HOLDING LIFE WITH AN OPEN PALM

Leviticus 24:1-25:46; Mark 10:13-31; Psalm 44:9-26; Proverbs 10:20-21

“Then on the Day of Atonement in the fiftieth year, blow the ram’s horn loud and long throughout the land. Set this year apart as holy, a time to proclaim freedom throughout the land for all who live there. It will be a jubilee year for you, when each of you may return to the land that belonged to your ancestors and return to your own clan…. The land must never be sold on a permanent basis, for the land belongs to me. You are only foreigners and tenant farmers working for me.”

 “Looking at the man, Jesus felt genuine love for him. ‘There is still one thing you haven’t done,’ he told him. ‘Go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’ At this, the man’s face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.”

“The words of the godly encourage many, but fools are destroyed by their lack of common sense.”

What is there to learn from the Year of Jubilee?  It seems so arcane, so unfair, so impractical for everything to return to its original owner after fifty years.  Once I’ve invested that long in a place, I’ve got serious sweat equity.  Why should anyone have the right to benefit from my hard work, to reap where they haven’t sown, to coin a phrase?  Where’s the motivation to work at all, if I just have to give it away?  Hey, once I’ve lived and worked on some place fifty years, by God, it’s mine!

“No,” says God.  “It’s mine. Always has been, always will be.  You’re just a tenant farmer….” At this, the man’s face fell, and he went away sad, for he thought he had many possessions.  The Lord showed him how self-centered and selfish he really was, and he was ashamed….

There is nothing like the idea of permanent ownership to make us forget all about the fundamentals of sharing and loving and caring for others.  The related sense of entitlement, the claims of personal rights to possess and control exclusively, are subtle and seductive.  We honestly don’t mean to be selfish.  But when the Lord comes and says give it all back, we get mighty protective of “our” turf.  It’s only natural.  We’re just protecting what we think is ours, what we worked for, what we think we’ve earned.  We forget that all good gifts come from heaven. 

Especially for anyone who has benefitted from capitalism, finding out we really don’t own what we thought we owned is bitter medicine indeed.  We might, in fact, lose our motivation to improve things once we figure out there isn’t really much in it for us at the end of the day.  But on the other hand, if we cannot see and celebrate that we are working for Christ, if we are not dedicated to that end from the beginning, our motivation is misplaced anyway. God isn’t requiring socialism here. He’s mandating monotheism.  He knows that when we give anything greater import than Him, when we work for anything other than Him, we are headed down a very rough road.  Because no other priority is as worthwhile, as eternally important, as working for the whole Kingdom of God. 

The Lord knows we cannot serve God and money, even if we won’t acknowledge that limitation ourselves. So, every fifty years, He gave the Israelites a lesson in forced generosity.  He taught them to hold onto life with an open palm.  I’d like to think at least some of them even understood the greater lesson:  we’re all going back home sometime.  When we get there, no less than the Creator Himself plans to overwhelm us with blessings.  We will all reap where we have not sown.  We will all benefit from Another’s work.  It will be far better than anything we might have thought we owned here. 

Just maybe, if I keep that in mind, I will be a little less inclined to claim exclusive ownership, and a little more willing to share what was never really mine in the first place.