The Lord's Prayer is full of "jubilee" images. Jubilee was a special time in the life of the Jewish people – in Maria Harris' words, a "heightened holy time" – it was the near boundary of God's reign – a time when debts were forgiven, captives and debtors freed, and the usual rules were suspended, so that the people might begin again. Just as fields need to lie fallow, unused, every few years, and we need a Sabbath rest, so our community, we as a people, need a time of jubilee. We need a time of forgiveness, a time of liberation, a time of justice. We need to begin again. In Jesus, we see the reign of God inaugurated, but right now we live in the in-between time, the time between that beginning and the coming fullness of God's reign. But we know from the Gospel of Luke what Jesus – and the reign of God - are about: good news for the poor, bread for the hungry, release for the captives.

We human beings participate in jubilee as both forgivers and forgiven. We find a whole new basis for human interaction, as one writer, Sharon Ringe says, "the polar opposite of the systems of debt and obligation, patronage and merit, honor and shame, that characterize life under various human institutions and authorities. In the realm of God, those old rules are canceled, and all things are made new." In the realm of God, we no longer measure our value by our promotions or the size of our credit line or our titles or even our time of service on the job or in the church.