"The Year of Jubilee and Redemption" - July 20, 2014

This Sunday, I will be focusing on the extravagant gift of redemption and the once-in-a-lifetime occurrence of the Year of Jubilee as it is described in Leviticus 25.  This is the most radical illustration I know of to put in physical terms the lavish (the root meaning of "prodigal") gift of grace and redemption that Jesus embodied, showers us with, and out of which He invites us to live.  The special music will be an integral part of the service and is being offered by a quartet composed of David and Anne Lonowski, Christy Loewen, and me.  Wayne Lonowski will be filling in for Anne at the 10:45 AM service.  

The Year of Jubilee was commanded in Leviticus 25 (verses 8 and following) to take place every 50 years.  On the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) of the Year of Jubilee - I LOVE this! - a trumpet would sound throughout the land of Israel announcing the gift that the Day of Atonement was ushering in this very special year.  On this day, all debts would be "written off the books", all who had had to sell themselves into slavery because of hard financial times would be freed from their bondage, and all land that had been leased for others' use would return to the stewardship of its families of origin.  Talk about justice!  No lifetime bondage and indebtedness.  No accumulation of wealth through land grabs because all would be returned to its families of origin every 50 years.  Imagine the feelings of release and freedom that occurred on that very special Day of Atonement and how the people might yearn to live long enough to experience - even once - that resetting of the social and economic time clock!

The grace God offers us in Jesus Christ is like this only more so.  It's available to us not once every 50 years, but all day of every day.  In the words of Michael Kelly Blanchard's song, "Be Ye Glad", "Oh, be ye glad / Oh, be ye glad / Every debt that you ever had / Has been paid up in full by the grace of the Lord / Be ye glad, be ye glad, be ye glad."  Jesus takes this one step further as Luke tells the story and applies to himself that passage from Isaiah that heralded "the year of the Lord's favor", prefigured in the Year of Jubilee: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor" [Luke 4:18-19].

We'll be singing about this truly amazing grace on Sunday and inviting a personal connection through worship to this feeling of gladness, forgiveness, and redemption as the spiritual ground in which we would be deeply rooted.  

Looking forward to exploring this with you in worship on Sunday.  I hope you'll join us!

Steve

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