Jubilation for a Sojourner
The Hebrew word ger is variously translated as “sojourner,” “immigrant,” or “alien.” It refers in the Old Testament to a vulnerable population that was without property or property rights, that lacked social protection and economic resources, and that was regularly on the move, always to another territory where it was not welcomed. Sonia Shah writes of such folk:
Migrants tend to be the kind of people who don’t have big bank accounts or landholdings or titles but are rich in good health, skills, education, and social connections with people in other places. Their capital is portable…They’re the kind of people who are the bedrock of successful communities…they are healthier, too (The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move 277).
It is odd, but nonetheless true, that such folk may bring with them what Shah terms “the healthy migrant effect” to a community but are nevertheless most often taken to be a threat to the established order.
Give or take a nuance, it is odd but true that Jim Wallis at Sojourner fits that characterization in remarkable ways. He brings a good bit of social capital with him that is indeed “portable.” He is bedrock for the wellbeing of his community, and he is, for good reason, often perceived as a threat to established social order. I am glad to salute this “champion sojourner” as he completes fifty years of work and resolved leadership of the Sojourner community.
That community was founded in 1971, with Wallis among its leaders, out of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Chicago. It emerged at the height of the Vietnam War in the midst of immense social turmoil among us. Originally called “Post-American,” it set out to witness against the grain of U.S. nationalism and was something of a commune which was not so odd in those shrill days. Out of “Post-American” came a community, a magazine, a movement, and Jim Wallis who would be a faithful compelling voice for faithful justice in our society for the following fifty years.
Since that founding fifty years ago, Wallis has emerged as a consistent, reliable prophetic voice among us. His remarkable voice is as truth-teller, as he unflinchingly bears faithful witness to the ills and evils of our society, notably America’s Original Sin. His voice is, at the same time, a hope-teller. Wallis does not linger excessively over his acute social analysis, but moves regularly and in fresh ways to his summons to action in his conviction that wise public engagement can and will eventuate in a healthy body politic for all of our members.
Wallis of course is no conventional progressive whose views are shaped by the liberal opinion of the New York Times. After all, he is from Trinity Evangelical and is thoroughly rooted in evangelical faith. Thus he is a throw-back to evangelical faith before it was co-opted and distorted by the frightened seizure of the right wing. There was a time in our country when evangelicals were at the forefront of justice issues; Wallis continues to embody that tradition. His urgency about justice matters is not simply a common sense reality. It is for him all about discipleship and faithfulness to the gospel. Among other things including editorial work and prophetic leadership, Wallis has over time nurtured a great number of young people into faithful Christian witness, so that they follow in his train as a great company of those who have inhaled wisdom and courage from him.
Now, after fifty days, Wallis relinquishes leadership of the movement, the community, and the magazine. That good big round number “fifty” attests to Jim’s steadfastness in which he has been unwavering in his discipleship and witness. That good big round number, beyond being a measure of his faithfulness, invites us to connect, as Wallis surely would do, to the same good big number in the Bible as the year of the Jubilee.
My guess is that Wallis, as a well-rooted evangelical, first became aware of Jubilee by reading the text of Luke 4:16-20. In that narrative, Jesus is in the synagogue at Nazareth. He reads from the scroll of Isaiah, perhaps an assigned text. The narrative quotes the text Jesus read from Isaiah 61:1-4 (Luke 4:18-19). The Isaiah text concerns “the year of the Lord’s favor,” a reference to the Jubilee year. That is the year, so Jesus read, when the Spirit of YHWH extends with anointing empowerment with care for poor people, prisoners, blind people, and oppressed people, that is, all of those excluded from and rejected by a well ordered society. This remarkable prophetic announcement from Isaiah anticipates the transformative emancipatory power of God deployed in the world because God wills:
debt cancellation for the poor,
release for prisoners,
restored sight for blind, and
protection for the oppressed.
This is a vision of real social power mobilized on behalf of those who have been victimized by misused social power. In the Lucan version, Jesus then asserts that he himself is the enactor of that prophetic vision. It was this latter claim by Jesus that evoked aggressive hostility against him. His listeners did not mind the notion of Jubilee as long as nobody was active about it.
