National Association of Episcopal Schools 50^th Anniversary

20 November 2014

Marriott, Anaheim, CA

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori

Presiding Bishop and Primate

The Episcopal Church

In 1998 I was living and working in Oregon, and I vividly recall Bishop Ladehoff coming back from the Lambeth Conference[1] and talking to everybody about jubilee and world debt. I was astounded, for he insisted that if all the nations of the world contributed a tiny percentage of their annual income (0.7%), we could solve the worst of the world’s poverty.

This was in the lead-up to the move for major third world debt relief in the year 2000. That debt forgiveness, and the responses to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, have brought major strides toward eliminating the world’s worst poverty.[2]

That movement grew out of the tradition we heard in Leviticus. I’m very glad we read it today, for it doesn’t appear anywhere in our lectionaries – not in the three-year Sunday cycle or in the daily office readings. Yet it’s absolutely foundational to our understanding of justice and a world of peace. There is plenty of scholarly debate about whether and to what extent Jubilee was fully practiced in ancient Israel, but the theological foundations are rock-solid. If Israel worshiped the God who created all that is, and understood that God was fundamentally the Lord or “owner” of creation, then human beings could not claim ultimate ownership of anything; their responsibility had to be as stewards and servants of God and God’s creation. That reality continues to vex all the children of Abraham.

The jubilee year’s plan for major debt relief, the manumission of debt slaves, and the charge to leave the land fallow, all reflect the command to rest on the seventh day of the week. All creation is meant to emulate its creator, and enjoy rest. No part of creation – human beings, animals, or the land itself – should be worked to death. Sabbath rest is a necessary corollary to the creative process. In many ways, the destructive nature of abject poverty is the inability to rest, reflect, and find creative and re-creative responses. That kind of poverty is abetted by those who purport to own the labor, land, and resources of this world – and a relentless push to continue expanding work and production. Sabbath rest also applies to the owning class, for rest and reflection is meant to elicit gratitude and responses of justice to the inequity around us and among us. The meaning of life is not found in getting and doing, but in loving – loving God, loving self, and loving neighbor.

Perhaps you heard about the young couple in Pakistan who were tortured and murdered last week.[3] The first news out said it was in response to blasphemy, for burning pages of the Quran. The deeper story eventually named the vindictiveness of a brick-factory owner who held a debt this couple owed. It was the kind of debt that gets frequently renewed – by small farmers, small business operators, and the working poor everywhere, who can never seem to get ahead and out of debt. When this couple said they weren’t able to pay, thugs beat and tortured them and threw them bodily into the brick kiln. The initial news reports were closer to the truth than anyone wants to admit. It is indeed blasphemy to treat human beings as chattel, for the image of God can never be owned. The Jubilee system was designed to fix limits on debt slavery, putting the entire nation on notice that after 7 years, everyone who had committed his or her labor in payment of a debt had to be set free and allowed to go home. Land couldn’t be permanently alienated, either. Its use could be controlled, but come the seventh year all bets and commitments were off.

When Jesus goes home to Nazareth and reads Isaiah in the synagogue, that same message is being proclaimed. ‘I’ve come to set the prisoners free,’ he says, ‘and today you’ve seen the start of a new Jubilee year!’ We’re still wrestling with it. Bankruptcy courts in the US may have discharged debts of individuals caught in the cycle of ever-increasing loan renewal, but a number of banks are still reporting those supposedly forgiven debts to credit raters, which keeps former debtors in thrall.[4] It parallels the situation of freedmen during the era of fugitive slave laws – the law might say you were free, but woe betide you if somebody caught you and took you across the border. In the world’s political systems, forgiveness or freedom may be a nice concept, but it isn’t always real. Jubilee, however, means what it says – the Origin of All That Is intends freedom for all, freedom that includes rest and creativity that serve to increase life, rather than slavery and indebtedness that diminish it.

What does this have to do with Episcopal schools? Certainly it’s about the vocation to teach the underlying biblical concepts of justice. It must also mean teaching critical thinking skills and an understanding that none of us can be truly independent of others and the larger creation. We are all the keepers and caretakers of our brothers and sisters, as we also are the charge of our siblings. None of us has life in himself, and none of us becomes her own master when she dies.[5] If one suffers, ultimately we all do, and if one rejoices in jubilee, we are all a little freer as a result. And perhaps at an even deeper level, this means schools should be forming a habit of life that understands the creative blessing of rest. That may be particularly pertinent in places of striving after academic excellence. For as Isaiah also said, “it is in returning and rest we shall be saved.”[6]

Creativity is the most profound way in which human beings reflect the image of God. We can say something similar about the other parts of creation – they, too, reflects the image of the Creator when living as they were created to do – and it is not possible without rest. Giving glory to God is sharing in the gift that has been given in creation. Human beings have the capacity to create more of life – not just by reproduction, but by making life more abundant, more free to respond in ways that reflect its origin. Rest is essential to that capacity – letting go, getting out of 24/7 production mode, delighting in the glory of the world around us, setting ourselves and others free.

How do teachers, administrators, chaplains and students together build a community that understands the need for that kind of rest and freedom? It isn’t about abandoning structure and deadlines. It is about finding a balance. I had a junior high algebra teacher who used to say, “vacations are for doing what you don’t normally do.” In his case, it meant that if you normally “shined on” your algebra homework, then get it done before you come back from vacation.

Those times of going aside, or up the mountain to pray like Jesus did, of stepping out of the normal routine, of being playful, and delighting in life and the world around – those shape and feed and give lively energy to the rest of life. They honor the need for diversity in how we spend our time and focus our attention.

So perhaps the challenge of this jubilee year is to find ways to set the debts aside, to let the land be free and the classrooms as well. Maybe you could dig up the lawn and plant vegetables instead of holding gym class. Or take a classroom to the beach to discover the physics of waves and sand. Maybe it looks like going across town to write poetry with nursing home residents, or playing with the children in a domestic violence shelter. It might mean looking carefully for the drudgery in your school, and finding ways of ending it.

Where will you celebrate jubilee this year? How will you become an outward and visible sign of holy rest and creative freedom?

[1] A gathering of all the bishops in the Anglican Communion, called by the Archbishop of Canterbury, that has been held about every 10 years since 1867

[2] http://www.cgdev.org/page/mdg-progress-index-gauging-country-level-achievements http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/05/world/asia/pakistani-christian-couple-accused-of-blasphemy-is-killed-by-angry-mob.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar%2C%7B%221%22%3A%22RI%3A7%22%7D

[4] http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/debts-canceled-by-bankruptcy-still-mar-consumer-credit-scores/?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Aw%2C%7B%221%22%3A%22RI%3A6%22%7D

[5] “Burial of the Dead,” Book of Common Prayer p 491

[6] Isaiah 30:15