Proclaiming Jubilee: The Year of God's Favor

by Marie Dennis

Marie Dennis is Associate for Latin America for the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns. She is former National Council Chairperson of Pax Christi, USA, a member of the Assisi Community in Washington, DC, and a participant in the community-based Kairos USA process. She shares her reflections on the meaning of this year.

The closing decade of the twentieth century has thus far presented one occasion after another for retelling the stories of our peoples, for examining the signs of the times, and for testing our faithfulness our authenticity as followers of the Word. As if to prepare us for a dramatic entry into the third millennium we have been challenged to reflect as perhaps never before on who we are, where we are going, how we will get there, and with which companions we will travel.

Those of us for whom the biblical image of Jubilee has meaning have been impressed by the powerful symbolism of the fiftieth years: 50 years times ten since Columbus arrived in the Americas; 50 years since the dawn of the nuclear age; 50 years since the end of World War II; 50 years since the founding of the United Nations; 50 years of existence for the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Jubilee Happens When We Have Lost Our Vision

By definition, Jubilee happens when there are wrongs to right, injustices to correct, alienations to heal, brokenness to repair. Jubilee happens when we forget who we are as people and communities. Jubilee happens when we have lost the vision and our way.

These have been years of searching for new solutions to regional and global problems. One glance at the state and work of the United Nations in its fiftieth year suggests most clearly the scope of the transformation we are yet called to effect. While it attempts to stop aggression and negotiate peace; monitor human rights and accompany processes of demilitarization; care for the world's children, refugee populations, and indigenous peoples, the U.N. yet struggles under the burden of an unrepresentative structure and decision making processes at the highest level. In this decade U.N. sponsored conferences and summit meetings have gathered citizens and governments to address global concerns, including ecology, population, social development, and women.

Energized by the concern of citizens around the world, but hampered by political intrigue and power mongering, these gatherings produced voluminous words in carefully crafted documents that only occasionally bear fruit in program or policy or patterns of human behavior.

As a civilization we are working our way through profound challenges to our own value systems. Each localized example of injustice and oppression in our world, we have come to realize, is supported by systemic level injustice and powerful worldviews that have tragically thus far prevailed.

The Voice of Women Cries Out in Beijing

We see sexism and injustice against women continuing, but we hear the voices of women that are stronger and clearer and more articulate every day. The vibrant participation of women from around the world in the United Nations Conference in Beijing was an excellent example. The clarification of an agenda that would eliminate some of the systemic prejudices and injustices against half of the human race is a sign of hope. Whether the meeting in Beijing was effective in terms of public policy or not, surely it was a demonstration of the determination, passion, energy, creativity, and intelligence of the women who gathered there and the millions they represented.

In these years we are celebrating the fact that more and more essential decisions about our work toward Jubilee are being made in concert with partners around the world; that leadership in the global movement against systems of repression and injustice is increasingly coming from the world of the poor and from women.

Jubilee would see the melodious crescendo of women's voices heard and celebrated. Literally.

Also in this decade, the 50th anniversary of the nuclear age and of the end of World War II evoked a memory so painful that too often it generated anger and defensiveness instead of repentance and reparation. It is a memory not only a memory but about the now as well of nuclear nations unwilling to agree to meaningful denuclearization of economies dependent on the arms trade of land mines planted where children play of money spent for death rather than life.

Jubilee would see seeds of peace, seeds of life replacing seeds of death, an end to the terror of the nuclear age, an end to the global arms bazaar. Literally.

Earlier in this decade, the quincentenary of the European's arrival in this hemisphere forced us to acknowledge racism, genocide, the desecration of sacred place, and the abuse of peoples, their land, their honored traditions.

Jubilee would see an end to racism, slaves freed, land returned in the Americas. Literally.

Approaching the New Millennium

As the new millennium approaches, the poor majority of our world know in their souls that the global economy is not functioning on their behalf. They experience the violences of hunger and illiteracy and disease in the fabric of their lives. They share a sliver of the world's wealth with millions of others while the extreme minority who are wealthy wield power over their lives.

In response, an amazing global network of very capable and serious women and men are working to change this system. Of necessity they are joining efforts with women's organizations, as women are the first to suffer in a unjust economy, as well as with those striving for ecological justice and an end to environmentally destructive models of "development."

Challenges to economic institutions and their decision making processes are taking place in every major international arena, from the United Nations Social Development Summit in Copenhagen, to the meeting of the G 7 nations in Halifax, to the U.N. Conference on Women in Beijing, to the Annual Meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington D.C.

Of particular concern are the heavy debt burdens devastating impoverished peoples and their communities. In these years of fiftieth anniversaries, as we move toward the millennium, a global movement for deep reform of the international financial institutions, including the World Bank and the IMF is emerging.

Jubilee would see debts that keep whole nations in bondage forgiven many labelled "already paid." Literally.

Witnessing a New Paradigm Shift

Some have described these last years of the twentieth century as witnessing a paradigm shift. It is a period of time which will be remembered as a major fault line in history, the close of the so called modern era. Early in this decade, a multi cultural, faith based partnership of local communities and groups in the United States launched a process of reflection and discernment to articulate the signs of crisis in our U.S. society and our world.

Written in the tradition of the Kairos Documents from South Africa, Central America, and many other nations of the impoverished Southern Hemisphere, Kairos USA agonized over the "systemic injustice and perverse values, social evil and personal irresponsibilities" that "permeate the fabric of our lives." Painfully aware of the ten "fiftieth years" that have passed without Jubilee in the Americas, the Kairos USA document, however, also identified opportunities for creative response from communities of faith to the crises of our times articulated in the language of Jubilee:

As provocative spark to the imagination, we recognize in this kairos a jubilean time. We look to the sabbatical legislation for hints and clues and root assumptions...
The earth is the Lord's...
The earth shall rest...
Debt is slavery...
You were freed...
Jesus is herald of the jubilee kairos.

In the fullness of his own time, Jesus proclaims the reign and realm of God vibrant with the jubilee spirit. Its signs are the forgiveness of debt, release from captivity, from denials of all varieties, from sin itself...

The contours of Jubilee are yet to be defined, but the invitation is clear and the need is great.
On the Way: From Kairos to Jubilee, Kairos USA