Unshakeable Grace

Unshakeable Grace

Unshakeable Grace

Jubilee Preaching Aid for August 24, 2025

Reflecting on the Revised Common Lectionary passages for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost in the context of Jubilee 2025, the Old Testament and the Epistle texts spoke to me about how we as people of faith can proclaim the year of Jubilee with confidence in the unshakeable reign of God.

In Jeremiah 1, the prophet hears God calling him before he even knows how to speak:

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

It is a word of divine initiation and purpose. Jeremiah doesn’t volunteer for the role. He’s young, unsure, and overwhelmed. But God promises to be with him, to give him the words, and to give him the courage to uproot and to plant.

We often think that calls to justice, to hope, to visions like Jubilee — the biblical dream of freedom, justice, and debt forgiveness — are for someone else. Someone older. Someone braver. Someone with more power. But throughout Scripture, we hear otherwise. The call to proclaim liberty — to announce good news to the poor, release to the captives, and the year of the Lord’s favour — often comes first to those who don’t think they are ready. But God sends them anyway.

Hebrews 12 reminds us of the weight and holiness of this calling. It paints a vivid contrast between two mountains: Mount Sinai, where God’s voice thundered in fearsome power, and Mount Zion, the place of grace, forgiveness, and unshakable joy.

“You have not come to something that can be touched… But you have come to Mount Zion… to the assembly of the firstborn… to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant.”

If Sinai symbolizes a word that convicts, Zion represents the mercy that redeems. This is where Jubilee finds its grounding — not just in legal relief from debt, but in God’s secure and fixed promise of grace. Jubilee, as portrayed in Scripture, was always about more than economics — it was a prophetic preview of a restored creation, where people are no longer defined by debt, bondage, or exclusion, but by their place in God’s beloved community, and where the Earth’s resources are stewarded for the benefit of all creatures.

We live in a world that feels like it’s shaking — economically, politically, environmentally. But Hebrews promises that what will remain is the kingdom that cannot be shaken. Christ’s reign is marked not by fear, but by grace. Not by condemnation, but by mercy. Not by oppression, but by freedom.

True biblical Jubilee proclaims that forgiveness, restoration, and community matter more than profit. Jubilee resets the scales. Not just to balance the books, but to reveal God’s heart:

• That no one is beyond redemption.
• That no family should be trapped forever in debt.
• That freedom and justice are God’s will for all.

Today, you and I are being called — like Jeremiah — to proclaim that kind of hope. That kind of justice. That kind of grace. Not with fire and fury, but with compassion and truth. In the face of all the suffering, prejudice, exploitation, and cruelty throughout the world, God’s reign is unfolding for those who have eyes to see – eyes of faith, not sight.

We are inheritors of a kingdom that cannot be shaken. So let us live like it. Let us speak prophetically, even if we think we are not equipped for it. Let us work for the cancelation of debts, let us speak with courage, weed out injustice, and plant peace.

For in Christ, we are already standing on Mount Zion — the place of mercy, joy, and a Jubilee that never ends. Amen.

Rev. Marianne Emig Carr is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in Canada (PCC), serving the two-point Brockville-Caintown Pastoral Charge in Eastern Ontario. Prior to becoming a minister, Marianne was a corporate lawyer for 19 years at General Motors of Canada. Marianne serves on the Steering Committee of KAIROS, is a member of the PCC Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations Committee and has been actively involved in refugee sponsorship efforts.