Jubilee Reimagined in 2021

Hyeyoon Song, Renewed, woodblock print on paper, 2020

Happy New Year! We hope you join us in taking a deep and full breath to begin 2021. We are fully that a new calendar year does not erase the weight of the past year. The pandemic continues to rage in our communities and we feel the reverberation rippling through our social, economical, political, spiritual and emotional dimensions in our daily lives.

However, in this year of shifting and change, we want to invite you to imagine a biblical vision of Jubilee found throughout the Old Testament and proclaimed by Jesus in Luke 4:18-19. Perhaps the vision of Jubilee can provide us the restorative and liberative news we need for such a time.

Jubilee means a "ram's hom" and was to be proclaimed every 50 years. Paul Hertig summarized Jubilee as a "reversal of rich and poor, a redistribution of resources, and a flattening of pyramids." In Upside Down Kingdom, Donald B. Kraybill describes Jubilee as "institutionalized grace" that implements "special provisions to defend and protect the helpless".

Throughout 2021, we hope to unpack what Jubilee means for us at this extraordinary time we are living in and guide us reimagine our relationship to the land, natural resources, and how to participate in the liberative work of the gospel. We hope you will join in the many conversations planned for the year.

ReconciliAsian의 2021년 주제는 희년입니다. 희년은 하나의 “제도화된 은혜”로서 죄와 탐욕에 대해 구조적으로 저항하는 것이라 할 수 있습니다. 희년을 통해 하나님께서는 힘의 불균형과 부정의(injustice)의 문제를 언약공동체 안에서 바로잡는 역학을 만들어 가길 원하십니다.

We invite you to the first webinar series of 2021 with Nam Gi-Up, the Director of Jubilee Together. His two webinars are entitled, "Jubilee and the Gospel of the Kingdom of God" (1/22) and "Jublilee, Land, Universal Income and a New Society" (1/29). This webinar series will be presented in Korean.
Register here.