Who is God’s favorite?

September 6, 2009

James 2:1-10

2My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? 2For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, 3and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit at my feet,” 4have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? 5Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? 6But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? 7Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?

8You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 9But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. 10For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.

 

An Ohio State fan in an elevator leans over to the guy next to him and says, “Wanna hear a good Michigan joke?”

The guy next to him replies, “Well before you tell that joke, you should know something. I’m 6′ tall, 200 lbs., and I am a Michigan grad. The guy standing next to me is 6′ 2″ tall, weighs 225, and he’s a Michigan grad. And the fella next to him is 6′ 5″ tall, weighs 250, and he’s a Michigan grad. Now, you still wanna tell that joke?”

The first guy says, “No, not if I’m gonna have to explain it three times.”

I don’t mess around when it comes to college football.  I have two favorite teams: Ohio State and whoever plays Michigan.  I love my Buckeyes and I do not apologize for this.  There is Ohio State, and then there is everyone else.  Nobody can compete for my love when it comes to college football.  Some of you (misguided) folks here today would say the same thing about the Virginia Tech Hokies.  Or maybe if football isn’t your sport, you might claim such love for the Boston Red Sox or for a NASCAR driver, a musician, or what ever other form of entertainment you might choose.

We as human beings tend to have favorites.  We could go through item after item, thing after thing, and you could probably name your favorite for me.  What’s your favorite color?  Your favorite food?  Your favorite song?  Yeah, we have favorites.  We might even have favorite people.  Maybe you have a favorite aunt or a favorite teacher or even a favorite child.  We have favorites.  That’s just the way we were made.

But when it comes to God we know that God does not have favorites, at least not among his children.  Whether you are rich or poor, young or old, handsome or down-right ugly, God loves you.  God loves you and God loves people diametrically different from you.  So let’s look at the scripture for this morning to see how God loves us all equally and does not have favorites.

            James comes right out of the gates with a tough rhetorical question, tough because it cuts right to the core of the issue.  He asks, “Do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?”  He seems to be implying that because his Jewish hearers are providing favoritism for a certain social class that they don’t even believe in Jesus!

            Now obviously these people were not saying that Jesus never lived or that he never died.  James is talking to Christians, so I can’t imagine that they don’t believe that Jesus is real.  He isn’t saying that these Christians don’t believe in Jesus in the same way that I don’t believe in the boogey man, elves, and hobbits.  Their not believing in Jesus had more to do with their actions than with their beliefs because as Jesus says in John 14:12, anyone that believes in him will do the works that he has done.  The biblical model of belief requires action.  Belief leads to following Jesus; living as he lived, doing as he taught.  At the end of this chapter James writes that even the demons “believe” in Jesus and that faith without works is dead.

            It is hard to say whether James witnessed something or if he is making up a hypothetical situation as an example, but he talks about two people entering into a place of worship, a synagogue in this situation.  One is a rich man with fancy clothes and the other is a poor man with tattered clothes, perhaps with scraggily looking hair and beard, maybe he even smells a bit.  And the people at the synagogue take notice of the rich man and they give him the best seat in the place of worship.  The poor man…well it sounds like they make him sit at the feet of the others.

            James has a problem with this!  Why would you treat a person better just because he or she has money?  Didn’t Jesus come to save both the rich and the poor?  And didn’t Jesus seem to spend more time with the poor, often criticizing the rich and the powerful?  Why would we flip this upside-down and roll out the red carpet for the rich man?  All men and women are equal in the eyes of God.  There is no longer male or female, rich or poor, slave or free, but all are one in Christ.  Yet the people at this synagogue seem to be flocking to the rich man.  And why?  Probably because of what he can give them.

            Imagine a rich person walking into the church, and we know of this person.  In fact, everyone knows of this person.  Let’s say that it is LeBron James.  So we reach out to LeBron thinking that if we become friends with him, maybe he will buy us lunch sometime.  Maybe he will take us to a professional basketball game sometime.  Maybe he will lend us his Lexus for awhile; maybe he will take us on exotic vacations with him.  And even better, other people will see us spending time with LeBron and they will think we are great as well.  Hey look, there’s Kevin!  He hangs out with LeBron.  We like Kevin.

