Jubilee at Walmart!

This Saturday, July 7, 2012, Interfaith Worker Justice invites friends and neighbors to join us for a 12:00 noon prayer vigil at the Walmart store on West Kellogg. This is part of a national IWJ campaign.

Professor Walter Brueggemann of Columbia Theological Seminary has written the following statement supporting Jubilee at Walmart.

  The Jubilee Year is authorized by Moses in Leviticus 25. It is celebrated in lyrical fashion in Isaiah 61 as "the year of the Lord's favor (Isaiah 61:2). It is claimed by Jesus as the shape of his life and destiny of his ministry:

       Today this scripture [Isaiah 61:1-2] has
        been fulfilled in your hearing (Luke 4:21).

   The biblical provision for the jubilee year proposes a pause in the rough and tumble of real-life-economics. It knows that through predatory action in the economy, some gain at the expense of others and some lose because of their vulnerability, and huge social inequities result. In order to curb such unsustainable economic arrangements, the jubilee year provides a regularized occasion when economic property and livelihood is given back by those who have gained to those who have lost. Giving back is a restorative action to maintain a viable neighborly infrastructure. The "give back" is an act of social realism that witnesses against predatory economics that "takes away."

   Given that the Jubilee in biblical provision occurs every fifty years, the 50th anniversary of Walmart is a splendid occasion for a Jubliee Year among us. Thus it is here proposed that on its 50th anniversary, Walmart pauses in its rough and tumble of economics to give back for the sake of the neighborhood. Such give back may take many forms: give back to the neighborhoods that the stores tend to diminish. Give back to the workers who stay locked into poverty by poor wages, give back hope to those locked into despairing economics. It would be an act of neighborly generosity that would bring health and well-being to the neighborhood to the benefit of all parties.

   Nay-sayers like to ask with a skeptical tone of the biblical jubilee, "There is no evidence that they ever really practiced it, is there?" We do not know. What we do know is that it is there in the text, in the life of Jesus, and in the vision that faith has for society. Jubilee waits to be enacted now. There is no better agent for such an action than Walmart. Walmart is a master at marketing. It could also be a master at neighborliness. This is the time!

   The term "jubliee" comes from the Hebrew term ybl, "ram's horn." The Jubilee Year begins when the ram's horn is blown. We can listen for it in Walmart stores all across the nation. When it sounds, the neighborhood will dance and sing!