Sung Il Lee: Integrating Jubilee and Disaster Mission

Today's post is by Rev. Dr. Sung Il Lee. Rev. Dr. Lee is a missionary of Global Ministries and Missionary Practitioner in Residence at Candler School of Theology. It is part of an occasional series on mission and jubilee.

In this post, I share what our Christian attitude should be toward disasters. Natural disasters and social disasters will happen constantly. We should serve those who have suffered with the eyes and heart of Jesus, who came as the Kinsman-redeemer, the realizer of the Jubilee. Jesus healed the sick, freed their souls from Satan's bondage, and restored their hearts as he traveled through the cities and countryside of Galilee.

What does it mean to stand in a mission or pastoral field with the spirit of jubilee? I believe that the heart of the Triune God, that is, compassion and grace, must be revealed in our words and actions. I believe that we must become true comforters to those who have suffered disasters as God's spokesperson.

I believe that doing missions from a jubilee perspective is faithful to the following three principles.

Seal the past with love!
Whenever a disaster strikes, we ask, Why does that happen? Did God cause disaster? However, we can't get a reasonable answer, and the tragedy is not explained. Sometimes in explaining a disaster, the words of religious leaders have brought more destructive damage than the disaster itself. Wesley wrote that the question of why “has been a question ever since the world began; and the world will probably end before human understandings have answered it with any certainty.”[1]

This realization makes us shift our focus to the works of mercy instead of exhaustive questions of theodicy, making God's grace known to those who suffer from calamity. Wesley wants us not to "lose an excellent means of increasing your thankfulness to God, who saves you from this pain and sickness, and continues your health and strength; as well as of increasing your sympathy with the afflicted, your benevolence, and all social affections."[2] I believe that our call to action in times of trials and sufferings is to seal the problem with "a missiological approach based on jubilee law thinking."

I clearly remember that during the earthquake in Nepal, Korean missionaries in Nepal used their personal expenses to help the victims by providing relief supplies. They served Nepalese with the mind of Jesus Christ, who feels with humanity and takes on the pain of their suffering.

But problems arose in unexpected places. A relief worker delivered a Bible with relief supplies. This simple act brought strong opposition from locals. "Why are they forcing religion in these difficult times? Even Nepal Christians didn't like their way of mission."[3] A good but thoughtless act at the most sensitive time caused strong opposition.

At the same time, a relief team from the United States served disaster victims and delivered relief supplies. Whoever asked why they helped, their answer was simply "God loved you." A surprise happened a year later:

One Tibetan Buddhist priest embraced Jesus Christ and became a Christian pastor. He converted after seeing the love of Christ shown by a group of Christian workers who helped out and provided relief goods to the people of the region after a major earthquake struck the area.[4]

In an update, Asian Access reports that 62 other Buddhist monks with 200,000 believers have decided to follow Christ as well, due to Christian workers who provided hope and healing to the people of Tibet.[5] Director Joe Handley of Asian Access said:

They haven’t seen Buddhists, Hindus, or other religious groups helping in the midst of the rubble. Rather, week after week, it is the followers of Jesus who have proved the test of time, sacrificed their own lives to serve and been the hands and feet of Jesus.[6]

The locals are watching. Only pure loving service can seal and comfort their past pains. If a sheet of an evangelism tract is telling people a little bit of God's love, their labors of love and works of mercy leave an indelible impression. Authentic Christians in times of disasters and calamities are not “disaster-causing comforters” (Job 16:2), but ones with “faith that worketh by love; all inward and outward holiness.”[7] They are the ones who seal the aching hearts of those who suffer and suffer with love.

Serve the present with humble heart and mind!
The service of love should be carried out with a humble attitude. Wesley urges us to serve the afflicted in “the whole spirit of humility, lest if pride steal into your heart.”[8] Without humbly asking for the Holy Spirit's help, in the process of helping them, we often could not become means of grace to the sick and afflicted because we were not able to accept their anger, bitterness, and stubbornness that emerge from the wounds of sudden disaster.

In his sermon “On Divine Providence” (#67), Wesley affirms God is always with us, even during tragedy. He shares, “It is hard, indeed, to comprehend this; nay, it is hard to believe it, considering the complicated wickedness, and the complicated misery, which we see on every side. But believe it we must” (#67. §13).[9] Through our experience, we know that disasters happen to both Christians and non-Christians. As Jesus said, “your Father in heaven … causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:45). The good news we proclaim is that God is with us through it all.

