Biblical economics first caught my attention as I read about the brickyards of Egypt. Deprived of their livelihood, then their land, and finally their own labor and liberty, the Hebrews embodied loss that cried out for divine intervention. The Exodus story tells of a literal liberation from economic deprivation. Maybe it so captivated me because I knew people who cried out like the Hebrews, people who were suffering under daily exploitation. These people lived in modern-day Burundi, but their life circumstances echoed the brickyards of Egypt. They fit the description of those often called the “havenots.” And they were certainly in line for some liberation.
When I arrived in Burundi for the first time, the extreme poverty shook me. Adobe-mud homes with dirt floors, street children and mothers begging throughout the city, dilapidated buildings, and nearly every paved road littered with potholes. So many of the people I met up-country had hollowed cheeks, dull complexions, and bodies thinned by malnourishment. This was the landscape Claude knew intimately. Extreme poverty was his lived experience. I did not imagine he could be shocked by anyone’s impoverished state.
But the first time Claude visited the displaced and marginalized Batwa community just north of his neighborhood, he was confronted with a shocking level of poverty—even by Burundian standards. The Batwa are the third and smallest tribe in the country. Hunters and gatherers who lived in the forest until the civil war dawned, the rebels pushed them out and dispossessed them of their land. Ever since, Batwa families often cluster together on the rough edges of society. They have worked for landowners known to treat them like slaves in terms of both living conditions and compensation.
Never before had Claude encountered such poverty or precarity, which is saying something since he grew up on less than a dollar a day in the thick of extreme poverty himself. One of thirteen children, Claude watched as his dad—a pastor—would be paid with a chicken or handful of mangos, seldom enough to meet all the family’s needs. He recalls many skipped meals so his younger sisters could eat. It would be years before I realized his family teetered on the verge of malnourishment throughout most his childhood.
Claude’s own experience of extreme poverty made him determined to find a way out. But it was while visiting that first Batwa village that he determined to do something to break the cycle of incessant impoverishment for these families and the most vulnerable communities in Burundi.
Growing up in the United States, I remember the regularity of sermons centered on tithing. We were encouraged to give 10 percent of our income to support the mission of our local church, which included funding missionaries abroad, charities at home, and the cost of running the church. Early on I learned that money, as far as the Bible supposedly was concerned, circled around the capacity to support the church. I did not find the call to tithe compelling, with its circularity of supporting the church and its mission.
Contrast that to the quickening when I first learned about jubilee, a practice for economic renewal embedded within the Bible. Immediately I felt the transformational potential. In Egypt’s liberation story I recognized something very different, something I wanted to dive into, an economic program I truly longed to practice. This is where my learning about jubilee, and my commitment to liberation theology began in earnest.
As I studied the history and the biblical texts, I discovered that the cornerstone of jubilee was debt cancellation. On the dawn of the fiftieth year when the shofar blew, debts were forgiven, breaking the cycle of indebtedness across the land. Families were set free from the weight of debt. Communities received large-scale release; the economy experienced a reprieve. The entire economy underwent a reset. And a liberated landscape meant a fresh start for everyone.
From the first encounter, jubilee sounded expansive compared to the insular nature of tithing. According to Deuteronomy, Leviticus, and Isaiah, what I call the jubilee canon, jubilee was presented as an economic program not only about ecclesiastical sustainability but for the viability of the whole economy rooted in deep neighborliness. Releasing debt on such a massive scale allowed fiscal recovery and possibility for every neighbor and neighborhood. That one idea alone set my imagination spinning like a whirling dervish when it came to biblical economics. That scripture offered practical wisdom about something as fundamental as debt only increased my admiration for this ancient text, revealing its true relevance even to a modern context.
Even in those early days of jubilary awareness, I knew it wasn’t all good news. In truth, jubilee was both good news and hard news; good news for the poor and hard news for the well-off or burgeoning creditor class. Jubilee was also an opportunity for the more affluent to contribute to the well-being of their neighbors and the neighborhoods they shared together.
Perhaps this is why the American church has preferred to speak more of tithing and less, if at all, about jubilee when it comes to economics.
In light of the call of jubilee and the identity of people devoted to the justice of YHWH, the American commitment to the tithe that is expected by the church falls short. Claude asks, “Is that all? Ten percent?” In his understanding the true measure of a Christian and jubilary ethic of giving is not a percentage of one’s income given to the church but rather determined by how generously we respond to our neighbors.
In Burundi the institutions are often weak, lacking sufficient capacity to help the populous or offer a reliable safety net. So it is the family member, the neighbor, the fellow church-goer that comes to aid when there is a health crisis, an eviction, a shortfall making it hard to bring food to the table. You see your neighbors’ need and give what you can to help. You contribute to help build their home, to cover funeral costs, to pay their transport to the village to visit family. For years Claude has covered all the costs related to his nieces and nephews schooling—tuition fees, uniforms, and books and supplies for every term. As one of thirteen, his commitment is no small amount but ensures that his siblings’ children can stay in school.
“If you are only giving 10 percent,” Claude says, “you just are not paying attention to those around you. And you are not nearly as generous as Jesus expected his disciples to be in their life.” These snapshots of Claude in action are part of how Claude sees living into an ethic of jubilee that is wedded to neighborliness in scripture. For him, it’s important to reach out to people, assist in their tangible needs. Sometimes it is small but regular help, like an inhaler or school fees. Sometimes it’s delivering bags of fortified porridge to a family he knows is running short on funds to feed their children. Sometimes it’s helping someone find a job, get a leg up. Sometimes it’s practicing jubilee so neighbors are helped in the moment and can pay it forward when they’re able.
Where a tithe is often a rigid act of giving that benefits a church or institution, Claude sees the call of jubilee and Jesus’s generosity as for those around us, the neighbor. To him, this is the difference between a tithe and the largess of a jubilee practitioner. Jubilee is connected to neighborliness, recognizing the humanity of others and our interconnectedness, which includes economic action on behalf of one another. When we love our neighbors as we love ourselves, something Jesus commanded, we must care for their economic well-being as we would our own.
Some talk of jubilee as an antiquated practice for ancient economies. And they add to that the notation that these texts, and the policies they outline, are utopian ideals. Far from it, what the jubilary canon reveals is an uncanny awareness about the undulations of the economy, the role of debt in that unevenness, and therefore the need for better policies in place to address the inevitable indebtedness. Not utopian at all, it is a highly functional structure. Jubilee practices were enacted—a testament to a true grasp of the economic realities in the world. Debt happens—so too must jubilee if neighbors are to live viable lives. To think that the economy will just magically calibrate itself, that its benefits will naturally trickle down to those at the bottom of the pyramid, is magical thinking, a false ideal that world economies now hold to. And not at all in sync with how economies are actually structured.
Excerpted from Jubilee Economics: The Purpose, Practices and Possibilities for a Better Future by by Kelley Nikondeha. Copyright © 2026 by Kelley Nikondeha. Used by permission of Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York, 10545. All rights reserved. https://orbisbooks.com/
