Title: The Heart of the Jubilee
The word Jubilee has a deep biblical and theological meaning, not just a calendar meaning of fifty years or fifty years. That is the Jubilee system established in the Old Testament we read today. This is an extension of the Sabbath, and the 50th year, which is the next year after repeating the Sabbath year, which comes every 7 years, is the year when all the land will rest and the slaves will be set free and return to their land. It is a year of restoration and regression that brings all history back to its original position.
For the past few years, we've been working on a jubilee movement. But nothing happened this year of the Jubilee. It passed very smoothly. It was called the Unification Jubilee, but we couldn't even connect the human bond we did last year, and the South and North Korean churches even agreed to hold a joint worship service at Panmunjom, but our government did not allow it. In the end, we had no choice but to be frustrated.
2] Rather than the hopes and joys of the Jubilee, a major global accident caused by corruption and poor construction during the military dictatorship in the past caused a lot of casualties, and I felt apocalyptic despair and frustration. And the ruling party, which held high the banner of reform, suffered a catastrophic defeat in the local autonomous system election. I realized that the work of the Holy Spirit who is involved in human history is unpredictable by humans.
We thought only that the foundation for unification should be laid in 1995 because of the greed of us humans and that something should be done toward unification. However, nothing happened, and despite the severe food shortage in North Korea, the inter-Korean dialogue did not proceed as desired. We were thinking only of reunification, but the direction of history is that the wind has begun to clear up our erroneous economic structure and the dark and unfortunate history of injustice of the past.
I re-read Leviticus, which speaks of our jubilee year of reunification. I read with a narrow eye that the jubilee in Leviticus 25 speaks only of reunification, but I realized that the proclamation of the jubilee should be read as to correct and liquidate the history of the past 50 years.
God's command in Leviticus is to put an end to the events of oppression and exploitation in the last 50 years. Those who have freed slaves, canceled debts and lost their homes, are to return to their homes. It is to correct the distorted history of the past 50 years. It is about ending the cases of oppression, exploitation and corruption in the past 50 years and returning to the beginning of history.
So, the statute of limitations in Leviticus is at least 50 years. I wonder if the Jubilee is being proclaimed and fulfilled in the midst of our history, and I look back at myself, who is weak in faith. Since the 1970s, we have cried so much for democracy in this land, and while talking about the power of the people and the history of the people, we can send Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo to the prison where our so-called ignorant intellectuals came and went today, even though they suffered and suffered unfairly from the military forces led by General Chun Doo-hwan. He did not believe that the day was, that the Jubilee would come. The Jubilee is not a promise of unification, but repentance of weak and distorted beliefs that have forgotten that it is God's command to correct the wrong history of the past.
We only hoped for reunification without liquidating the 50 years of distorted ideology, corrupt politics, unjust economy, and corrupt society created by the history of division. It is regretting that we were only devising policies, tricks and methods for unification without creating necessary and sufficient conditions for unification. Only when we clear our 50-year history of division, repent, and design a new history can we become convinced that the road to reconciliation, peace and just reunification of our divided nation will be opened.
3] I went to Israel just two weeks ago. Three world religions born in the Middle East, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, visited the so-called Holy Land, a country of history, a country of religion, suffering from conflicts, conflicts and wars.
But Jerusalem was not the capital of Jesus and Christianity. It was not the Jubilee and the City of Peace and Hope. Young children, aged 17 and 18, fresh out of high school, dragged the heavy M16 submachine gun, checking passersby. The eyes of the people on the streets of Jerusalem were red and bloodshot with fear and hatred. The Palestinians, the centuries-old owners of the land, had been occupied, deprived and oppressed by the Jews. Jerusalem is said to be the birthplace of Christianity, but out of its 600,000 population, there are only 8,000 Christians, from Catholics to Presbyterians. It is a minority among religious minorities. I met and had in-depth conversations with Christian leaders, most of whom were on the side of the Palestinians rather than on the side of the Jewish government of Israel. The Jews persecute the Palestinians while gaining sympathy from world public opinion on the pretext of being persecuted by the Nazis.
Christian Fundamentalist believers are seduced by Judaism's Zionism, and they are immersed in the literal eschatological belief that Jesus will return when all the Jews in the world return to Jerusalem and agree with the Jewish occupation policy. Islamic fundamentalists in Palestine are opposed to Judaism and Christian Zionism. As a result, Christians have lost their place in the gap between Judaism and Islam and are being persecuted from both sides. There is no place for Christians to stand in the land where Jesus was born.
What does the Jubilee in Palestine mean in today's context? I sometimes fell into thoughts as I prayed while holding onto the large rock of the Wailing Wall in the city of Jerusalem. Is it a jubilee to give back the land of Jerusalem to Christians, or a jubilee to give back all the land of Israel to the Jews? This Christmas Eve, the Jewish government decided to return Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, to Arafat, Palestine, I think it was the right practice of the spirit of the Jubilee.
4] Last week we passed Christmas. How to connect the Jubilee of 1995 with Christmas. The song of Mary, the virgin of Galilee, who conceived Jesus is the very spirit of the Jubilee. The jubilee year is to set history, to return the land to its owner. It's not about returning the land to the person who invested in the property. It means returning the land to God in the sense of history that recognizes that the owner of the land is God. It means correcting the concept of property and the concept of power. This is Mary's song.
The Lord stretches out his almighty arm
He scattered those who were proud in heart.
put those in authority out of their places,
He exalts the little ones
The hungry man is filled with good things,
The rich are sent back empty-handed.
Maria was, literally, a young woman from the movement. Jesus was born into the body of a young woman from this same movement. And he set the true meaning of the Jubilee in his mission, the practice of the kingdom of God. It is to think that it is the missionary mission of all of us to clear the dark history and create a new history, the history of heaven and earth.