            But now switch LeBron with some homeless guy named Larry.  Larry has nothing to offer us.  He won’t buy us lunch or lend us the Lexus.  In fact, we might have to lend Larry money and give him rides.  Larry isn’t going to take us on vacations.  Larry hasn’t ever even been out of the state.  And when people see us with Larry, will they think less of us?  Will they think, “There’s that stinky guy and his friend.”

            That’s what they said about Jesus, too.  Those in high positions critiqued Jesus on whom he spent his time with.  But Jesus knew that each and every person had the same value to God.  He did not discriminate based on level of income.  He didn’t discriminate at all.  Jesus didn’t choose with whom he spent his time based on someone’s socio-economic status.  Jesus didn’t choose his friends based on what they could do for him or whether or not they would make good conversation partners.  Jesus loved everyone equally.

            As many of you know, my pay check comes from these baskets that get passed around each Sunday.  My income depends on how much you give.  So you might think that I have a lot of interest in the offering each week.

            But it has been my policy to not have anything to do with the collecting, counting, and depositing of the offering each week.  I don’t know who gives and I don’t know how much you give.  I have never gone through the offering and looked at your gifts to the church because I have never wanted to show one person favor over another.  If LeBron gives more than Larry, should he get more of my time and more of my prayers?  Should I show him favoritism because of his giving?  I don’t think so.  What you give is between you and God.  I hope you are giving to the church and to other charities, but I don’t want to know if you are giving toward our budget or not.  If LeBron walks in the front door, I shouldn’t view him as a walking dollar sign.  I should view him the same as a poor person, the same as Jesus did.  I should see him as a beloved child of God, a person needing to be ministered to, a person in need of grace and love.

            For who knows how long, in India they had a social system in place known as the Caste System.  This was a hierarchy of people based on what jobs they had.  The highest position in the Caste System was known as the Brahmans.  The Brahmans were the intellectuals: the priests, the poets, the professors.  The lowest position in the Caste System was known as the Dalits, with many positions in between the Brahmans and the Dalits.  The Dalits performed the lowest of service jobs in the country.  These were the people that cleaned up after animals, dug sewage ditches, and burnt the bodies of the deceased.  The Dalits were better known by their common name, the “Untouchables.”

            The Caste System kept you in your place.  You didn’t move up a division and you didn’t move down.  If your father was a Brahmin, you would be a Brahmin.  And so would your mother and your spouse, because you didn’t marry outside of your caste.

            The Caste System in India, which I am told still exists in some areas, is not an example of racism.  It is an example of classism.  It was discrimination based on your level of income.  And by looking at our scripture for this morning, we can see that classism is not something that the Indians invented.  This is something that has been going on since at least Jesus’ day, and I would bet for a long time before that.

            Classism was not only a problem in the church when people came together for worship, classism was a problem anytime people got together.  In 1^st Corinthians 11, Paul writes to the church about a problem that he has heard about in how they get together for meals.  It seems like there are some that are coming early and eating and drinking more than their fair share and leaving some to go hungry.  What Paul seems to be suggesting is that it is the rich and the powerful that are coming early and eating all of the food, even though they have plenty to eat at home.  And then it is the poor that are left to go hungry because they don’t have anything to eat at home; this was their opportunity to eat and the rich folks were gluttonous, consuming all the food and drink.

            So while James uses the example of giving the best seat to those who are rich, his point is that we are to treat everyone as equals.  Money, power, fame, fortune…all of these things are temporary and without value in the kingdom of God.  Each person has the same value in the eyes of God and we saw that in the ministry of Jesus.  Young and old, rich and poor, sick or healthy, he loved them all equally and still does today. 

            I think we do a pretty good job of welcoming people to this church that might be different from ourselves.  But, like in most things, we can also probably do better.  Myself included.  I know that I have a certain kind of person that I have idealized as coming to this church.  I would like to see more people in their 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s with families.  And when we have someone that fits this mold walk into the church, I feel a little nervous because I want to make a good impression on them.  I want them to like me and I want them to like this church.  I want them to keep coming back.  So when a retired person comes to visit, do I give them the same welcome as I might give a young family?  Do I invite them to my home for lunch or to get together sometime just to hang out?  Probably not.  And that is a problem.