I was not at Trinity Evangelical when Wallis studied that Gospel reading. But I can imagine that Jim and his classmates with him were dazzled by this gospel text (surely encouraged by good teaching) so that it became an igniting instance for students in 1971 in the United States. The narrative, of course, goes on to show how Jesus claimed his own identity in a Jubilee of debt canceled. That text is enough to set Jim and his cohorts on their way with passion and energy.
Maybe it was a bit later that Wallis pushed back behind Luke 4 to pay close attention to Isaiah 61 that concerns the restoration of devastated Jerusalem. He would have found the same words that Jesus quoted in the synagogue. He would have read about Jubilee:
To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God (Isaiah 61:2).
He would have learned that the text is the dispatch of one who will be at work to restore devastated Israel in the exile. The entire passage is about the promise and expectation of a transformed society:
Garlands of joy instead of ashes of grief;
gladness instead of mourning;
clothes of praise instead of a faint spirit (v. 3).
All that is tired and sad and worn out is displaced by possibility. The one who speaks these words displays self-identity:
For I the Lord love justice,
I hate robbery and wrong doing (v. 8; see Amos 5:15).
God hates injustice! That must have been a massive moment of learning for Wallis as for anyone who lingers with this stunning text.
The move back in Wallis’ awareness likely continued when he got “learned and sophisticated.” He pushed back behind the prophetic oracle of Isaiah 61 to the Torah provision of Leviticus 25 and the Jubilee. In that Torah provision, Israel is to proclaim and perform a Jubilee of restoration, the return of property that had been lost in a predatory economy. It turns out, YHWH asserts, that “the land is mine” (v. 24). The land does not belong to economic predators and sharp dealers, nor does it belong to armies of conquest. The land is properly and in perpetuity on loan to small stakeholders who lacked the technical means to protect their property; Wallis also learned that the Jubilee promise is closely echoed in “the year of release” (Deuteronomy 15:1-18) in which all debts are cancelled so that poverty may be overcome. These provisions in the trajectory from Leviticus 25 to Isaiah 61 to Luke 4 have provided the Leitmotif for Wallis and his brave ministry of witness.
It is worth notice that the word “Jubilee” is from the Hebrew term ybl that means “ram’s horn.” The “ram’s horn” was to blown at the end of forty-nine years to signal the social economic enactment of Jubilee:
In the year of jubilee you shall return, every one of you, to your property…In the jubilee it shall be released, and the property shall be returned … They shall serve with you until the year of the jubilee. Then they and their children with them shall be free from your authority; they shall go back to their own family and return to their ancestral property. For they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. They shall not be sold as slaves are sold (vv. 40-42).
The sound of the ram’s horn in the fiftieth year breaks the vicious cycle of predatory greed that generated poverty and debt slavery. The recovery is restoration to a viable economic life!
I had another thought about Jubilee after fifty years! This year marks the fiftieth year after the founding of what became the Sojourner community. This year marks the fiftieth year of Wallis’s leadership of the community. This year marks the year when Wallis relinquishes that leadership to Adam Taylor. This year then, is a proper time to blow the ram’s horn to set in motion exuberant joy and gratitude in celebration for Wallis’s steadfast leadership. Jubilee is always a time of joyous celebration, for who does not want debt cancelled or property returned? It is time for such joy for and with Wallis. I imagine that all over our land there is gladness for Jim. I imagine jubilation. We say “jubilate” for Jim and for his fifty years of bold hard work in which he has exhibited faithful discipleship.
I am glad to add my voice in celebrating Jim’s fifty years. Happily it is not a time for his retirement. It is rather a time when he embraces a new career as a full time teacher: lucky students! It is a new career; it is not, however, a new vocation. I know it is a time for me to voice deep gratitude and equally deep affection for Jim in his obedience to the God of Sinai. The “sojourn” continues through and beyond Jim:
Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect (Hebrews 11:39-40).
Imagine that: all that Jim has done depends on us to bring it to fruition. We must be at that! But for now we may pause to sing, “Jubilate, jubilate, jubilate!” “Jubilate” marks Jim’s faith:
Now our wants and burdens leaving
To God’s care who cares for all,
Cease we fearing, cease we grieving;
At God’s touch our burdens fall.
Jubilate! Jubilate! Jubilate! Amen!
Cease we fearing, cease we grieving;
At God’s touch our burdens fall (The Presbyterian Hymnal 545).
Walter Brueggemann
