A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — November 14, 2010
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts:  Leviticus 25:8-17;  Genesis 41:53-57, 47:13-26

 

An mp3 audio file of the sermon can be downloaded by clicking HERE

 

So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for the Pharaoh… As for the people, he made slaves of them from one end of Egypt to the other. — Genesis 47:20a, 21

You shall hallow the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family. — Leviticus 25:10b

First we heard about the Jubilee Year.  After seven Sabbath year cycles, with all debts cancelled and slaves freed, the shofar (ram’s horn trumpet) is sounded to proclaim the Jubilee Year, when landholdings are to be returned to original owners.  Jubilee is the capstone of an economic system the Hebrew people envisioned as a radical alternative to the economy of Pharaoh in Egypt, where the people were held in slavery until God led them out in the Exodus.  In Greek the word “odos” means “way,” as in “people of the way,” and “ex-odos” means “the way out.”

Then we heard part of the story of Joseph.  You may recall from Sunday school or “The Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat” how Joseph got out of jail by interpreting one of Pharaoh’s dreams to be about how seven years of plenty would be followed by seven years of famine.  Pharaoh makes Joseph his “Food Czar” to stockpile grain in the good years, and by the time feast turns to famine they have so much grain “it was beyond measure,” the story says.  I used to think we were to admire Joseph for his cleverness and good planning.  But then at seminary I read commentaries from Old Testament scholars like Norman Gottwald and Walter Brueggemann.  I just spent three days at a pastor’s retreat with Brueggemann, and he reminded us how Joseph was too clever for his own good and his people’s good.

Listen to Genesis 47 as the famine years arrive and Pharaoh’s economic system kicks into gear.  Genesis 47— ¹³Now there was no food in all the land, for the famine was very severe. The land of Egypt and the land of Canaan languished because of the famine. ¹⁴Joseph collected all the money to be found in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, in exchange for the grain that they bought; and Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh’s house.  When people come starving, Joseph doles out the grain.  But not as some kind of aid package; no, business is business.  Joseph sells it, thereby acquiring for Pharaoh every bit of the people’s money.  So Pharaoh corners the nation’s capital resources.

 

Continuing at v. 15:  15When the money from the land of Egypt and from the land of Canaan was spent, all the Egyptians came to Joseph, and said, ‘Give us food! Why should we die before your eyes? For our money is gone.’ 16And Joseph answered, ‘Give me your livestock, and I will give you food in exchange for your livestock, if your money is gone.’ 17So they brought their livestock to Joseph; and Joseph gave them food in exchange for the horses, the flocks, the herds, and the donkeys. That year he supplied them with food in exchange for all their livestock.  Now Pharaoh has his hands all the people’s means of production.  The ideology of greed is in full swing.  Greed?  Did I say greed?”  Oh, this is nothing but the market at work, supply and demand; it’s not personal, just basic capitalism.  The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

So what’s next? ¹⁸When that year was ended, they came to [Joseph] the following year, and said to him, ‘We cannot hide from my lord that our money is all spent; and the herds of cattle are my lord’s. There is nothing left in the sight of my lord but our bodies and our lands. ¹⁹Shall we die before your eyes, both we and our land? Buy us and our land in exchange for food. We with our land will become slaves to Pharaoh; just give us seed, so that we may live and not die, and that the land may not become desolate.’ ²⁰So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh. All the Egyptians sold their fields, because the famine was severe upon them; and the land became Pharaoh’s. ²¹As for the people, he made slaves of them from one end of Egypt to the other.  Pharaoh, the great accumulator, now owns it all—money, animals, land, the people themselves.  Slavery results from an ideology of greed and accumulation that reduces everything, even people, to commodities.  A favored few do escape: ²²Only the land of the priests he did not buy; for the priests had a fixed allowance from Pharaoh, and lived on the allowance that Pharaoh gave them; therefore they did not sell their land.  But these priests have been “bought off.”  They’re in Pharaoh’s hip pocket.  And don’t think of them simply as religious professionals.  These are Pharaoh’s closest advisors and confidants.  They are the favored few who will live well and prosper on the backs of the less fortunate.

The story closes: ²³Then Joseph said to the people, ‘Now that I have this day bought you and your land for Pharaoh, here is seed for you; sow the land. ²⁴And at the harvests you shall give one-fifth to Pharaoh, and four-fifths shall be your own, as seed for the field and as food for yourselves and your households, and as food for your little ones.’ ²⁵They said, ‘You have saved our lives; may it please my lord, we will be slaves to Pharaoh.’ ²⁶So Joseph made it a statute concerning the land of Egypt, and it stands to this day, that Pharaoh should have the fifth. The land of the priests alone did not become Pharaoh’s.

[Hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.  Thanks be to God.]

There is no way out from this slavery, except exodus.  Dependent on Pharaoh’s good graces, people are caught in a producer/consumer rat race.  To make it worse, they offer thanks for this—“You have saved our lives; may it please my lord, we will be slaves to Pharaoh.”  They’re now peons, serfs, debt slaves, and Egypt is a company town—“Sixteen tons and what do you get?  Another day older and deeper in debt.”  Joseph’s cleverness has landed the entire Hebrew people in slavery, and they will remember this time always.  So Pharaoh becomes Israel’s nemesis as well as a metaphor for an economy of rampant greed and accumulation.

