Our Year of Jubilee - 10 years later

Our Year of Jubilee 

The following article was written in Fall 2016 for our 50th anniversary celebration. I still think it’s wild that our birthday is in “THE” Book, and I still give thanks for my Creator family. Happy 60th!                                                    Peace, Jenny

Happy Birthday, Creator!  

Can you hear it? It is the horn of a ram sounding our Jubilee. In ancient Israel, the “Year of Jubilee” was a special observance of the 50th year in the life of a congregation. The word "jubilee" in the Old Testament is from the Hebrew word "yobel" or yovel," meaning "a ram's horn, trumpet" or "coronet." If someone announced the Jubilee, he would do so by blowing a trumpet and all of the congregation of Israel would be able to hear it. 

When the trumpet sounded on the fiftieth year, and specifically on the Day of Atonement, liberty would be proclaimed "throughout the land to all its inhabitants," and then all of the property that had been taken by others for unpaid debts would have to be returned to the original families (clans). In that year, there would be no reaping or planting or gathering of the crops, for it was to be "holy to" the nation Israel and everyone could "eat the produce of the field." What a celebration that must have been! Everyone that had been indebted was then released from their debt and able to start over again by having their land returned to them.* 

You may not know it. I certainly didn't until I went online to research the biblical concept of the Jubilee. But here is the wild thing, Creator. We celebrated the Jubilee. We did. Without even knowing it. When your faithful 50th anniversary committee met a year ago to plan the events of this year, we missed one date. A very important date. Kathy Barclay found it by chance, digging through shoe boxes of old photos that would become the BEAUTIFUL scrapbooks we enjoyed on October 9th. That was the crowning date we had been so focused on: October 9th: The date 50 years ago when the Bishop of Virginia first visited Creator and celebrated the first Confirmation. 

How handy (thank you, God) that this momentous anniversary was kind enough to fall again on a Sunday so that we could come to worship and mark it–with what? A homecoming–a call to the people far and wide to relinquish property, to free debts, and to return to one's own family. The crazy thing is, we were working so hard for October 9th as our Bishop's visit that we missed the date Kathy discovered in a faded, mimeographed service leaflet: the very FIRST worship held at Creator. Ever. July the 10th, 1966. 

How handy (thank you, God) that such a nearly forgotten anniversary also fell on a Sunday this year, so that we could observe it as a gathered Body. But we worship an awesome God, a Creator God–a God who can bring life out of dust and meaning out of chaos, and do you know what? The lonely little July date was our church's "real" birthday because it is the very first Sunday 50 years ago that our people gathered together in his name. 

More amazing still, this very date finds a precedent in holy scripture itself. As in, our date is in the book! As Leviticus 25:8-12 instructs,  "You shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall give you forty-nine years. Then you shall sound the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month. On the Day of Atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land. And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you…”

The “tenth day of the seventh month” ??? July 10th, 2016? We did that! Our 50th year celebration is in the BIBLE! As I recall it was birthday cake, piñata, and a ring toss--regrettably no ram's horn-- but we gathered, we celebrated, we sang praises and we gave thanks for five decades of God's providence and mercy. 

This past year has given us much to celebrate. We began in fellowship, enjoying a lovely spaghetti supper, and we will end gathered around the manger once again. In between were a bus trip, ball game, concert, homecomings. Ironically--(thank you, God) the Christian year "ends" with its very own beginning: just at that point where the harvest is gathered, the ground is shuttered tight and the air is bright with cold, just at that winding down of all things secular and seasonal comes the greatest beginning of all time: The Genesis of new life from the author of our salvation. And so the year ends with newborn life (IS there anything on the planet more hope-filled than the birth of a baby?) and the great pull to humanity to look up and understand so that we can come to worship and adore the only thing that ever mattered and ever will. 

Of course we can see what Jubilee means to us. Spiritually speaking, we have been freed from sin. Property which was rightfully God's (YOU, precious one) is being freed from family misery or Black Friday shopping or health issues or financial issues or any of the many modern grinds that grip our hearts and vie for that hold that only our God should like to have, freed back into the open arms of your Creator God. In our church body, friends we have lost are returning, new friends are finding home here as all "property" or claim on property has been released such that we are One Body in Christ. 

Indeed, the Jubilee year contains many of the pictures of our salvation. Just as the land, the people, and all the property was released, so we too have been released from a debt that we could not pay (our sins). We were once slaves to sin but now we've been released, once held captive but now set free. Christ's blood has atoned for our sins and satisfied the wrath of God that was due us (Romans 5) and as the land was given rest, we too have entered into His rest from all of our works for we could never save ourselves by our own works because salvation is fully a work of God. 
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"What then?" They asked of Jesus himself: "What must we do, to be doing the works of God?" Jesus answered them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent" (John 6:28-29).* And so we will, this Advent, pour our hearts into that believing. Live our lives into that believing. For we are in Jubilee. We are a people Holy unto Him. Thanks be to God. AMEN.

"And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you." Leviticus 25:10