The London Institute for Contemporary Christianity

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Community and holiness (3/4) | Justice matters

The fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; do not sow and do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the untended vines. For it is a jubilee and is to be holy for you; eat only what is taken directly from the fields. In this Year of Jubilee everyone is to return to their own property.

LEVITICUS 25:11–13

Leviticus tends to have a bad press, because of its many laws and harsh sentences. Yet one of its best-known passages is the exact opposite: the Jubilee chapter, which proclaims that every fiftieth year is a year of freedom and release, when the slate is wiped clean and everyone can get a new start. It is a year of Sabbath and rest for people, animals, and land, and resetting community relationships to reflect God’s love, grace, and desire to see people, animals, and land flourish.

Leviticus 25 is a cornerstone of Christian thinking about social justice, because it offers a vision for a society where no-one can amass riches and privilege over generations, and no-one can pass on injustice and disadvantage down generation after generation.

It does not say that working hard and doing well are wrong; the results of hard work are a fair and generous blessing. And yet it also recognises that hard work does not always pay, that bad things happen, through random events, misfortune, or sin and brokenness, and that amassing riches can happen at the expense of the welfare of others.

Leviticus 25 suggests that individuals do not flourish unless the community as a whole flourishes, in harmony with their environment, and provides mechanisms to reset the clock of what gets distorted over time. The chapter opens with the Sabbath. The land, the animals, and the people are given a sabbath year as an antidote against exploitation, overuse of resources, and desperate activism based on anxiety and competition for resources.

The Sabbath year proclaims that human beings are more than work or economics; that work has its proper place, but not a definitive, overarching place. It also proclaims that having land and food (what is needed to survive in an agrarian society) should not depend on merit, hard work, or chance, but should be shared equitably simply because human beings, animals, and land are precious in God’s sight.

The Jubilee is unlikely to have ever been practiced, but its vision for a holy community in an imperfect world endures. A holy community in the real world will suffer the distorting effects of sin, chance, and brokenness, yet be aware of its need to acknowledge its own shortfalls and distortions, and seek to put them right.

Injustice on a grand scale can feel impossible to solve; yet small choices make a difference: donating to local foodbanks, befriending refugees, and voting responsibly for a better world.

Revd Dr Isabelle Hamley
Isabelle is Principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge 

How could the vision of Leviticus 25 shape the way in which you engage with your local community and its practical needs?

 

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