Dónal P. O’Mathúna in his book “Christian Theology and Disasters: Where is God in All This?” says, “believers are called to aid the poor , the sick, the oppressed, orphans, refugees,” because all humans are made in the image of God, which confers everyone with both inherent dignity and moral responsibility.[10] We as his disciples are called to join Jesus in displaying God's mighty works as an extension of God's presence in the midst of the tragedy.[11]

Look forward to the future with hope!
Natural disaster “is not a whip that is easily wielded when God is angry. Nature is still beautiful, and when the seasons change, it presents flowers and leaves, red sunsets and green seas, and produces precious grains for human consumption.”[12] However, it produces constantly 'thorn bushes and thistles' that makes the farmer's forehead sweat and his hands bleed.

As Paul mentioned in Romans 8:19-22, it is evident that the ferocity of the earth, which scratches people and sometimes devours them, is perhaps the scream of a 'slave of corruption', the 'groaning' and 'pain of childbirth' of the land. This is a pain to endure until it will be released on the day when humans who have been enslaved by sin will be fully revealed as 'children of God.'

Therefore, what are the consequences of Western theology, which hardly includes nature and creatures, and narrow soteriology, which only regards humans as the object of salvation? As a result of cruelty to the natural environment in the name of construction and treating nature only as an object of conquest, we are experiencing an unprecedented disaster. It is believed that many natural disasters are a request to look back on God's will, which also commanded the rest of the earth during the Sabbath year, and at the same time, we must discern whether it is God's warning against our endless greed.

Paul referred to the fall of Adam and the cursed nature and the suffering of all creatures, saying that they were waiting for the emergence of new creatures. The new creation refers to a Christian born again in Christ. It refers to the saints who live by the Spirit who dwells within them.

When we practice the spirit of Jubilee in the church and in the field of life as Jesus played the role of the kinsman-redeemer and realizer of the Jubilee, a wonderful thing that the indwelling Holy Spirit works and speaks through us will restore the true reconciliation and koinonia by cancelling debt, liberating the oppressed and returning the land. Caring for the afflicted in the Jubilee spirit will set us free from the narrow soteriology that only I and my family need to be saved and bring us to a wider one that embraces my neighbors and even this land where we stand. Is it not the will of the Lord who called us and saved us in order to co-work with him in terms of Jubilee?

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[1] Recited from “How do we understand suffering from disaster?”, https://www.umc.org/en/content/ask-the-umc-how-do-united-methodists-understand-human-suffering-from-natural-disaster.

[2] Sermon 98. On Visiting the Sick. I. §2.

[3] Park Jun-seong. “The Nepal earthquake is due to Hinduism?...” Believe in Jesus, 5/16/2015. http://www.newscj.com/news/ articleView.html?idxno=290524. 2021/3/19.

[4] Speaklifedaily. “62 Tibetan Monks Follow Christ,” 22nd December 2016. https://speaklife.org.uk/2016/12/22/62-tibetan-monks-follow-christ/. 17th March 2021.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Sermon 62. The End of Christ’s Coming. III §6.

[8] Sermon 98. On Visiting the Sick. II. §1.

[9] https://www.umc.org/en/content/ask-the-umc-how-do-united-methodists-understand-human-suffering-from-natural-disaster.

[10] Dónal P. O’Mathúna, Christian Theology and Disasters: Where is God in All This? Ibid.

[11] AsktheUMC. Op cit.

[12] Shin Jiyeon. “The fallacy of the theory of judgment on natural disasters in the Bible.” 2011/3/18. http://www.newsnjoy.or.kr/news/articlePrint.html?idxno=34216. 2020/12/20.

Jay Choi: Jubilee Mission and Poverty in the Philippines

Today’s post is by Rev. Jae Hyoung Choi. Rev. Choi is Missionary in Residence with the General Board of Global Ministries. It is part of an occasional series on mission and jubilee.

In my past post, I said that unity is important for mission but not the ultimate end of the church. The raison d’e tre of the church always has something to do with the plan of God’s salvation for the world. In order to save the world, the unity of church becomes one important means.

