Imagine

(August 17, 2008; Leviticus 25, Luke 4:16-21)What if I told you that Canada existed only as an act of imagination? That wefight wars, pay taxes and support Olympic teams for an act of imagination. What couldthat possibly mean? I recently read two books by someone who could very quickly become one of my favourite theologians. His name is William Cavanaugh and he makes just such an assertion. In the opening lines to one of his books he writes the following,Politics is a practice of the imagination. Sometimes politics is the ‘art of the possible,’ but it is always an art, and engages the imagination just as art does. Weare often fooled by the seeming solidity of the materials of politics, its armies andoffices, into forgetting that these materials are marshaled by acts of theimagination. How does a provincial farm boy become persuaded that he musttravel as a soldier to another part of the world and kill people he knows nothingabout? He must be convinced of the reality of borders, and imagine himself deeply, mystically, united to a wider national community that stops abruptly atthose borders. . . . Modern politics was not discovered but imagined, invented.We believe in Canada and it exists because people inside and outside of the boundariesare sufficiently convinced or persuaded by it. The way we understand national bordersand governments is largely the product of a process that began around the time of theReformation in the sixteenth century. One of the things I found most helpful inCavanaugh’s understanding of the modern nation-state is how it relates to the church.The emerging nations conceived of themselves as a single body of which each citizenwas a part. This would be like calling Canada a single body made up of each of itscitizens. Cavanaugh asserts that this understanding of a nation came in directcompetition with the church who also conceived of herself also as a body. The differenceis that the body of the nation was defined by those who lived within particular geographic boundaries while the church body was understood as though who joined in the body of Christ regardless of race or nationality. Today we tend to think of the role of countries as

2 being somehow more ‘real’ then the role of the church. The church has for most of us become a smaller part of our larger life as citizens of Canada.So why am I telling you all this? What does this have to do with our readings thismorning? If we hope to accept the Bible and live out of its story and particularly thismorning’s story then we are going to need to

re-imagine

the world around us. We needto the learn the truths and expose the falsehoods of our current story, as it is and step intothe biblical story and allow it to shape and transform our expression of church. I believethat our reading this morning offers one such re-imagination. So this morning I aminviting us to consider our story and also the story and imagination that forms the conceptof Jubilee.Early in Canada’s history land was secured by the emerging government and thengifted and sold to those who would be most economically productive and stabilize thegovernment. The legal immigration of people to Canada was developed around their potential benefit to our economic base and so our immigration act still disallowsimmigrants if they will be taxing on our health care system or are unable to financiallysupport themselves. Land in our system is obtained and maintained by those who havethe ability to obtain and maintain more land. This is not how land was imagined in Israel.Land in Israel was not distributed on the basis of a self-interested government but was agift offered on the basis of a promise. The space and society this opened then was always based on this foundation. The foundation was that the land belonged to God and thatevery family in Israel had a share in it. It still happened that families fell on hard timesand would have to sell their land or work it for someone else. But this was always inrelationship to God’s promise. No one was allowed to continually amass more land and

3wealth. At some point in each generation the family’s promised land was restored tothem and people were allowed another opportunity to provide for themselves. God saysthis to Moses, “The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and youreside in my land as foreigners and strangers. Throughout the land that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land.”Can you imagine what the American and Canadian landscape would look like if in the 1980s, fifty years after the Great Depression, the children of those who profitedfrom that time, those who acquired all the land from farmers who could not survivereturned the land to the children of those who lost it? Economic theory is certainly notmy strength but I can’t help but note the irony that it was in the 1980s that we witnessedthe rise of huge multinational corporations and the outsourcing of work to economicallyimpoverished counties. It was at this time that land and capital began to be increasinglycentralized around fewer and fewer people. This is a movement that the act of Jubileeworks directly against. So we need to ask ourselves how can we re-imagine theredemption of the land for all people?In North America personal security is understood largely in economic terms. Our economic model encourages us to amass wealth infinitely through work and saving. Inmany cases this can nurture a healthy and responsible work ethics. However, the realityof our current economic model is that increasingly the most wealthy people in the worldare making their money without producing any valuable goods or services. Even with theeconomic slowdown in the U.S. corporate CEOs continue to increase their owncompensation despite posting losses and layoffs. Since 1965 CEOs have moved frommaking an average of 51 times minimum wage to 815 times what a minimum wage