Jubilee! (or… On the Corner of Sumner and Monroe)

The house is empty.  That is, the house is ALMOST empty.  I still have a few items I have to put on the curb and some personal belongings still to throw into the car at the last minute.  It’s weird camping out on the floor of your own home.  Suddenly I’m well aware that the place that was the loving refuge to my family over the last year really is just a century old museum of empty rooms and hollow chambers.

It went from a house, to a home and back to just a house again.

The family has gone ahead to that land of our new adventure.  There are schools to enroll in, new house to rent and jobs to start.  I stayed behind to make sure all our worldly belongings get sorted between the truck, the trash or the happy trails.  Soon, I too will be off on this new adventure.

First, however, I want to take a moment to dwell on the end of my present adventure.

Just over a year ago I stepped down from my last position.  My final paycheck took me through the middle of September.  Beyond that was a mystery, a time of trust, and no small amount of fear.  My last paycheck took me right up the the day of Rosh Hosannah, the Jewish new year.

It was the seventh year of the Jewish cycle; a year known as the Shmita.  It was a year known as the Jubilee.  Even more so, it was the seventh seven year.  A powerful date.

“You are also to count off seven sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years, so that you have the time of the seven sabbaths of years, namely, forty-nine years. ‘You shall then sound a ram’s horn abroad on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the day of atonement you shall sound a horn all through your land. ‘You shall thus consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim a release through the land to all its inhabitants It shall be a jubilee for you, and each of you shall return to his own property, and each of you shall return to his family.”  Leviticus 25:8-10

Jubilee is the Sabbath of years.  It is a year where the fields you work on so hard and so long are to lay fallow.  All the produce that grows on it without the labor of man or woman is to be enjoyed by any and all.  For that year it is not your land, but for the stranger and the alien of the land to eat from.  The land belongs to God and belongs to all.

The debts you have accrued and have crushed you under their weight are to be forgiven.  In the same way, the debt of sin you owe is to be atoned for as you seek repentance during the following ten days of awe.  It is a time of repentance, release, and rejoicing.

It is a year to draw close to God.  A year to set your minds on things beyond the stress of your day to day life.  A year to look higher, to hope harder and to trust deeper.

It is the year that the slaves go free.  All that brings a person into a lowly state of servitude is to be forgiven and released.  All men and women stand as they are before God.

It is a season of anointing as we follow the leading of Christ when he quoted the book of Isaiah in the presence of the people;

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Luke 4:18-19

For a year I feared that all the work I have done in my fields have been lost.  I feared that I would be a slave to my own angsts, my own faults, and my own weaknesses forever.  I feared the future and the past and at times lost sight of the present.

For a year I sat with my God as we talked intimately about life.  I read more than I thought I would ever read.  I though deeper than I have ever knew I could.  I began learning what it means to live in repentance, release, and rejoicing.  That old house became a home (although chilly in the winter, and sweltering in the summer) as my family sat around the dinner table being a family.  The city became a refuge as my friends became my family.  I noticed things deep inside me began to change.  Circumstances that before would have sent me packing into my field of rejection didn’t have the same impact on me as they once had.  It was a time of freedom.  It was a time of the Lord’s favor.

It was a time to live.

The truck is all packed now, and our home has become just a simple house once again.  This evening begins another Rosh Hosannah, and the end of another year of Jubilee.  Tomorrow I shall walk down Monroe Ave and back onto Sumner Park one last time as the street that I live on.  Tomorrow they come to haul the trailer away with all our earthy possessions to a new house that shall become a new home and a new adventure.  Rosh Hosannah will begin the ten days of Awe, which shall usher in the Day of Atonement, and a new adventure shall begin.  A new city.  A new job.  New friends. A return to work in the field of my God.

But all that happens tomorrow.

Today, I will enjoy one more day of Jubilee!

“Shana Tova! May your name be inscribed in the Book of Life”