The implications of the law of the year of jubilee for shaping Jewish society and culture would have been immense. This law would, for a start, prevent the development of a polarised class system of wealthy landowners on the one hand and poor peasants on the other. Every fifty years there would be a redistribution of property back to the original owners. It prevented a few people monopolising the property leaving the rest disenfranchised. But this is not communism. It was a family matter. This law served to solidify the idea of a shared family inheritance among God’s people. Luke wants us to see in his descriptions of the early church how the Christians fulfilled this very principle. It was for him a key fruit of the outpouring of God’s Spirit: “No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had” (Acts 4:32). To be a part of God’s family is to live a shared life with the rest of God’s people. In a society that is preoccupied with wealth-creation this is a sobering reminder. It is not how much you earn, but how much you share that matters in the Christian life. God is calling us out of our private isolated existence into a common purpose. That is what it means to be part of God’s church. It is to share a common life with a common cause. You don’t have to share everything as the early church did, but you must share something.
Reflect on your attitude toward your wealth and possessions.
Read Leviticus 25.
