The Bible is full of cycles of seven -- seven days to a week, six of work and one of rest or Sabbath; seven years – six of working, both land and labor and a seventh of rest and freedom or manumission; and seven sets of seven years for the Jubilee (on the 50th year) – return to the land, returning purchased land (which is more like our leasing or renting of land) and freedom from the bondage of servitude to another . . . all are cycles of creation.
Creation in the biblical view, is an on-going thing. And somehow, some way, mysteriously, human beings are part of the creating as well as being the created.
And one of our acts of co-creation with God, one of the hardest, is the act of restraint . . . of refraining from . . . of stopping . .
In the stopping, in the restraint, creation itself emerges as part of the divine creative process . . . the painting emerges from the canvas . . . the form from the sculpture . . . the character takes shape in the drama . . . and as every artist knows, sometimes, it’s the job of the artist to get out of the way . . . to take hands off . . . and simply allow the creation to speak for itself . . .to take on its own shape and form . . . to grant it the freedom to emerge . . .
We confess before coming to the Communion Table in order that we might ourselves be freed . . . freed from all that binds us up into the worries and hurries and scurries of this world into the waiting . . . wondering . . . resting . . . rescusitating pace of the divine . . .
We are assured of our own pardon that we might freely pardon others . . . that they too may be freed of the worries and hurries and scurries . . .
Jubilee reminds us that even as we are loved, so too is the other . . . as God loves each and all of us, so too God loves other people . . . the animals . . . the land . . . it’s immensely practical, this jubilee business, but so too is is wonderfully, divinely, inspired . . . Jubilee . . . rest and rescusitation . . .freedom and space for the emergence of . . . God’s own masterpiece!
