I started to tell you a story about retirement and Jubilee.

Years ago, my friend Katie was retiring from her work helping churches.

“People ask me what I’m going to do next,” she said. “I don’t know what to tell them.”

I understood. Not long before I had left a job as a pastor, not knowing what was next. I now know that next was working as a chaplain and working with Katie for a bit, and teaching, and consulting.

But the very question of “next” assumes that work, or play, needs a specific answer, that someone retiring has to account for time.

As we talked, I started telling her about an idea in the Old Testament called Jubilee. When the people of Israel came into the land God promised, God gave two specific words about the land. Every seven years, the land should go unworked. Animals and people wouldn’t plow.

And then every fiftieth year would be a year of Jubilee. Land would go back to the original family allocations when the people came into the land. Indentured servants would be set free.

Looking at retirement as Jubilee, I said, means that we don’t have to say, “here’s what I’m doing next.” It’s saying, “I’m taking a year to not have to answer that question.”

It sounded good in that moment years ago. But when I started to tell you the story, I realized how much I assumed about the biblical idea of Jubilee.

I’m not writing that research essay right now.

I am acknowledging how often we reference things from the Bible without having looked at the words and the context and the timing. We use the ideas to prove our own points rather than having our points shaped by the text.

Maybe it’s time for my own Jubilee.