The Next Small Thing

The next big things in our world may start out as very small things indeed.  The quark is our imagining writ wondrously small; and so it may be with the next ‘big’ ideas.

One that has captivated my attention is Rolling Jubilee.

The idea is incredibly simple (as often truly great ideas are): contribute to a fund which will buy up debt that has been turned over to debt collectors.  Once the debt is purchased, it will simply be forgiven (hence Jubilee).

Personal debt that is in default is often turned over to debt collection entities, who actually purchase the debt for pennies on the dollar, giving the creditor some return on the debt.  The collector is then free to pursue all legal means to collect on the debt, in whole or in part.

What the Jubilee ‘debt collector’ will do is simply purchase the debt like any debt collector, but then discharge (or forgive) the debt.

The debt crisis around the world is not simply the burden of nations and large corporations.  Individual debt is a crushing burden on many with no hope of repaying in these challenging economic times.

Using existing systems to subvert them is as old as time itself.

If you believe that debt and debt structures are inherently unjust, this solution may just be one you can subscribe to.  If you or people you know are being held captive to the burden of unmeetable health care costs, mortgage balances even post-foreclosure, or even the more mundane credit card debt with its exorbitant interest rates, you may find this grass roots approach appealing.

And who knows, maybe you’ve got the next small-big idea.  Take a page from the Rolling Jubilee folks and get together and make it happen.  Sometimes, all it takes to change a world is the will to try.

Jubilee - Cliff Notes of World Communion Sunday Sermon

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 5^0th 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!