jubilee

This Saturday was that rare day, a double sabbath.

Normally in the Jewish calendar, great care is taken to prevent one occasion from blurring into another, and to keep anything from superseding the Sabbath. Only one day trumps that one, and it’s the day of atonement: Yom Kippur.

(Biblically, it’s the one day a year someone entered the holiest of holy spots in the Temple. His mission: make a sin-canceling sacrifice good for the whole nation. It may have been a one-man mission, but it called a nation-wide halt. Time to afflict one’s soul. To fast and feel weak. To bow low. To repent).

I have never heard a quieter day in Jerusalem: as soon as I stepped outside, I instinctively wanted to whisper.

No traffic noise. No buses, taxis, horns. (I saw perhaps a dozen cars in half an afternoon). Here and there, bicyclists and roller-bladers, and even little children enjoyed the empty streets, or white-clad folks headed to their prayers, but most people were at home or in synagogue — praying, fasting (no water, even!), and reading the book of Jonah.

(Jonah: the guy who was sadder about losing his shade than the possible deaths of a whole city-full of fasting, God-fearing, fully repentant foes).

God knows we need reminders to live out mercy — not metaphorically, but in fact.

It used to be that once each fifty years this fast began the jubilee, the year when slaves were loosed, and families returned to their homes. Back then, they used a trumpet to:

Proclaim Liberty! throughout the land…

(Yes, that’s the verse on the Liberty Bell in America — and on its twin, hung here in Liberty Bell Park).

Like so much God does, it’s a paradox, this day. It’s a solemn, awe-some sabbath, a joyous, fruitful fast.

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of His inheritance? He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us; He will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.

He brings our sin to light — to bury it. He shows up our bondage, before setting us free.

Imagine, for a moment, that you’re sitting in a first-century synagogue on an ordinary Sabbath day. The guest speaker turns to Isaiah 61, and this is what he reads:

ruach adonai יהוה alai
The Spirit of the Lord GOD is on me.

ya’an mashach יהוה oti
Here’s why the LORD has anointed me:

levaser anavim
to announce news to the meek!

shlachani lechabosh lenishbrei-lev
He’s sent me to bind up the broken-of-heart,

likro lishvuyim dror
to call to the captives: “Liberty!”

vela’asurim pkach-koach
and to the bound, “Dungeon-opening!”

likro shnat ratson le יהוה
To proclaim the year of the favor of the LORD