What does it mean for the church to save the world? Solving the most urgent and universal problems of the world through God’s will and way! When the church is fully committed to this task, only then can it boldly speak the truth, receive credibility in the world, radiate the real meaning of eternity it propagates, and be acknowledged for its origin of divine revelation and commission.

Poverty in the Philippines
Then what is the most urgent and universal problem that Philippine society now faces? Needless to say, it is poverty. A kind of poverty from which the masses suffer, requiring a call for the church to be one.

Like many Latin American and African countries, the Philippines is full of natural and human resources. Also, the Philippines is the only majority Christian country in Asia. Nevertheless, many in the Philippines have long been affected by poverty and socioeconomic polarization. The coexistence of countless church buildings and widespread poverty is the dilemma of the country.

Unfortunately, at the outset of this dilemma, there was Christian mission. When the early Spanish missionaries brought the gospel, they introduced Jesus, but without Jubilee. What arrived with Jesus at that time was the Roman concept of absolute private ownership. Before the Spaniards arrived, a local indigenous people had had their own ownership philosophy and practices.

“Akin”	Exclusively mine (things produced or traded)
“Amin”	Exclusively ours (like villages and rice terraces)
“Atin”	Inclusively ours (like mountains, rivers, and ocean)

As reflected in their everyday languages, the indigenous people had a clear distinction between private and communal ownership, and they had been able to practice it organically. That local ownership was similar to the biblical principle of Jubilee.

Early Spanish missionaries were pious and committed people, but at the same time they were the people of their own time who took the Roman ownership for granted. The indigenous Filipinos could not fully understand the Roman concept of ownership. Onofre Corpuz, a Filipino scholar, said that from the colonization in 1500 to the Revolution in 1900, for 400 years, except for a few local elites, almost all Filipinos were still confused about the concept of Roman absolute private ownership.^[1]

For me, this Roman ownership that was bundled with Jesus was the first button put in the wrong place in Christian mission in the Philippines. What if, the missionaries introduced Jesus who proclaimed Jubilee in his inauguration sermon?

As the old giant Goliath horrified God’s people, so too does poverty scorn the people of God. What we need is a small stone that can eradicate it, just as David defeated Goliath by hiting the dead center with a small stone. And the stone is the “Law of Jubilee.” God has put this law in the hand of the church to throw at evil.

Misunderstanding Jubilee
But does the church understand this? There are many churches, and many of them are large, powerful, and influential; but they seem to have no will to comprehend and proclaim the principles in Jubilee. Churches are too busy with heavenly concerns and earthly businesses. Their energies are divided and wasted.

But if they pull themselves together; tighten their grip; and in unity, with resolution, stare at the Giant, then the Spirit of God, who is able to make the impossible, possible; will come and work through them. Then the world will know God through the church in action.

My spirit is depressed, however, with the way people misunderstand Jubilee. According to my personal experience, there seems to be two main understandings of Jubilee: spiritualized Jubilee and idealized Jubilee.

First, spiritualized Jubilee is representative of a mere religious or spiritual symbol. One example is the 50-year Jubilee cycle, which is used for periodical celebration. The danger in this approach dissolves the historical and social significance of Jubilee.

This phenomenon happened frequently in the history of Israel. During the Second Temple period, most people were accustomed to such spiritual Jubilee that they used the cycle as an apocalyptic tool to predict the future. We know how the socio-economic and political conditions were during the time when they were holding the husk without the kernel of Jubilee, and why Jesus proclaimed Jubilee in his inauguration sermon; “The Spirit of the Lord is on me … to proclaim Jubilee (the year of the Lord’s favor).” (Luke 4:18-19)

There have been numerous theories on the cause of poverty in the Philippines. But Christians should be able to discern the correlation between spiritualization of Jubilee and the prolonged socio-economic and political extortion and injustice. In other words, the real culprit for such problems is neither corrupt politicians nor unjust social structure, it is Christians!

The second misunderstanding is to see Jubilee as an impractical ideal. Ironically, this attitude is found among many church leaders who are well versed in Scripture and is more serious than laypeople spiritualizing Jubilee. Christian leaders treat Jubilee as a mere ideal; an impracticable, utopian vision; or a culture of a specific ethnic group in antiquity, analogous to those who cut their own hair but still believe that they are Samson.

