We Found an Economic Advisor 
Hiding in Leviticus

by Lee and Juanita Mangan-Van Ham

Leviticus is a good place to hide. Few Bible-readers or church/synagogue-goers look there for spiritual food, life guidance, or an encounter with the living Word.

We didn't go looking there either. But as we began to see economics everywhere rivaling God for the best energy of people and defining the patterns by which we arrange our lives, we were searching in new places for alternatives. It was then that the financial advisor hiding in Leviticus stepped out onto our path and introduced herself. Her name is Jubilee. As the saying goes, "When the pupil is ready, the teacher appears."

Early in 1999, Jubilee entered into relationship with us. Since then our eyes continue to be opened to the "Great Economy" she disclosed to us. It's a kind of archetypal economy implanted in the hard-wiring of creation's soul.

We already knew that the Bible talked a lot about money. We even knew that the Sabbath (both the day and the year) and the Jubilee had economic impact. But it was different this time when Jubilee stepped out from between the pages. Our eyes got bigger and bigger as we saw, not just disjointed stories and ideas about money, but an integrative economic system. And months later, Jubilee continues to show us the inter-linking of major life issues in the "Great Economy." Interest, debt, accumulating, investing, property ownership, ecology, land use, worker rights, human rights, defining what's criminal, valuing commodities, caring for those marginalized, immigrants --- wow!

The wisdom of Jubilee quickly puts awe in one who previously believed there is no alternative to what is dominating the world today economically. There are alternatives! There's even one in the Bible! Jubilee takes troubling issues of life today, which at first appear unlinked, even dense, and integrates them into, not a safety net, but a life-giving tapestry for everything in our sacred biosphere.

That Jubilee has stayed hidden from most of earth's citizens says more about our ability to see than her unwillingness to be seen. What she calls us to is very different from the current corporate globalization. So, blinded by culture, our eyes remain unhealed when we minimize, spiritualize, and rationalize the economic teachings of the Bible --- just as people in the Bible did. How like them we are! Rather than trust Jubilee, we have put our faith in secular economic formations, all the while convincing ourselves that it is our attitude toward money and not the economic system that matters.

But that's changed for us. We can't do the Bible that way anymore. Instead, the Bible is doing us. Repentance has set in. And regeneration.

Jubilee has been removing from us, like cataracts from blind eyes, illusions we have been living. Explanations we had been using to soften biblical passages on economics --- ones that criticize our culture and personal lifestyle --- are being pierced by the gospel of Jubilee. Seeing more clearly now, we understand why "opening the eyes of the blind" is an essential theme of Jubilee. It challenges us even as it fills us with hope. Increasingly, Jubilee helps us see that the privileges of being in the world's top 20% economically blind us from seeing God's kingdom/kindom rather than being an exhibit of it. "Eyewitnesses" to the invisible kingdom/kindom are literally necessary.

But once we see it, what do we do with it? We ask, as did the people in Jerusalem upon hearing Peter's eye-opening address in Acts 2, "What shall we then do?" His answer is also the one for us today: "Repent." Literally, change your mind.

The prescription is a fair one. Implemented, it's fairness brings healing to us personally, to the human family, and to the whole creation. Jubilee brings a saving gospel to our world. The current global markets do not.

The systems now running the global economy and thus all of human life are now gravely deficient when measured by the biblical Jubilee. They do not sustain life on this earth no matter where one lives on the continuum of have and have-not. Because they are unsustainable and apocalyptic in their consequences, the current systems of globalization need to quicken their conversation with Jubilee. Now! Her archetypal economic wisdom is as much for the present and the future as it is from ages past.

Who, we can wonder, will facilitate such conversation? You? Me? Us? Us, people from across economic, ethnic, and national lines accompanying one another --- that sounds like the way God would do it. Though we appear to be unlikely candidates, the vision of Isaiah (Isaiah 6) comes to mind. "Who will go? asks the voice from the Throne when faced with a task too big for anyone and not very possible. "Whom shall I send?"

And, standing before the altar, Isaiah, insufficiently credentialed by secular standards but filled with the awe from which truth is uttered says, "Here I am. Send me." He can't not say it. His passion had been roused by eye-opening vision intersecting with the great need in his country.

Well, God took him up on it. And my, what oracles came forth from that soil and the group that formed around him! Not that they met with lots of receptivity or success. But even today when we give his words opportunity to speak to us, we know they are true for our time as well as his. Once Isaiah's eyes were opened to who is really on the throne, who really runs the global governors, his awe gave him the wisdom to say "Yes!" to being in the service of that One.

When we heard Jubilee ask, "Would you do it?" We knew what our answer needed to be: "Here we are." How fascinating that it was only after we declared ourselves that Jubilee stepped out of the pages of Leviticus to teach us.

In that vein we have formed Jubilee Economics Ministries. We seek coalition and solidarity with four groups (1) justice activists, (2) academics seeking alternatives with justice, not just better and better positions in the current system, (3) artists, and (4) people of faith who can hear the gospel of the "Great Economy," hearing repentance as liberation to hope and joy, not sadness and shame.

Our primary purpose is to let all who wish meet Jubilee. Letting her step out of the pages of the Bible happens best, we believe, as people from the poorer 80% of the world and from the rich 20% come together. So we offer immersions in the city and third world. We encourage investors to witness to their values with their money through faith-based investing. We arrange for visiting prisons including death row, and learn why "releasing the prisoner" is a Jubilee theme. We support debt cancellation for the world's 60 most heavily indebted countries. We join in the search to live more simply. We welcome opportunities to open the Bible with people who want to have Jubilee revealed to them, stepping out from its pages.

Will the current global economic designs change? Yes, of course, they will. Every world-dominating design has. If they continue unchanged from their current direction they will at some point collapse under the weight of their own selfish excesses. On this the Bible and history confirm each other. In such moments the scenarios are apocalyptic. All creation suffers.

More hopefully, the current patterns of globalization will be redeemed from their distortions as the One works through all of us who are available to see the deeper economic wisdom of the "Great Economy." It is the grassroots living in solidarity and living out Spirit-wisdom that God uses.

In addition to the macro-level, Jubilee also teaches us a lot about everyday. The everyday practice of Jubilee's economic wisdom captivated Jesus. He made Jubilee His daily spiritual practice and invited us to follow. So, we delve into the Sabbath-Jubilee patterns of Scripture. We have decided to let them shape us as they will rather than to reshape them and pretend our ways don't contradict them. We don't always get it right, but our commitment persists to practice Jubilee as daily spiritual discipline.

Just where in Leviticus was Jubilee hiding? We found her in chapter 25. Then she showed us where she reappears throughout the Bible. Ironically, verse 10 of Leviticus 25 is on the U.S. Liberty Bell. But, just as that cracked bell rings no longer, so Jubilee is no longer practiced in the dominant system of the land. However, the economic advice of Jubilee is anything but cracked. It is the gospel that the majority of the world's people and the ecological web of life are eagerly awaiting us to practice.