Sermon on Leviticus 25:1-24

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

We continue our sermon series this week, reading parts of the Bible we don’t normally spend a lot of time on—parts that talk about Sabbath, Jubilee, and rest.

This week we read from Leviticus, which records the code of Law given by God to God’s people after they had been freed from enslavement in Egypt. It’s not the most exciting of books. One can only read about different types of offerings and what people should do if they have a skin disease for so long before one’s eyes begin to cross. There are a lot of laws that don’t have a whole lot to do with our lives today.

But then, there are beautiful passages like this where, yes, it’s still a list of laws and details, but it sets out a beautiful picture of the life God intends for God’s people. There are intentional practices of rest, not only for the people, but for the animals and the land.

In addition to the weekly practice of Sabbath named in the Ten Commandments, this passage describes sabbatical years and Jubilee.

Every seven years, the people were to give their land a rest. They were not to plant or harvest anything in their fields for the whole year. It was a “year of complete rest for the land.” If any of you grew up on farms or have spent any time in agricultural work, I’m sure you can teach me a lot about how to care for land. But I do know that if you grow the same crops in the same fields year after year without changing things up, the fields will produce less. It’s not good for anyone involved.

God taught the people how to take care of the land, which involved taking a year of rest. It benefited not just the people, but God’s creation which they tended.

Then, after 7 sabbatical years, there was a year of Jubilee. That fiftieth year was hallowed, just as God hallowed the seventh day of creation. Again, people were not to plant or harvest their fields. The land went back to the original owners as it was divided up upon arrival in the Promised Land. This is troubling, considering there were people who lived on that land before the Israelites conquered it, but that’s a very important conversation we’ll have to save for another time.

Suffice it to say, though, that there was a reset of ownership every fifty years. Land went back to its owners, those enslaved became free (it has more details about that in the rest of the chapter, which we didn’t read), and there was rest for the land and the people.

God decreed these patterns of rest: a Sabbath every week, a sabbatical year every seven years, and a year of Jubilee every fifty years. They were communal, not individual, practices. Today, self-care is so often marketed as an individual practice. You have totake time to rest. You have to make time for a bubble bath or a yoga class. None of these are bad things, but they fall short by themselves.

Sabbath and sabbatical years and Jubilee are not individual self-care practices. The ways we take care of ourselves as individuals are crucial, but they alone will not lead to the authentic justice and peace of the Beloved Community.

For example, mental healthcare is so important, and I have personally benefited from therapy immensely. But, if someone is anxious or depressed because they’re not sure they’ll be able to afford the rising cost of housing in their gentrifying neighborhood or because their disability benefits are not sufficient to cover their needs or because their farm isn’t able to compete with larger agricultural companies, that is a societal problem, not an individual one. Individual solutions are not sufficient.

In the Law, God establishes patterns that support the well-being of the whole society, not just the individual. God gives instructions to foster practices of freedom and justice. And one of the ways God does that is through practices of rest:

·       In Sabbath, the people are to rest in God’s love and care for them.

·       In the sabbatical years, people are to give the land, and therefore also themselves, a rest to renew.

·       And in Jubilee, people’s relationships with each other and their possessions and their land are refreshed and restored.

Through Sabbath and sabbatical years, and Jubilee, God institutes rest as a form of freedom and justice that heals the relationships between God, people, and creation.

So what does this mean for us?

We don’t live as a unified people group who worship the same God with a rule of law that dictates spiritual practice.

We, in fact, live in a pluralistic and individualistic society. We have many different faith traditions and forms of spirituality which we are encouraged to practice privately. There are pros and cons to that as with anything else. But it does have some challenges.

In our pursuit of Sabbath this year, it’s hard to imagine what that looks like on a communal and not just on an individual level.There are certainly individual restful practices, and I definitely encourage trying them out.

In fact, that’s exactly what I encourage you to do for your Lenten discipline, if you’re so inclined. Lent will be here in just 3 ½ more weeks, so it’s a great time to start thinking about it. This year, try on different rest practices.What would be restful for you? Maybe it is setting aside a full day of not working. Maybe it’s stretching five minutes before bed.

What type of tired are you? Are you physically tired? Mentally tired? Emotionally tired? That can help you figure out what would be most restorative for you this season. Or try something new each week.

Individual practices can bring you rest and connection with God. That is so important.

And also, we see in our reading today a set of communal practices of rest. What can that look like for us in the society we live in today?

I don’t have a prescription for that. I’m learning to practice Sabbath alongside you. This is something for us to learn and figure out together.

But I do notice some things about our reading that could give us a place to start:

1.    The laws in our reading care for the land. What does caring for the land we live on look like? How can we be good stewards of the land on which our church building sits? Most of us don’t grow our own food, so what do just agricultural practices look like today? How can we support that?

2.    The laws in our reading today also remind the Israelites that they are “aliens and tenants” of the land which is God’s. What practices can we do that help us hold our possessions loosely? Our stewardship team is always finding ways to help our congregation to live in a spirit of generosity and gratitude. What can we as a congregation do to remind each other that we are entrusted with what is God’s?

3.    One final thing I notice is that our reading enacts practices that allow for others’ rest. People are not just told to guard their own rest, but for instance, the sabbatical year laws require everyone to rest. If the land is not being worked, the laborers rest, the animals that work the land rest, and the land itself rests. The patterns of rest foster rest for everyone. There is trust for God’s provision, because God says there will be enough to eat until there is food to harvest again. It is a bigger pattern of what we read in last week’s reading about God providing enough manna the day before the Sabbath that the people wouldn’t have to gather it on the Sabbath itself. God is setting up patterns of freedom and rest for God’s people.

Now, we get the opportunity to not only try on Sabbath for ourselves, but to craft Sabbath practices for this faith community that foster rest for everyone.

As you try individual Sabbath practices, listen for what the Holy Spirit is saying about how to build a culture of rest that encompasses our communities and creation.

Our God of freedom proclaims rest for everyone. Rest well, beloved.