| The concept of Jubilee is drawn from the book of Leviticus, in which a year of Jubilee is celebrated every fifty years. In the Jubilee year, social inequalities are rectified: slaves are freed, land is returned to its original owners, and debts are canceled. The project will expand the Jubilee concept to include and focus on the broader Biblical issues of domestic justice, peace, freedom, reconciliation and forgiveness here in the United States.; The reader will gain a more conscientious understanding of Jubilee and the gospel mandate of forgiveness and reconciliation. Participants of the Jubilee Dialogue Encounter will be provoked to explore ways they can better understand and apply the concept of Jubilee in a corporate and individual context. It is a beginning point, offered to help congregations and individuals to get started, with the expectation that it will give birth to a multitude of ideas, actions, resources, programs, and processes that can help the church and society to become a Jubilee people.; As congregations from different racial and/or ethnic backgrounds or yoked, the participants will be encouraged to think globally and act locally by engaging in dialogue about the Biblical concepts of Jubilee, hence discover and/or rediscover how those concepts can provide insight into addressing contemporary issues such as social, political and economic oppression, and moreover, how they relate to racial reconciliation and forgiveness.; The scope of the project includes an invitation to live out the principles of Jubilee as well as a call to spiritual awakening. It offers a challenge to examine how individual and corporate lifestyles have broken our relationship with God, with each other, with God's creation and even with ourselves. It calls us into a renewed life in which we can join Christ in proclaiming: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” (Luke 4:18–19). ... |
