The impact of Jesus coming into the temple, proclaiming a Jubilee, a year of favor given by God, redeems the lost and forsaken. He releases prisoners held in bondage. Jesus comes to his hometown inviting God’s people to come home to God, restored into full covenantal relationship. Finally, this Jubilee Year brings rest, divine peace.
As Jesus declares a Jubilee Year, in which all lays fallow, our holiness becomes his focus. This Holy Year, as we celebrate a Jubilee this year 2025, changes our focus too. Instead of spending our time on worldly matters, the proclamation asks us to spend our time on God and his ways. Throughout this year, we, his people, seek holiness
Jesus, anointed by the Holy Spirit as we saw at his baptism, proclaims good news. Captives are released. The blind see. The oppressed are lifted. The darkness in our world beholds a great light. The Lord Himself comes to redeem, release, restore, and create peace.
Peace comes from God. He removes the sin and suffering, the lost and forsaken feelings, the broken relationships, grief from lost loved ones, and the spiritual desolation and even dark spirits that plague our lives. The Jubilee Year infuses in us understanding and insight which transforms our thinking. Instead of seeing these as chains oppressing us, these challenges and disorders empower us to turn to Jesus. He has the power to change the tragedies of life into blessings. The struggles of work and finances into strengths. Death becomes the resurrection. We, disfigured by sin, become transfigured by this Jubilee Year.
Isaiah reveals the transfiguration. After the Israelites suffered exile, sent to Babylon and their city, Jerusalem, burned and destroyed, Isaiah proclaims:
“to comfort all who mourn; to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit” (Is 61: 3).
Throughout the Jubilee Year, our celebration reveals God’s plan to restore our holiness. Holiness anoints us with the oil of gladness, removing our afflictions and addictions that enslave us. Holiness, that sanctifying spirit, brings grace to replace the disgrace of our ungodliness. Holiness brings peace knowing that righteousness now reigns in our lives. What was once destroyed and devastated, the Lord Himself, through the power of the Holy Spirit, redeems. He cuts us free from the devastation of our sinfulness, imprisoning us with imaginary chains. These chains now become the very bonds uniting us to Christ. He, upon the cross, cuts those chains and ties them to Himself so we no longer live as slaves to sin, but as sons and daughters of God’s Fatherhood.