            I think it is clear that we tend to spend time with people in our own social-economic class and close to our own age.  Most of my friends are middle class, 25-40 year olds.  And there is nothing wrong with having friends that are like you.  Of course you are going to have friends that are like you, you must have common interests, otherwise conversations sure are difficult.  You can only talk about the weather for so long, my friends. 

The problem is when my friends are exclusively people just like me; when I don’t reach out and share the love of Christ with people of every race, color, creed, and social-economic class.  How many times have I invited a person living in poverty into my home?  How many times have I had them over for a cookout? 

            I know the excuses; I know them because I have used them myself.  We don’t invite people of a lower social status than us into our homes because we won’t have anything to talk about.  It is difficult to connect with some people when you don’t have anything in common.  Or maybe it is scary to have someone into your home and see your valuable possessions.  There is a fear that they might steal from you.  But these excuses are examples of classism today.  Judging people based on their socio-economic position. 

            But look at Jesus.  Jesus had every opportunity to hang out with the richest and most powerful people of his time.  And he did, to some extent.  He did spend time in the homes of Pharisees and he did spend time with Scribes.  But he also spent time with common folk like Mary and Martha, and he spent time with the poorest of the poor, with tax collectors and sinners.  I keep coming back to this strange group of men that Jesus spent time with every day.  There was a zealot that would have been a part of a group that wanted to fight the Romans and take back Jerusalem and there was a tax collector that worked for the Roman government.  There were fisherman who worked hard out on the sea, bringing in their catch, and there was a man that turned Jesus in to the authorities for some silver.  Some were richer than others.  Some were young, some were old.  Each had value to Jesus.  Jesus knew an important truth that we would all gain from hearing again: Each and every human life has equal value.

            There are people that get this.  I’ve mentioned Shane Claiborne a time or two.  Shane is cofounder of a Christian Community in one of the poorest sections of Philadelphia.  Shane owns very few things, dresses like a neo-hippie, makes his own clothes, and ministers to the poorest of the poor.  Every day he hears stories about people being mugged, beaten up, raped, and exploited.  And he doesn’t just listen to the stories and then go back to his safe home in a gated community.  He lives out that reality with those that are suffering.

            Here we have an educated white male, privileged for sure, choosing to live among the poorest of the poor.  Sounds kind of like something our God did in Jesus Christ, taking on human flesh and living among us.  And what in the world would make a person do such a thing?  Love, my friends, love.

            In verse 8, James quotes a verse that Jesus also thought had some importance for his followers.  Love your neighbors as yourself.  Jesus thought that this verse was so important that he put it as second in importance, only to loving God.

            And we all know that this is not always easy to do.  It is difficult to love the people we like and have things in common with, let alone people vastly different from ourselves.  But we have a decision to make.  As Shane Claiborne has said, “The most radical thing we do is choose to love each other… again and again.”  It is a choice that we must make continually.  We make the decision to love others every day.

            So I want to leave you with a few challenges for the week ahead.  The first challenge is to commit an act of radical love and generosity to someone that you normally wouldn’t spend time with.  And it doesn’t have to be a homeless person.  If you are a Republican, invite a Democrat over to your home for supper.  Give a ride to a person that you have met before and that you dislike.  Show that the love of God is not bound by any –ism.  Not classism, racism, or nationalism.

            My second challenge for you is to make sure that they know why you are tearing down the walls that have been built between you.  Make sure that they know that you are acting out of Christian love.  Don’t just invite them to go to church with you, offer to give them a ride.  Offer to take them out to eat afterward or better yet, invite them to your home.

            James begins our scripture for today by asking Christians if by their acts of favoritism they are showing the world that they believe in our glorious Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  God shows no signs of favoritism, Jesus shows no signs of favoritism.  As followers of Jesus Christ, we must not show any signs of favoritism, either.