Nevertheless, the Counsellor, the Spirt of Hope, always reminds us of the vision the Prophet foresaw, “The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.” (Habakkuk 2:14)

Churches in the Philippines, converging all their energy to solving the most urgent and universal problem of society, poverty, through the law of Jubilee, while journeying toward unity in the Triune God, is ecumenical Jubilee mission. Such mission has been a constant call from those who are in dark, lonely, and marginalized corners of society. It is a wake-up call from the suffering people who yearn for the epiphany. It is an invitation from the suffering world to the church to be faithful to God’s call. The church should make this mission its own again, lest it is too late.

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[1] Onofre D. Corpuz, An Economic History of the Philippines (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1997), 63.

Jay Choi: Ecumenical Mission and Jubilee in the Philippines

Today’s post is by Rev. Jae Hyoung Choi. Rev. Choi is Missionary in Residence with the General Board of Global Ministries. It is part of an occasional series on mission and jubilee.

Looking from the conventional view of Christian mission, doing mission work in the Philippines is ambiguous. Does the view of mission as establishing the church through conversion by spreading the gospel make much sense in the Philippines? The archipelago accepted the first missionaries from Spain almost 500 years ago, and Protestant mission has been active for more than a century.

The slogan “believe in Jesus!” will put both evangelists and hearers in an awkward situation. The same with “church.” If “church” means a space for worship, almost every barangay has it. If the “church” means an order, the Philippine has a state of art order from the Vatican to the barrio. The recent growth of some Protestant denominations is overwhelming, especially that of Pentecostals.

Thus, this tension between the “Christianized Philippines” and the “Christianizing mission” demands an answer. As a missionary who served this land, I find the answer in ecumenical jubilee mission.

The most famous biblical foundation of mission is the Great Commission in Matthew 28:18-20. The verses, however, have suggested a rather aggressive expansion of the institutional church. According to Karl Barth’s exegesis, its meaning is rather closer to “filling the world with new ethical beings that are transformed in the gospel of Christ as the disciples were.” Its Old Testament parallel could be Genesis 1:28, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.”

Another problem is that most Christians have tended to take this verse as the sole foundation of mission. As a result, the other Great Commission has been overlooked and neglected. The other Great Commission is unity among Christians, found in John 17:11. Jesus willed his followers to be one.

Christian unity and mission are like two sides of one coin. We can never overemphasize the missional meaning of Christian unity. That is, mission is not only “going out to preach the gospel” but also “loving one another to be one in Christ.”

This pursuit of inner cohesion that may look somewhat passive becomes, in fact, a very active social kerygma toward the world. The apathy of the world is exposed through agape in the church; the violence of the world is disclosed by peacefulness in the church; the injustice of the world is indicted through equality in the church; and conflict and division in the world are questioned through the unity of the church. Thus, unity of the church pro-vides a profound and practical guideline for mission.

Sadly, church today seems to devote itself too much for centrifugal mission (going out, reaching out, and preaching to) while neglecting the centripetal aspect of mission (forming a model within so that others come and see). The balance between propagation and unity has been severely damaged.

Figuratively speaking, it is like children from a dysfunctional family yearning for recognition and acceptance outside their family. Or it is like troubled spouses wandering outside searching for immoral satisfaction. Looking for the solution from the outside while the problem is from within is a paradox. The more they roam outside, the worse their situation will be, and in the end, they will be the objects of censure from others.

Likewise, many churches are busy with various outreach programs while pretending their inner relations are normal. What about the universal church? Is it healthy enough as one body? If we understand how the early Christians wrestled to keep unity within the church, we will surely be ashamed of being called Christians today.

Throughout history, when disunity of the church reached an unbearable level, the church was no longer the subject of God’s mission. Instead, the church itself turned into the object of God’s mission, which meant severe judgment. How many innocent people had to suffer and shed their blood because of the disunity of the church! Therefore, mission should always include the church’s looking within through genuine metanoia (repentance) and kenosis (self-emptiness). Isn’t this the mandate for the universal church, to be one in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit the essence of ecumenical movement?

