Economics Week Two: Sabbath & Jubilee Economics in Early Israel

 1. Sabbath

·       Sabbath (Hebrew, shabat)

o  First encountered in Genesis 2:2-3.

o  Not just “an absence of work” – a day of rest and delight.

·       Next encountered in Exodus 16

o  God’s people are wandering in the desert.

o  Israel can’t imagine a life outside the imperial economy that had enslaved them (16:3)

QUESTION: 1 Peter says that followers of Jesus are a holy nation, a peculiar people who belong to God. And yet sometimes it can be hard for us to imagine life outside the imperial American economy. Why do you think that is? QUESTION: We read in Genesis 47:22 that Pharaoh took everyone’s land except the land belonging to the priests. It’s a reminder that the economic, political, and military powers often look to religion to confer blessings and legitimacy. Is that relevant to us today? If so, what would it look like for us to withdraw support from the parts of our system we find contrary to the laws of God’s household?

2. God teaches Israel three important lessons about God’s economy in the desert

·       The lesson of enough. (16:16-18)

QUESTION: How do we evaluate when we’ve reached “enough”? For example: How much money do we need in the bank? When are our homes nice enough? How full do our closets need to be? QUESTION: What does “enough” look like for Silverton Friends Church?

·       The lesson of redistribution. (16:19-20)

o  Wealth and power in Egypt were defined by surplus accumulation. (Genesis 47)

o  Though we’ll talk about this in a future week, it’s worth remembering that the first organized structure created by the new church in the book of Acts (Ch. 2 and 4) was a system of redistribution that ended economic need among followers of The Way.

·       The lesson of Sabbath faith and Sabbath discipline. (16:22-30)

o  God promises seven days of food for six days of work.

o  Sabbath isn’t some quaint Jewish custom.

·       It’s given before the Ten Commandments

·       It provides the basic rhythm of Israel’s public life for the people (Lev. 23)

·       If people didn’t practice Sabbath they would die (Ex. 31:12-17)

·       The people were instructed to keep a jarful of manna in front of the Covenant (Ex. 16:32)

3. Sabbath Year and Jubilee

·       Sabbath Year – every seventh year

o  “You shall let the land rest and lie fallow, so that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the wild animals may eat.” (Exodus 23: 10-11)

o  Debt release (Deuteronomy 15)

·       Jubilee Year (“Sabbath’s Sabbath”) - every 49^th/50^th year (Leviticus 25)

o  Upend structures of accumulation and social domination by:

§       Releasing each community member from debt (25:35-42)

§       Returning land to its original owners (25:13, 25-28)

§       Freeing slaves (25:47-55)

§       Reminding Israel that the land belongs to God (25:23) and that they are an exodus people who must never return to a system of slavery (25:42)

§       Messiah’s Jubilee! – The inaugural address of the Jubilee Kingdom (Isaiah 61 and Luke 4:14-20)

QUESTION: What do Sabbath and Jubilee remind us about the economy of “enough”? What are some other ways the economic aspects of Sabbath and Jubilee can be reimagined for today? QUESTION: In Genesis, Joseph was clearly set aside by God to save the lives of many thousands of people who were going to be hit hard by the famine. But the economic centralization he initiated also put in place the economic preconditions for Israel’s future slavery. This is a reminder that “economic miracles” (Meeks) have unintended consequences. Could this be one rationale behind the Jubilee…to systematically dismantle even the unintended consequences of economic miracles? QUESTION: In Leviticus 19 and 25, we also see laws like gleaning that allow the poor to have access to a field’s produce. For those of us who aren’t farmers, are there other ways we can practice gleaning in more metaphorical ways?

Opportunities for Action

·       Practice enough: Complete a gratitude and contentment survey.

·       Practice redistribution: Make a radical change in how you spend our money for seven days (for example, limiting your food budget, giving up coffee or eating out). Collect the money you save and donate it to local or global poverty relief.

·       Practice Sabbath: Take a true Sabbath day of rest and delight.

·       Other possible practices?

Next Week – Possible Topics

·       More on Sabbath and Jubilee

·       Biblical Economics in the Writings of the Prophets

·       Jesus and the Economy of Love

·       The Economy of Love in the Early Church

·       God’s Superabundant Economy

God's Economy - Week 1: Economics

SUMMARY AND PRACTICES

Yesterday in Forum class we began our series on Economics. Our word for “economy” comes from the Greek word oikonomia, meaning the “law or management of the household.” (That means the phrase “home economics” is redundant!) As Christians, we are members of God’s household. Over the next couple months we are going to explore what the laws of God’s household are. We are going to explore God’s economy.

We started our study yesterday by taking a moment to remind ourselves of the abundant fruitfulness of God’s creation. Walter Brueggemann has called creation a liturgy of God’s abundance. We celebrated that abundance by reading from Psalm 104, a poem many scholars believe is a kind of poetic commentary on the biblical creation story.

Then we began discussing how the economies of the world – in particular, capitalism and communism—have at their foundation “the myth of scarcity.” We looked closely at the second half of the story of Jacob, Joseph, and Joseph’s brothers in the book of Genesis. We saw how, after the people of Israel had settled in Egypt under Joseph’s care, a severe famine came on the land. We saw how over the course of three years all the people of Egypt, their livestock, and their land became part-and-parcel of Pharaoh’s monopoly. Even in the midst of the famine, the people of Israel flourished as a community of abundance—but they were now under the control of the Egyptian imperial economy, and by the first chapter of Exodus, under the rule of a new Pharaoh, they were forced to build store cities for the empire’s wealth, forced to make bricks, forced to work in the fields, ruthlessly enslaved, and were the victims of genocide. As Christians, we can and should relate to the people of Israel. But 21^st century America bears a striking resemblance to ancient imperial Egypt. How do we, as Jesus followers, live in that tension?

We got a brief glimpse of the “Sabbath economics”—the economics of enough—that God would teach God’s people during their 40 years of wandering in the desert, but we will have to pick up that discussion some other time. Next week, perhaps.

We were also reminded how important, and how personal discussions are about economics, money, and debt. These are topics we are often afraid or embarrassed to discuss. There were some tears, some confessions, and some visions of a community characterized by radical generosity and care.

This week we began adding opportunities for praxis to our time together. Here are the three practices we settled on. If you do one or more of these practices this week, and feel comfortable sharing, we’d love to hear about your experience next week in class.

1. What are the things you are anxious about when you wake up, the concerns that you think about as you lay in bed staring at the ceiling? Each morning this week, prayerfully offer those concerns up to God.
2. Every day this week, write down three or four things you are grateful for. No repeats!
3. This week, pick one item in your house, your garage, or your table, and try to trace back its story. For example, how did your cup of coffee get to you? Where was the coffee grown? Who grew, picked, and dried it? What are their working conditions? Is the coffee fair trade and, if so, what difference can that make? How was the coffee likely shipped? Was it roasted locally? Where did you buy it? And on and on. We are all plugged in to a global economy, so my breakfast ties me to people in Africa (coffee), Latin America (banana), the Midwest (wheat bread), and New England (butter). Our stuff has a story…and the story has faces.