God’s Jubilee in 2025
Isaiah 61 (have Bible up front)
December 29, 2024
The question is this: Isn’t it time for God’s Jubilee in 2025?
Jubilee is found in the book of Leviticus. The Year of Jubilee is a time of great freedom and celebration. It comes around once every fifty years. On that year, all property in Israel goes back to its original owner. The families who have become poor are once again given land so they might have an equal chance to make it. It’s also a time when any enslaved Jew is freed or emancipated. Therefore, the Year of Jubilee is a time of new opportunities and hope for the poor and the oppressed.
The Year of Jubilee makes me think of the story of the Prodigal Son. The Prodigal Son runs away with half his father’s inheritance. He wastes it on wild living. He becomes so poor that he has to work in a pigpen. But the prodigal son returns home.
The Father welcomes the prodigal back to the family despite his poverty and his sin.
Jubilee is for those who have become poor and oppressed. They have been no longer accepted as equals at the family table. During the year of Jubilee the poor have their debts forgiven. Their lands and homes that were once sold off are restored to them. The poor are once again able to sit as equals around the family table.
The year of Jubilee leads us from the early years of Old Testament history to one of the last writings. The author of this part of Isaiah is writing after the Exile in Babylon. Many of the Jewish people are finally back home in Jerusalem. Unfortunately, many of the Jewish people are struggling in poverty.
We’ve been looking at these prophecies from Isaiah all month long. Today we look at Isaiah 61.
Isaiah says in our Scripture reading today: “The Spirit of the Lord God has taken control of me. The Lord has chosen and sent me to tell the oppressed the good news, to heal the brokenhearted, and to announce freedom for prisoners and captives. This is the year when the Lord God will show kindness to us.”
The people hearing this understand the author to be talking about Jubilee. The year of God’s Jubilee is beginning. The poor and oppressed are lifted up and restored. They are able to sit as equals again at the family table.
Five hundred years go by. Jesus is beginning his ministry in his hometown of Nazareth. Let me read what happens in
Luke 4:16-21
Jesus is saying, ‘The year of Jubilee is beginning. I’m initiating it. The poor, the oppressed, the blind, the imprisoned, and the suffering will now be lifted up and restored.’
Today, God’s arms are open wide. Jesus is still initiating Jubilee. As a result, God is welcoming us home. God is forgiving our debts, our sins. God is freeing us from all that holds down. God is lifting us up and restoring us. God is welcoming us back to sit at the family table.
Isn’t it time for God’s Jubilee in 2025? Will we receive God’s grace and celebrate God’s goodness to us in the coming year?
A few years after the message of Isaiah 61 is preached in Jerusalem it becomes clear that the words had fallen on deaf ears. So Nehemiah had to remind them again of God’s Jubilee.
Listen to another Scripture: Nehemiah 5: 1-13
This is the story of Nehemiah strongly encouraging the people to carry through with the Jubilee that Isaiah had earlier preached about.
You see… God’s Jubilee calls for action. It’s not enough to simply be the Prodigal Son in that story. We’re also called to be the father in the Prodigal Son story. We’re called to open our arms to the poor and downtrodden.
God’s Jubilee calls for action. It’s not enough for us to simply receive the benefits of God’s open arms of grace. It’s not enough to simply have our debts forgiven by God. It’s not enough for God to free us from all that holds us down. It’s not enough to be healed by a good God. It’s not enough to have God restore us to the table.
God’s Jubilee also means that we are called to action, to be the father. We are called to extend God’s grace to others. We’re called to lift up the downtrodden. We’re called to release the poor from the debts they owe us…without consequences or strings. We’re called to welcome the poor to our family table, so they can have for themselves that which we take for granted.
Imagine a family with six children. Four of the children are fed three times a day with nourishing food. The other two have to live on scraps of food a couple times a day. Four of the children sleep in warm, comfortable rooms. The other two have to sleep in a run-down shelter. Four of the children get regular medical check-ups, all the customary shots, and immediate attention when illness strikes. The other two are plagued with chronic infections and respiratory diseases, which are left untreated.
This is the family of our world today.
Will we join God’s Jubilee in 2025? Will we lift up the downtrodden and give to the poor? Will we welcome all of them to the table, to our table?
The story isn’t over. Trouble is on the horizon.
Let’s go back to Jesus reading the Scripture in Nazareth.
I wonder if the people listening that day had previously heard about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Do you remember what he says in that sermon in Luke’s gospel? He says, “God will bless you people who are poor. His kingdom belongs to you. … But you rich people are in for trouble. You have already had an easy life.” I’m thinking that the people of Nazareth had already heard about this radical message related to the poor.
Jesus gets up in Nazareth and reads the Scripture from Isaiah 61 in which he says, “The Lord’s Spirit has come to me, because he has chosen me to tell the good news to the poor.”
You can hear the murmurs of the crowd. “Good news to the poor? Why the poor? They don’t deserve it! Who does this guy think he is? Isn’t he Joseph’s son? Isn’t he one of us?”
Jesus hears this and says, “God’s not only for the poor, God’s also for the foreigners you despise. For example long ago God healed the foreign army commander of Syria, Naaman.”
Jesus is just asking for trouble. And he gets it. They drag Jesus out of town to a cliff. Here they try to throw him down to his death.
Later Jesus puts this reaction he got in Nazareth into story form. Read Luke 15:25-30
It’s not enough for us to simply be the Prodigal Son in that story. We’re also called to be the father in the story. We’re called to open our arms to the poor and downtrodden.
Unfortunately, too often we act like the older son.
“It’s not fair. We’ve worked hard for what we have and they haven’t. We deserve what we have and they don’t. We’ve earned it and they haven’t.
We’ve already done so much. Why do we have to give any more? Why do we have to keep sacrificing for them? It’s seems like God’s playing favorites here and we’ve been left out.”
Jesus finishes the story in Luke 15:31-32
We’re invited to be glad and celebrate for this is the Year of Jubilee; the Year when the poor and oppressed are lifted up and restored to the family table. It seemed like they were dead. But now they’re alive. It seemed like they were lost. But now they’re found.
Howard Thurman wrote these words:
“When the song of the angel is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas has begun:
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
[To restore the poor,]
And to make music in the heart.”
The work of Christmas has begun. Will we join God’s Jubilee in 2025?