Enacting Communities of Jubilee

Kevin Gasser

Staunton Mennonite Church

10/12/08

 

Leviticus 25:8-13; 39-42

 

8You shall count off seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the period of seven weeks of years gives forty-nine years. 9Then you shall have the trumpet sounded loud; on the tenth day of the seventh month—on the day of atonement—you shall have the trumpet sounded throughout all your land. 10And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family. 11That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you: you shall not sow, or reap the aftergrowth, or harvest the unpruned vines. 12For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you: you shall eat only what the field itself produces. 13In this year of jubilee you shall return, every one of you, to your property.

 

39If any who are dependent on you become so impoverished that they sell themselves to you, you shall not make them serve as slaves. 40They shall remain with you as hired or bound laborers. They shall serve with you until the year of the jubilee. 41Then they and their children with them shall be free from your authority; they shall go back to their own family and return to their ancestral property. 42For they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves are sold.

 

            A vacuum salesman, desperate to make a sale, approaches the last house on the block.  He had a plan: he had a garbage bag of dirt, he would dump it on the carpet, and he would show how powerful his vacuum is.

            He rings the doorbell, springs through the door and begins dumping the dirt on the floor.  And he proclaims proudly to the woman, “If my vacuum can’t clean this up, I will eat it up!”

            The woman looks at the man and she says, “Sonny, if I had the money to buy your vacuum, I would have paid my electric bill before they cut it off.  Now would you prefer a spoon or a fork?”

            But seriously, poverty isn’t a laughing matter.  And unfortunately, with all of the economic turmoil in our nation today, we are going to see more and more of it.  But it doesn’t have to be that way, and I think we have the answer to poverty: Jubilee.  Today I want to look at the scripture above and see how we can help our economic condition by enacting communities of Jubilee.

            Our scripture for today comes from Leviticus (When was the last time you heard a sermon from Leviticus?).  Leviticus is chock-full of holiness codes, purity laws, and ritual observances of holy days, many of which we as 21^st century Christians do not observe.  Included in that list of things we don’t observe is today’s scripture on the Year of Jubilee.

            Leading up to our scripture in verses 1-8, we find the instructions given to Moses for the Sabbatical Year.  After entering into the Promised Land, the Israelites were to plant and harvest for a period of six years.  Then in the seventh year the land was to be left fallow meaning you don’t plant anything.  And the reason for this is given in verse 4 when we find that this is meant as a time of rest for the land.

            This primitive nation of Israel didn’t know about fertilizers, this primitive nation didn’t know about checking the soil pH, this primitive nation didn’t know about the cation exchange capacity of the soil.  So in order to prevent the soil from becoming depleted, God gave a year of rest for the land.  God instituted the Sabbatical Year.

            So if the Sabbatical Year was instituted for the well-being of the land, the year of Jubilee was instituted for the people.  Our scripture tells us that the Israelites are to count off seven times seven years, or 49 years.  And then on the 50^thyear, on Yom Kippur, the trumpet will be sounded loudly announcing the beginning of the year of Jubilee.  There are three aspects of the year of Jubilee that I would like to bring your attention to: The cancelling of all debts, returning the land to the original owners and releasing the indentured servants.

            The Israelites didn’t live in a perfect society.  There were some people who were rich and there were some who were poor, with most people falling somewhere in between.  When someone runs out of money and their back is against the wall you have to do what you have to do to put food on the table.  So usually the first thing to do is to take out an operating loan, thinking, “All I have to do is get by until harvest.  Then we will be okay.”

But harvest comes and harvest goes, and you are still without enough money to support your family.  You sell your things.  What good is a possession if you are not around to enjoy it?  But it isn’t enough. So in times of extreme poverty, the Israelites would sell something that would bring a good price; something that was only available in a limited quantity.  They would sell the land that was given to them upon entering into the Promised Land. 

            But what if poverty continued to strike your family after you sold all of your land?  Where are you to get food from if you don’t have land to grow it on or money to buy food?  In this case an Israelite would become a servant to land owners, often working in the fields that they themselves had once owned.  They worked for food or for a modest wage.  They worked for others until the Year of Jubilee.

