Message From Ched Myers

Author of Binding the Strong Man..and  Who will Roll Away the Stone? To the participants of the Kairos Gathering, May 12-14, 1995, Chicago

This note is to extend solidarity greetings to you all as you gather to nurture, celebrate and clarify the kairos  process here in the U.S.  I am sorry not to be with you, but we in the East Los Angeles theological reflection group remain supportive of this process.

I pray that the Spirit leads you deeper into the work and grace of building a community of faith and justice.  That the times demand such labor is clear.

I wish in particular to encourage you in your focus upon the biblical themes of Jubilee Justice.  I was grateful to hear that this is emerging as a central theme of kairos/USA reflections, as well as in broader ecumenical conversation.  It is my judgment that the Jubilee vision represents the core of the faith and practice of free Exodus Israel; that Jesus of Nazareth came in part to revision and recontextualize that faith and practice in his historical moment; and that our task today is to similarly recover and recontextualize it for our time and place.  So much of what we decry and abhor today is rooted in the ways in which wealth and power are distributed; I believe the biblical mandate that a just society must regularly redistribute power and wealth thus addresses our dilemma directly.

It will not be easy to proclaim the gospel of Jubilee in our present context because neither church nor society are hospitable to its radical proposals.  I encourage you not to be deterred by the three most common ways of dismissing the Jubilee:

       1)  the prevailing skepticism among biblical scholars about whether Jubilee was ever "practiced."  We have all heard versions of this skepticism from pulpits and classrooms, such that the tradition as a whole has been utterly marginalized in biblical theology.  We must understand that this skepticism reflects a profound hermeneutical bias against all notions of radical redistribution of power and wealth--a bias that characterizes the culture of capitalism and thus influences uncritical theology.  In other words, Jubilee skepticism says far more about the social, political and economic commitments of biblical scholars than about the biblical texts themselves.  In fact, the evidence of how, when and whether the Jubilee was practiced in the biblical period is inconclusive either way, the argument from silence is specious.  Moreover, even if one concedes that Jubilee may have only ever been a minority practice in Israel, the skeptics must still explain why the tradition of Jubilee was preserved in Torah--and later reiterated by Jesus.  Dismissing the practice because the leaders departed from it is like saying that because love of enemies was never practiced by the majority tradition of Christianity it is therefore irrelevant to contemporary faith and practice (come to think of it, many theologians have argued precisely that! )

In contrast, I believe that if one is attuned to Jubilee language and allusions in rereading the gospels one finds it to be a fundamental theme of Jesus' teaching and practice.  The narratives about Jesus are all about his proclamation of the kairos that invites us to "turn around" and recover the roots of our faith:  the sovereignty of Yahweh, right here, right now (Mk 1:14f);  Jesus unilateral forgiveness of sin/debt (Mk 2:1ff) and renewal of the Sabbath vision (Mk 2:28);  Jesus invitation to his disciples to "spontaneously" (that is, apart from the market) redistribute wealth

(Mk 2:23ff, 6:34ff; 10:17ff);  and his challenging of the cultural and political codes of privilege and power (Mk 10:1ff;  11:38ff.)  In all these practices Jesus invited his disciples to follow.

     2)  the prevailing skepticism in capitalist culture that wealth and power can and should be redistributed according to the demands of equality and universal enfranchisement.  With the demise of much of socialist theory and practice, there are few left who dare even raise questions about redistributory justice.  I believe there is new space for the church to become a true heretic under capitalism and insist that nothing short of Jubilee will do.  This will not be welcomed, and we would do well to find new forms of discourse to articulate this biblical conviction, ones that leave behind the old Left-Right platitudes in order to open up the conversation.  We need to speak in pastoral terms:  e.g. the increasing accumulation and concentration of wealth is killing all of us, and only redistributory justice can heal us as a people.  I feel that another key biblical theme (one also recontextualized by Jesus), namely that of retribalization (the relentless decentralization of socio-political structures) will be just as important to imagining a new social and economic order based on redistributory justice.      

     3)  the deep skepticism within ourselves that things can really change.  This is the most difficult task of all, for it lies behind our loss of heart and faith and energy, particularly in these times.  That is why the kairos challenge goes to the core of our spirituality in a world careening toward self-destruction.

 Sisters and brothers, we will be better served in our theological reflection and our struggle for justice by approaching both our scriptures and contemporary problems with a different set of assumptions, namely that Jubilee is to be taken quite seriously as the only way to personal and political restoration.  There are an increasing number of people doing just that.  I commend you for gathering to embrace this theme, and this task, and wish you strength for your deliberations.

Blessings!