By looking at mission from this ecumenical perspective, doing mission in the Philippines is never ambiguous. Christians from all traditions should be aware of this unity and strive for this unity with all their hearts and strength. All missionaries should be fertilizers for this unity. Churches, instead of revealing other churches’ weaknesses, should strengthen their own weaknesses by seeing others’ strengths until all of them may grow into maturity through Christ together. Then the churches will be the agents of love, justice, peace, forgiveness and reconciliation to the world.

Although unity is important, it is not the ultimate end of the church. The clue for unity should not be sought in “doctrine” or “belief” anymore; instead it should be found in the joint action of solving the most urgent and universal problem. I will talk more about the role of Jubilee in this sort of joint action in my next post.

Jay Choi: Reimagining Christian Mission with Jubilee

Today’s post is by Rev. Jae Hyoung Choi. Rev. Choi is Missionary in Residence with the General Board of Global Ministries. It is part of what will be an occasional series on mission and jubilee.

Today, one of the most common understandings of Christian mission is mission as “helping.” Helping is an integral part of mission, but it is not the entirety of mission. The Church also faces a challenge that the world tends to show apathy and antipathy towards churches’ attempts at helping.

One reason for this could be that people are looking for a fundamentally different approach from the Church. With the increase of technology and efficiency, goods and services overflow, and yet poverty still overburdens a majority of the population. This is a constant human condition that calls for a particular Christian response.

What we learn from Moses, the prophets, and Jesus is that their responses were radical, penetrating the core of the problem. Starting backward from the apostles, to Jesus, to the prophets, and to the Law of Moses, we reach to the Law of Jubilee. What I am going to talk about in this piece is the biblical Jubilee, specifically its land ownership principle and its relationship to Christian mission.

Jubilee Spirit
The Law of Jubilee is the culmination of the Sabbatical regulation, which is central to the Torah. It was promulgated for sustainable justice and equality through periodic restoration of land ownership. In Leviticus 25, Jubilee is defined to include the laws on land, labor, housing, and lending and the foundation is the law concerning land. Verse 23 shows the great principle of Jubilee, “The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers.”

Without doubt, the overarching spirit in this ancient law is “fairness and justice.” The kind of society Jubilee envisions and embodies is (1) that clothing, food, and shelter for all people are secured, (2) that there should be no human bondage, and (3) that out of this social security, all the members of society flourish socioeconomically, ethically, and spiritually.

The Law of Jubilee was akin to a “Silver Bullet” God provided for the liberated Israel so that they could eradicate poverty and oppression and pursue a peaceful life. The Bible depicts God’s Jubilee people as a holy salvific people since it radiates God to the world through their life that stands in contrast to that of the world.

Jubilee Ownership
The Jubilee ownership principle is an organic mixture of private and communal ownership. That is, what a person produces out of his/her labor becomes his/her possession. Likewise, what God creates belongs to divine possession. Ecclesiastes 5:9 clarifies the meaning of divine possession, “The increase from the land is taken by all.” In short, according to the Law of Jubilee, ownership, usership, and tradership of land ought to be ruled by the principles of “fairness, equality, and justice.”

About 2,000 years after Moses, Basil the Great, who was from Cappadocia of modern-day Turkey and became the bishop of Caesarea, revisited the Jubilee ownership and stated it thus: “There are [Ownership] between ta idia (one’s own) – what is one’s private property in virtue of one’s having brought it into being, as the product of one’s labor, and ta koina (common goods) which are just ‘there’, which have been created by God for the use of all. Natural productive elements are not ‘there’ due to anyone’s merit or labor.”^[1] When the bishop saw the land monopoly pervasive in the empire drove commoners out of their lands into poverty and slavery, he denounced it by saying that whether you are a first settler or a conqueror, if you privatize the land God created for all people, it is “robbery.”^[2]

Henry George and Jubilee
In late 19^th century, about 1,500 years after Bishop Basil, a poor young man from San Francisco visited New York City. While witnessing the coexistence of skyscrapers going up high and pauperism below, this bewildered young man was determined to understand “the law which associates poverty with progress, and increases want with advancing wealth.”^[3] This man was Henry George. After arduous days of labor, he would visit the public library in the evening for self-study and finally came to the conclusion that the root cause of poverty amid progress was derived from land monopoly. Then he proposed a remedy based on the Law of Jubilee.