Is Pharaoh alive in our world today?  Are we all caught up in the producer/consumer rat race?  Undoubtedly we live in a world focused on accumulation.  In a recent New York Times editorial, Nicholas Kristoff sees the U.S. as a banana republic because of its extreme and growing income inequality—the richest 1% of Americans now take home almost 24% of all U.S. income, up from 8.9% in 1976.¹ That 1% already owns over 50% of the nation’s wealth.  According to David Cay Johnson, despite the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, from 2008 to 2009 the incomes of “a small group of individuals hauling in more than $50 million annually… increased fivefold.”²  Five times!

The Hebrew people looked back at Pharaoh and developed a vision of a more compassionate and just economy, a neighborly society focused less on trying to be king of the hill and more on the good of the whole.  How can an economy reflect love of neighbor?  Their answer is seen throughout the Torah… in things like the Sabbath year, the forgiveness of debts, and the freeing of all debt slaves.  The Hebrew people were encouraged to loan to all in need but not to charge interest, because compounding interest can trap the debtor.  Deuteronomy 17 says that the Hebrews may have a king, but only if the king does not acquire great wealth and power.  It’s even in the Ten Commandments—the tenth, “You shall not covet,” that is, don’t spend your life going after more and more stuff; and the Sabbath Command, which calls us to disengage from the production/consumption rat race.  “Remember,” says the commandment, “that you were a slave in the land of Egypt.”

Jubilee sits at the peak of this vision of a neighborly economy, because in ancient Israel the land was the basis for a productive society, much like jobs are in our world.  In the fiftieth year everyone who has lost lands or homes, for any reason whatsoever (!), gets them back, period.  Those who have fallen into slavery are to be released—every last one of them.  They and their children are free to return to their ancestral lands.  Property is valued by how many crop years remain before the next Jubilee, at which point its value goes to zero.  Those who have piled up great wealth during the fifty years lose their hoard so that all those who have suffered loss can be given a new start.  Inequities are not allowed to proceed unchecked.  Jubilee ensures that there is no permanent underclass.

Jubilee is rooted in the theological understanding that the land belongs not to certain people but to God who has given it as an inheritance to all families, clans, and tribes according to need.  The people live in covenant relationship with God as God’s tenants, and they’re called to be stewards of what God has entrusted to them.  So they cannot sell or lose by foreclosure the land for all time.  God liberated them from slavery—a slavery that was rooted in Joseph’s wheeler dealings for Pharaoh.  So they are to respond by living freely as God’s grateful people, caring for each and every member of the community—“Love your neighbor as yourself.”  No one is to blame the poor for their poverty or enrich themselves by taking advantage of others’ misfortunes.  (No payday lending here.)

Now all this may seem impossibly utopian and foolish.  We live in a “Joseph” economy, after all, and our thinking has been shaped in “Joseph” terms—make a quick buck, get rich quick, corner the market, to the victor belongs the spoils—life as a game of Monopoly.  In kinder, gentler moments, we talk of social safety nets.  But a full-blown Jubilee economy seems unthinkable.  That’s how ideologies work; there seem to be no choices except to keep things the way they are.  Some claim the Hebrew people never actually practiced Jubilee.  Yet when the people returned from exile, Nehemiah called for a communal sharing based on the Jubilee Law (Neh. 5).  And the spirit of Jubilee runs throughout the preaching of the prophets, who constantly criticize the wealthy and plead the case of the poor.

No one writes off the Law of Love because it seems foolish or impossible.  Who can ever so perfectly love every potential neighbor, no matter who they are or what they’ve done?  Yet the love of neighbor remains the ideal for us all.  In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus opens his preaching in Nazareth by reading from the prophet Isaiah:  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  Then he sat down and said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  The year of the Lord’s favor is the fiftieth year Jubilee.

Is a time of Jubilee possible?  At the turn of the millennium in 2000, a host of churches from more than 40 countries called upon the richest nations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund to cancel all third-world debt.  More than 20 million people signed Jubilee 2000 petitions.  And some degree of debt reduction has been achieved in the ten years since, but not enough by any means.  Now we are faced with many other arenas of debt, both national and personal as people lose their homes.  We also see the threat of job losses and the fear of debt itself being used to promote policies that tilt in favor of the rich and powerful.

No doubt Jubilee 2000 was foolishness, but it was the foolishness of God, the foolishness of the cross, the foolishness of grace.  As the Pharaohs of our world continue to accumulate massive power and privilege, can we turn from greed and accumulation and learn a new way based on grace and generosity?  We pray, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”  Do we mean it?

The choice is ours—will we follow the way of Joseph (and Pharaoh) or the “way out” that is Jubilee?  According to Luke, the people who listened to Jesus were amazed at first, but when they had heard all he had to say, they “were filled with rage [and] got up, drove him out of town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built so they might hurl him off the cliff.”

They chose the way of Joseph.  Which will we choose?  Joseph or Jubilee?³

 

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¹Nicholas Kristof, “Our Banana Republic,” The New York Times, Nov. 6, 2010.

²Bob Herbert, “Fast Track to Inequality,” The New York Times, Nov. 1, 2010.

³Some ideas for this sermon came from “The Wisdom of Jubilee vs. The Wisdom of Joseph” by Arthur van Seters, The Living Pulpit, Vol. 9, No. 3, July-Sept. 2000 (pp. 24-25).