What does love require of us, and how can we provoke that spirit of Jubilee that God was up to?
—Shane Claiborne, The Francis Factor
At CAC’s 2015 conference The Francis Factor, activist Shane Claiborne told a story about how his community’s study of Jubilee and their unexpected receipt of $10,000 in a legal settlement led to a creative action on Wall Street:
We thought, “Wow, this money isn’t just for our nonprofit. This should go to folks on the street, because we were literally fighting anti-homeless legislation.” We said, “Let’s use that money…. Let’s have a Jubilee party and let’s do it on Wall Street.” We invited a bunch of homeless folks from all over New York, many of them friends, and we said, “Hey, we’re going to go to Wall Street and we’re going to give away the money that we won in a lawsuit. We need to be peaceful, but it’s going to be beautiful.” We didn’t want it to be too crazy, so we broke it up in small change…. We had hundreds of us that had it divvied up everywhere. We had people on bikes and people with backpacks, people with coffee mugs that were filled with money.
When we got to Wall Street, you could see folks from the street trickling in wondering, “Is this really happening?” The police are all already there … and they’re insisting, “This is not happening. If anyone’s here for this money distribution, it’s not happening.” What they didn’t know is we were already there…. As soon as the bell was about to drop on Wall Street, … we announced, “We believe another world is possible, another world where everybody has what they need and there’s not this deep inequity.”
We preached it that morning and then Sister Margaret [a Catholic sister] announced the Jubilee, blew the ram’s horn, and money started pouring out everywhere. I mean, we had people on the balconies with paper money. They start pouring it out…. It was beautiful. They’re singing. This one … street sweeper, he’s got his dustpan filled with money. He’s like, “It is a good day at work. Hallelujah!” Another guy grabs some money off the street and he said, “Now I can get the prescription I needed. Thank you.” We even had folks from inside Wall Street that heard about what was happening. They said, “We heard that there’s more fun happening out here, so we’re here.” One guy just said, “I want to start getting bagels and giving them out,” and he did. It was contagious….
I think that in the end, our goal is not to create enemies but is actually to courageously proclaim the vision of God that is so big that everyone is welcome. But it also means, as Desmond Tutu says, that those who have been oppressed are free from oppression, and those who have done the oppressing are free from being the oppressor, that everyone is set free. [1] That’s the invitation for us.
References:
[1] Claiborne may be paraphrasing Nelson Mandela’s quote: “I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.” Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela (Little, Brown and Company, 1995), 624.
Shane Claiborne, The Francis Factor: How St. Francis and Pope Francis are Changing the World (Center for Action and Contemplation, 2015). Unavailable.
Image credit and inspiration: Wei Feng, untitled (detail), 2025, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Like this person in the field, arms unbound and outstretched, we explore the freedom that rises when we support economic justice, no longer tethered to endless and oppressive debt relationships.
Story from Our Community:
Does God call us to exhausting service? As someone who has spent the last fifty years trying to live into a balance of contemplation and action, exhausting service has been a major source of temptation and spiritual pride. The gift of Sabbath, as described in Leviticus, suggests a way of life that balances work with extended times of resting in God’s grace. For me, exhaustive service is another expression of a Protestant work ethic, encouraged by the church, that is focused more on achievement and less on God. Are we to conclude that unless we are exhausted, our service is not sufficient?
—Terry C.