George knew that it was utterly impossible to redistribute the land in modern societies. So, he proposed to tax the value of land and return the revenues for all the members of society. He got this idea from the tithe, shared by the landed to help the landless, like the Levites, orphans, and widows. Because Henry George advocated levying a tax on land value increase while removing all other taxes upon human exertion, people called his Land Value Taxation the “Single Tax Movement.” From today’s perspective, this Single Tax Movement was tantamount to socioeconomic structural reform to eradicate poverty and polarization of wealth. The important takeaway is that George’s thought was based on the principles of biblical Jubilee.

Mesmerized by George’s philosophy, Leo Tolstoy included the spirit of Jubilee in his novels to enlighten his fellow Russians, especially peasants. Influenced by Tolstoy, Sun Yat Sen, the first president of China, included Henry George’s idea in his book Three Principles and wanted to implement Jubilee principle as the economic foundation of China. When Mao Zedong’s the Red Army succeeded, Sun’s successor Chiang Kai Shek retreated to Formosa, today’s Taiwan, and implemented Sun Yat Sen’s economic plan. Although Taiwan is a Buddhist country, at its economic base there is the biblical principle of Jubilee. We know that Taiwan was the only country in Asia that could withstand the Asia financial crisis in 1997.

Jubilee and Mission
In Hwang Gee, Gang-won-do, South Korea, there is a place called “Jesus Abbey.” It was established by an American Anglican missionary, Reuben Archer Torrey III. Father Torrey served in Korea for 50 years. He read Henry George’s book Progress and Poverty. Later, he translated the book into Korean with the title How to Escape from Poverty? For his entire life, he prayed for Korea and preached Jubilee.

Many Korean young people followed him. When they gather, they pray earnestly for Jubilee Korea, Reunified Korea, and Mission Korea. And when they scatter, they become the evangelists of Jesus and Jubilee. I have been fortunate enough to meet several among them who have been actively working to apply the Jubilee principles to Korea’s national land policy.

Christian mission needs helping the poor, and it also needs solving the root causes of poverty. As we are going through this crucial transition period in history, the Church should be able to reimagine its mission with Jubilee because God’s suffering people and groaning creation thirst for justice.

On his deathbed, Father Torrey left this final word, “Go up to the rooftop and proclaim Jubilee.” We need to remember that the boldest mission John Wesley did was to denounce the English Enclosure, which expelled farmers from the land and made them into a lumpenproletariat during the Industrial Revolution.^[4] At the same time, we need to remember that such courageous social action was from the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit that empowered Jesus to proclaim the Year of Lord’s favor, Jubilee.

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[1] Charles Avila, Ownership: Early Christian Teaching (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2004), 135.

[2] Avila, Ownership, 135.

[3] Henry George, Progress and Poverty (New York: Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, 1997), 12.

[4] Francis McConnell, John Wesley, (New York: Abingdon Press, 1939), 251.

Jae Hyoung Choi: COVID-19 & Mission: Imagine Jubilee

Today’s post is by Rev. Jae Hyoung Choi. Rev. Choi is Missionary in Residence with the General Board of Global Ministries. This post first appeared in Korean on United Methodist News Service on Jan. 6, 2021: https://www.umnews.org/ko/news/imagine-jubilee-for-the-mission-in-the-covid-19-era.

It is unlikely that the coronavirus pandemic will end easily. One out of thirteen people in the United States was or is infected with the virus. Some people share a gloomy estimate that in the worst-case scenario, 60% of the world population will be infected.

This time calls for sober reflections on what it means to participate in mission. Our situation reminds us of the time when the Roman Empire was in crisis due to the massive invasions from the northern people (c. 400-500). The difference is that we are receiving the attack from an invisible virus. While witnessing the empire at the brink of falling apart, which was something inconceivable, the Romans wondered whether their Roman gods were punishing them for replacing them with the One Christian God.

Augustine of Hippo, who felt the gravity of this question, reacted through his historical theological work, The City of God. Based on Hellenistic dualism, Augustine concluded that although the earthly city was temporal, the heavenly city was eternal. Unfortunately, his answer, without his intention, became a theoretical basis for the hegemony of kings and popes for the following millennium, known to us as the dark ages.
 