            When that 50^th year came around, all debt was erased, all servants were released, and all land was returned to the original owners.  If you had made some financial mistakes in your past, this was a chance for you to start all over again.  If you had fallen victim to famine or flood, drought or locust, you could have the chance to get your feet back under yourself.  Your family wouldn’t have to pay for your mistakes or bad fortune for generations to come.  And I think we have seen how poverty breeds poverty generation after generation.  If you are poor, your children are likely to be poor because you can’t afford education; you can’t pass on land and property.  Poverty is a binding chain that keeps the poor poor.  The Year of Jubilee was meant to be a way to break those binding chains of poverty through the forgiveness of debt, return of land to the original owners, and the release of indentured servants.

            If you look in my backyard, it is clear to see that one object dominates the landscape: our big pin oak tree.  It is tall; it is taller than our house.  It is strong having survived years of drought and years of flooding; it has survived extreme heat and it has survived extreme cold.  It has been around for some time and it would take a lot to kill such a strong tree.

            But this week I did something to weaken that tree, to take away from some of its dominance.  I pruned its branches.  I got out my 6’ step ladder and I cut all of the branches that I could reach from the ladder.  I even climbed on the top step of my step ladder, you know the one that says “Do not stand on or above this step” and trimmed that tree real well.  The reason for pruning the tree is because I wanted to reduce the dominance of this mighty oak.

            Because of the size, width, and all-around healthy nature of this tree, it produces a large number of long branches with many, many leaves.  These leaves help the tree to collect sunrays and convert the rays into energy that will be used for future growth and sustainability for the tree.  But because there were so many branches and leaves, other plants were not getting the sunlight that they needed.  The mighty, powerful, dominant oak tree was shading the grass and it cast a big shadow over my future garden.  So I asked the mighty oak to give up some of her dominance for the sake of the weaker plants attempting to grow in her shadow.

            It seems to be the case that the strong, the powerful, and the mighty always get what they need.  Just like my tree is acquiring all of the sunlight that it needs, the strong, powerful, and mighty people in our society always find a way to have food, shelter, water, and clothing.  But sometimes the powerful in our society take more than they need, not leaving enough for the poor, the weak, and the small. 

And we don’t even think about it.  We are just out sunning ourselves and we notice the brown patches of grass developing below us.  “Poor things” we think to ourselves, not realizing that, perhaps, we are a part of the problem.  It couldn’t be that CEO’s are making billions while their employees are struggling to get by while earning minimum wage, could it?  Maybe it is time that we cut back a bit and make sure that there is enough for everyone.

I spend two days at the church each week keeping office hours.  I am there to be available if anyone needs to drop in and talk, ask questions, and to work on various church-related tasks.  But I have to admit, something about being here all alone scares me as of lately.  Now it isn’t that I am afraid of being here alone just because I am alone.  It is because I know that if the phone rings, I am going to be the one who has to answer it.  And there are two kinds of phone calls that I get on the church phone.  I get telemarketers calling trying to sell me something, and I get the phone calls requesting financial assistance.

            Just this past Monday I was sitting in the church when the phone rang.  Telemarketer or a request for money?  I answer the phone and I hear yet another sad story from a woman whose family member had stolen her wallet and she needed $25.00 for her electric bill or it would be turned off.  We went through the normal procedure, I asked if she had contacted the local relief agencies, checked here and checked there, and finally I did pay her electric bill.

            I went to sit down and get back to work and just as my hands were reaching for the keyboard of my computer, the phone rang again.  Telemarketer or a request for money?  I answer the phone and I hear a story from a woman who had recently lost her job and the engine in her car had blown up.  I explained to her how we had just helped someone financially and that we couldn’t help her.  “We are a small congregation” I explained to her “and we just can’t help everyone that is looking for assistance.”  She talked with me for a few more minutes and she thanked me for listening.  I told her I would be praying for her and we both hung up our phones, likely to never speak again.

            That is hard for me to do.  It is hard to tell someone else that I don’t have any money to spare for them.  It is hard…because I do.  I could live on less and give more.  But when is it enough?  When have we given enough and when should we give more?  And is giving money to the poor really the answer?  Maybe we are asking the wrong questions.  Maybe we need to ask, How can we break the cycle of poverty?  How can we break the chains that bind the poor?

