Owning and Being Owned

“The land cannot be sold permanently because the land is mine and you are foreigners—you’re my tenants.”
Leviticus 25:23 (MSG)

According to the United States Census Bureau, 80 percent of the U.S. population lives in urban areas. I have learned along my life journey that when you live your life in urban America, there are certain realities of rural living that are completely lost on you. For example, here in rural Iowa, land is gold. It is among the most productive farmland in the entire world, and to those families who have owned it and worked it for generations it is priceless. I have learned that this didn’t just evolve over time. It’s part of the land’s heritage.

Our own small town here on the Iowa prairie was envisioned and founded by a Dutch pastor and his flock of largely uneducated farmers and peasants right as Iowa became a state and the Federal Government was selling the land. Our town’s founder had collected and consolidated his congregation’s monies in order to make it most efficient to purchase, survey, plat, and divide the land. It was a wise thing to do. However, his simple flock failed to understand the complexities, bureaucracy, and inefficiencies of a Federal Government 1,000 miles away in a time 15 years before the Pony Express. The process took so long that they accused their own pastor of being a con-man, cheat, and stealing their money and all of the land that they’d been promised. They threw him out of the pulpit.

The deeds for the land eventually arrived from Washington, the land was distributed appropriately, and tempers eventually eased. Nevertheless, I have observed that the precious, priceless land only grew in covetous value in the hearts of those who owned it. Ironically, the land became a modern-day golden calf to people who were among the most religiously devout people you’d ever meet. It seems they majored on some of the minor religious lessons of the Great Story and failed to learn one of the most major spiritual lessons it communicates. Families have divided, sometimes violently, over the land. In the farm crisis of the 1980s, some committed suicide when they realized that they were going to lose their family’s land to foreclosure. Along my journey, I have observed that these are the kinds of things that happen if and when I allow the things I own to own me.

Today’s chapter is incredibly fascinating. God continues to instruct His ancient Hebrew people regarding the way He wants them to live, and now He begins to get into some details of how He wants them to handle both land and property. God instructs them to give the land a sabbath rest every seven years, just like He gave people rest every seven days. How amazing that God viewed His creation, the land, as a living thing that He cared about. He wanted humanity to care about His creation, too, just as He has cared about them, delivered them from slavery, and is choosing to live among them.

God goes on to tell the Hebrews that every fiftieth year (the year after seven periods of seven years) is to be a year of Jubilee which is a giant reset button. Everyone takes the entire year off. People all return to their family land. Lands revert back to the families to whom they were originally allotted. Debts are cancelled. Reset, refresh, and restart.

This entire system is predicated on one major truth: God owns the land. It is His and the families to whom it has been allotted are merely chosen stewards to whom it has been given for caretaking and graciously providing for their own daily needs. Any perception they may have that the land is theirs and they own it is a mirage.

In the quiet this morning, that is the core spiritual lesson that erupted for me out of the text. It is the same core lesson that Jesus continued to teach.

“Don’t hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and corroded by rust or—worse!—stolen by burglars. Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it’s safe from moth and rust and burglars. It’s obvious, isn’t it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being.”
Matthew 6:19-21 (MSG)

Jesus is the Alpha Point from which everything in creation flows. Jesus is the Omega Point to which everything in creation will return. Nothing that I own is really mine. This is the lesson I’ve watched Iowa farmers and families miss as they tear themselves and one another apart over the land they believe they own.

Everything that I am and have is from God. I am just a caretaker, an earthly manager, and a steward to whom everything I have has been given and entrusted. God was trying to communicate this to the ancient Hebrews. Jesus was trying to communicate the same thing to everyone.

The further I progress in my spiritual journey, the more I’ve come to understand and embrace that the only priceless thing in the grand scheme of things is the sacrificial gift of Jesus’ grace and mercy. The more I embrace this treasure, the more I see everything I am and have in perspective of the economy of God’s Kingdom.

The more I think I own something, the more it ends up owning me.