Some characteristics of the church’s mission during Augustine’s time were: (1) the further institutionalization of the church, (2) the church’s gain of sociopolitical influence through imperial backing, and (3) energetically practicing charity out of monastic spirituality. Although the church was given freedom and authority that was unimaginable when it had been under persecution, the paradigm of practicing charity continued.

What if Augustine had envisioned that the crisis could be an opportunity? What if he called the church that was given authority to a mission of proclaiming jubilee ("deror" in Hebrew, which means "liberty," involving cancelling debts, releasing the enslaved, and restoring patrimony, as Jesus preached in his inauguration sermon in Luke 4:18-19), not only helping the poor but also eradicating the cause of poverty, and not only pursuing personal monastic ideals but also transmitting the ascetic zeal toward collective social reform? Rather than a dark age, the church may have been a beacon for a more just society in the world.  
 
Today, Christian mission is carried out institutionally through a myriad of ecumenical global networks and partnerships, and the church still has socioeconomic, political, and cultural potential and influence. The question is, where are we using God’s given power and resources, particularly during this crisis? The coronavirus has exposed the bare face of the world system that is tainted with structural injustices and exploitations.

If the church is waiting to resume its mission business as usual, while not discerning the signs of time, we could be conspirators in another dark age. It is time to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, jubilee.

The pandemic has been a time for the church to examine its mission. All Christians want the post-pandemic church mission to be a renewed pilgrimage towards Jesus’s mission of giving the world life and giving it to the full. I wish to reflect on three things about mission during these times.

First, mission is looking back to our past.
For so long, Christian mission has been entangled with the modern ideology of progress and growth. The church, after a long period of vigorous mission engagement, is now feeling fatigued while wrestling with rapid social changes and facing an uncertain future. Mission includes action and reflection. The pandemic has been a time to slow down and reflect for the church. It would be good to utilize this temporary period as a Sabbath to look back at our mission thus far. To stop never means to quit mission. It is time for self-reflection before standing up and walking with a new mind and a renewed commitment. Looking back is a vital component of mission.   

Second, mission is looking into ourselves.
Mission is God’s mission. Christian tradition teaches that mission overflows from the inner agape relationship among the triune God, from the creation of life, to sustaining and saving life, to completing life. We often tend to make God’s mission our own enterprise. With the limited freedom during this pandemic, we are led to investigate our mission motives and put ourselves at the right place in God’s mission. The reason why the church is so beautiful and special is because God has called it to be active participants in God’s life-giving mission in history.   

Third, mission is looking forward to our future with jubilee imagination.
This dangerous virus has magnified an intersectionality of the pandemic with the other social problems, like poverty, racism, and climate injustices. The pandemic has shifted people’s question beyond mere superficial phenomena to something fundamentally structural. Do we have the answer? The biblical jubilee provides a new mission imagination.

Leviticus chapter 25 specifies the four elements of jubilee as (1) canceling debts, (2) freeing slaves, (3) returning land to original owner, and (4) laying the land fallow. To sum up, jubilee aimed to secure clothing, food, and shelter for all people and sustain life to the full, generation after generation.

By resetting their society with the jubilee cycle every 50 year and thus periodically eradicating the causes of socioeconomic polarization and inequality, the ancient Israel manifested their mission of radiating God’s holiness to other nations. Jubilee was the central theme of the Hebrew prophets in their criticism of the social structures and their efforts to energize the people for a better society. In his inauguration sermon, Jesus made his mission clear by proclaiming jubilee (Luke 4:18-19). And later Jesus’s jubilee was fused into the early Christian mission community, the koinonia.

From the jubilee perspective, salvation is to solve the most universal and urgent problem of each age through God’s people with God’s hearts and ways. John Wesley was one of God’s great people of jubilee, who, in pursuit of personal holiness, annunciated the good news to the people, and who, with the vision of social holiness, denounced structural problems, for instance, the enclosure that drove countless English peasants off of the land and thus to pauperism. On this deathbed, the late Father Reuben Archer Torrey III, an Anglican missionary in Korea who is my missionary role model, left this final word of his, “Go up to the roof and preach jubilee.”   

Many people are hopeful because the end of the pandemic is gradually visible with vaccines. But a mere return to the past will be both impossible and irresponsible while facing an uncertain future. I pray that this pandemic is a seminal moment of a new Christian mission by looking back our past, looking into ourselves, and looking forward to our future with Jesus and jubilee.