdom. Samuel
warned the elders of the consequences of such a move. He prayed to Yahweh--who
answered him, "It is not you they reject, they are rejecting me as their king."
_____The Davidic Empire was the empire of a conqueror. Marriage with foreigners were
an important instrument of domestic and foreign policy. In fulfilling their purposes, the
King’s power was consolidated by marriages and the foreign women brought their own
fertility gods and goddesses, so that the temple became a collection of fertility symbols
rather than the sanctuary of Yahweh who led the Chosen people from the degradation of
slavery to the freedom of God’s realm
_____As long as Israel was a confederacy, resting on a social organization of clans and
families, the tendency to a mere human constitution of society could only become active
when the serious problem of a distorted social order arose in the permanent organization of
the Kingdom. The question had to arise whether Israel, in becoming a nation like other
nation’s had ceased being the people of Yahweh. Had not the anointing of David brought
back the image of a ruler as a sole mediator which Israel had rejected in Egypt"

_____This backsliding into the imperial society and static religion of Israel was never
completely effective. It faced constant challenges by the efforts of the Prophets. Prophecy
sought to reform Israel’s religious and civil institutions by reverting to the times of Moses
and Joshua and to the moment when Israel was acting more immediately under God’s
leadership. When returning to its agrarian past, to the pre-Monarchic stages of Israel’s
existence, to rural imagery, to a socio-critical perspective; the prophets were trying to
reform Israel. They appealed to symbols and to religious practices aligned with popular
piety, to a popular consciousness drawn from wilderness wandering, with the early
struggles with justice. Their songs and imagery were from an agricultural and pastoral
heritage.
_____During a time of political threat, in the 7th and 8th centuries, the scribes gathered
together the stories of Israel’s heritage as a rural people, what some have called the Jubilee
Tradition. It was gathered to help Israel’s people remember their heritage as a people in the
consciousness of the possible loss of their land and their way of life. The land, as Walter
Brueggeman wrote in "The Land", is sheer gift, is a grace, not something to be owned or
captured. It is God’s original blessing.
_____The Jubilee Tradition expresses the notion of the Sabbath in the ecological, social,
political, and religious organization of Israelite society. The Jubilee Tradition was the
extension of the Sabbath --the rest of the seventh day in praise of God--to the total life of
the Hebrew community. It was a social program--a model, for the ongoing conversion of
the life of an entire people. It solidified the notion of Israel as a community rather than as an
empire.
_____It included the following elements:
_____l.leaving the soil fallow
_____2.the remission of debts
_____3.the return to each individual of family property
_____4.the liberation of slaves
_____The Jubilee tradition expresses an ideal form for an agrarian people and is a model
for all people’s renewal in striving to live with care for creation and care for community.

There was an ecological liberation which the Jubilee year mandated. During the sabbatical
year, every seven years; and at the peak of the Jubilee (the Great Jubilee) every 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 raping or exploitation. And so in the 50th year you did nothing
with the land--you let it lie fallow that it might recreate itself, renew itself. Let it be
restored, go back to its original richness, fallowness, creativity. The Rabbis mandated that
in the fallow year, all the fences in the land were taken down and whatever grew by itself,
whether apples or pears or cereals 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. No one went hungry because it was an injustice against the dignity of the human
being that anyone starve. The rabbis were not a class closed in upon themselves, they came
out of the people. They lived with the people, raised disciples among the people. In the
villages and towns there were boxes which were set up to provide alms for the hungry
people. In the market place there 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,
which included the least among us, the poor and hungry. There was present and active the
notion that a society of Yahweh needed solidarity, to be bonded with mutual care, social
love, and 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.
_____There was to the Jubilee tradition an economic and political liberation. Those who
were in debt had their debts canceled. Land which was ceded in debt had it restored to its
original owner. This way, a wide distribution of land ownership was ensured. The people
had learned of the dangers of highly concentrated control over food and land in Egypt. All
of the land was returned to its original owner families so that there could not take place the
disparity in wealth and power of the few over the many.
_____The Jubilee Tradition also provided that all of the slaves of 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
to be returned 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,
cultural, social, economic and ecological conversion of the community. It was the
expression of a religious and cultural ideal. It stands, as much of the scriptures do, by
contrast with Egyptian, Monarchic, Roman, and contemporary imperialist , bureaucratic
captivity.
_____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:
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the
poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let
the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord." Luke 4:18.
_____At NCRLC we use seven fundamental principles in a framework for rural life
which flesh out in principle form, elements of the ethic of the Jubilee tradition:

_____When developing economic, social, environmental policies for rural communities, the
following can be used as principles for reflection, criteria for judgment, and directives for
action. These principles are drawn from the Gospel and from Catholic tradition:
_____l. Human dignity
_____2. Subsidiarity
_____3. Solidarity
_____4. Universal Destination of Goods
_____5. The Common Good
_____6. The Integrity of Creation
_____7. The Option for the Poor

l. ___Human beings are created in the image of God. Any diminishment of that dignity,
violates Catholic conviction. As related to the economy, Catholics believe that the economy
is for the human person, the person is not for the economy. The family farm is a preferred
rural habitat for families to develop personal responsibility and dignity.

2. ___Persons and communities should exercise as much power as they can in harmony with
their dignity. No higher community should strip a person or local community of its capacity
to see, judge, and act on its own behalf without serious and good reason. Local control
and democratic participation are supported by the principle of subsidiarity. Higher
communities should not preempt but should co-ordinate lower communities efforts for the
good of all.

3. ___The virtue of solidarity carries individuals and communities beyond narrow
selfishness to care for their neighbors, their regions, and the world beyond their borders It
advocates corporate and personal responsibility beyond self-interest or private advantage.

4. The earth is the Lord’s and has been created for the well-being of all. Greed, excess
profits, control by a few of goods meant for the many are contrary to God’s desire that
creation is for the good of all.

5. ___The common good encourages individuals and communities to act on behalf of the
good of all. Individual goods include health, food, shelter, clothing, land, water, air.
Values exist on an ascending scale: vital, social, cultural, personal, religious. Where the
common good is ignored, social, economic, personal, ecological disharmonies grow.

6. ___The web of life is one. Creation has an integrity which has an inherent value beyond
its usefulness to human beings. Humans are to be responsible stewards of creation, in that
activity they work in harmony with God as co-creators. Sustainable communities are
socially just, economically beneficial, environmentally healthy.

7. ___The option for the poor includes threatened land, nature, people. A fundamental
moral measure of any society, economy, or ecology asks how the poor and vulnerable are
faring. The earth is among the oppressed.
A fundamental image for a rural ethic is the Web of Life — nature and people in one
communion, one common community. The counter image is imperialism.