I expect this winter to be a busy one for our telephone here at Staunton Mennonite Church.  I assume that the frequency of phone calls requesting financial help is only going to increase with the high unemployment rate and high heating fuel costs.  And I wish we could just come to a year of Jubilee and set everything back to zero, even the playing field, erase all debt, release the land and the servants.  I wish that I could proclaim a world-wide Jubilee, but I know that I do not have the authority to do so.  But what I can do is I can live out Jubilee and enact communities of Jubilee.  I can stop being part of the problem and start being a part of the solution.

I love Jesus’ first sermon in his home town of Nazareth where he reads from Isaiah: “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).  It has been noted by many scholars that the year of Jubilee was rarely (if ever) actually practiced.  By the first century when Jesus lived, it would have been merely a good idea, but a non-viable option.  The year of Jubilee was not being practiced.

But Jesus comes along and he enacts a community of Jubilee.  Those that follow him will bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, heal the blind, set the oppressed free, and proclaim the Lord’s favor.  And we as the church today must continue in this ministry.  We must continue to be communities of Jubilee.

            Let’s return briefly to my backyard and the work that I did on the tree.  You might be wondering, What is Kevin going to do with all of those branches that he cut off the pin oak tree?  Well, I started a pile of branches where they will dry down and I hope to break them into pieces of three foot long or less.  Why three foot long?  So that they will fit into my compost bin.  You see, not only did I cut the branches off the tree to allow the grass and my garden to receive adequate sunlight, I will be able to take some of the nutrients that the tree has been storing up and give that to the very soil that so desperately needs those nutrients.  The dominating pin oak has not only stopped being a hindrance to the weaker plants below from receiving the needed nutrients, she has now donated some of her stored reserves to the garden that has not received much in the last number of years.

I have come to appreciate the work of Mennonite Central Committee, or MCC, over the last number of years.  MCC is the relief organization of Mennonite Church USA.  But MCC doesn’t just send food to the hungry or money to the poor.  They teach people sustainable agricultural practices, help them to establish small business including artisan work that is sold in the United States at the various Ten Thousand Villages stores.  MCC doesn’t just provide a handout, it helps to transform lives, all in the name of Christ.

            Last weekend many of us helped to contribute in some way to the MCC Relief Sale.  Some of us bought donuts, some donated items, and more donated their time.  Some did all of the above.  The Relief Sale this year raised over $310,000, which will make a sizable donation to MCC after expenses are paid.

            The thing that impresses me the most about the money raised this year for MCC is that we are in a time of economic turmoil.  The stock market is in the gutter, sub-prime mortgage lending has come back to bite us, economic bailout proposals of $700 billion haunt the minds of financial advisors world-wide.  Nobody knows what tomorrow will hold, but right now it doesn’t look too good.  And those of us that have been accumulating wealth were willing to give $310,000 to help others break the chains of poverty.  Rather than being a part of the problem, we are trying to be a part of the solution.

            We need to give those who have little reason to hope, whether that is in our own neighborhood or halfway around the globe.  And I am not saying that we pay the way for people who choose not to work, but we must help those that cannot make enough to earn a decent living.  There are people that are working, but still cannot afford basic necessities.  We call these people the “Working Poor” and there are 12.2 million people in the United States that fit this category.

            The working poor, the mentally and physically handicapped, those struggling to find work, these are the people that need economic bailout, they are the ones that need Jubilee.  Jubilee was put in place to free people from their financial mistakes and the financial mistakes of their forbearers.  I don’t pretend to know much about economics, but I hope that as we seek economic stability in this nation, that we will remember to help those who can’t help themselves; again, whether that is in our neighborhood or halfway around the world.     

            Jubilee, a time to restore equality, a time for men and women to escape enslavement, and a time for every family to gain their fair share of land.  Maybe we have been like the pin oak tree in my backyard.  Maybe we have grown strong and tall over the years, not realizing that we were doing so at the expense of those that are small and weak.  Maybe we have been blocking the Son-light from reaching those below us.  Maybe it is time that we trim back our branches and allow others to receive the nutrients that they so desperately need.  Maybe we need to give some of what we have accumulated to those that have nothing.  Maybe it is time for another Jubilee.

             Let us be the church, let us be a community that lives out Jubilee.  For the Spirit of the Lord is upon us and has anointed us to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, and bring sight to the blind.  We are to set the oppressed free and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.  May it be so.