Ep. 379 Kelley Nikondeha Returns - Jubilee Economics

What does it mean to take Jesus seriously when he announces good news to the poor, freedom for the captive, and release from debt? In this episode of Shifting Culture, I’m joined by theologian and practitioner Kelley Nikondeha to talk about her new book Jubilee Economics and the disruptive, concrete vision of Jubilee found in Scripture. We explore why Jubilee was never just a spiritual metaphor but a real economic practice involving debt forgiveness, land, labor, and community restoration. Kelley shares stories from her work in Burundi—where economic collapse forced hard, human decisions about care, reentry, and neighbor-love—and helps us reframe Jesus’s sermon in Luke 4 as dangerous, embodied good news. This conversation asks what Jubilee might look like today, and what it might cost us to love our neighbors well in a debt-saturated world.

Kelley Nikondeha is a liberation theologian, community development practitioner, and author of First Advent in Palestine and Defiant. She is Co-founder of Communities of Hope in Burundi.

Kelley's Book:

Jubilee Economics

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Episode Transcript

Kelley Nikondeha (00:00):
While Jubilee is a concrete set of practices,

(00:03):
you know, it also is a set ofpractices that set our
imagination on a different kindof trajectory. I think Isaiah
does that so beautifully. Whenhe was imagining a new city, a
way, the way a city could workbetter, work differently, and
Jubilee was absolutely part ofwhat he was dreaming and
imagining.

Joshua Johnson (00:36):
Hello and welcome to the shifting culture
podcast in which we haveconversations about the culture
we create and the impact we canmake. We long to see the body of
Christ look like Jesus. I'm yourhost. Joshua Johnson, no, money
is never neutral. It'stheological because it tells a
story about who belongs, whogets protected, and who gets
trapped in Scripture. Jubileeisn't an abstract idea. It's

(00:58):
concrete and disruptive. Debtsreleased. People set free, land
returned, communities given achance to start again. In this
episode, I'm joined again byKelly, Nick and Deha to talk
about Jubilee economics and whathappens when we take Jesus at
his word. Kelly shares thisstory from Burundi, where a fire
destroys the Central Market.
Everything gone in a few hours,people go to bed as business

(01:21):
owners and wake up poor. Thequestion becomes immediate, what
does good news sound like whenyour inventory is ash and your
loan is still due? The responsewasn't a slogan, it was
neighbor, love with a plan,food, presence, grief, then real
paths back into the economy.

(01:42):
That story reshapes how we hearJesus in Luke four when he
announces good news to the poorand released to the captives.
He's not speaking in spiritualmetaphors. He's naming the
economic weight people carry intheir bodies, and he's doing it
in a world where saying that outloud was dangerous. This
conversation is about practicingJubilee now small, costly

(02:04):
choices that make room forpeople to breathe, break cycles
of debt and love our neighborsin ways that actually change
lives. So join us for thisconversation around Jubilee
economics. Here is myconversation with Kelly. Nick
and Deja. Kelly, welcome back toshifting culture. Excited to
have you back on Well, thankyou. I'm glad to be back. I'm

(02:26):
excited to jump into Jubileeeconomics, your new book for the
listeners. I'd love for you justto give us a brief overview of
what Jubilee is, what it'sabout, and why it's important.

Kelley Nikondeha (02:38):
So Jubilee is actually a set of economic
practices, very concretepractices. So when I first heard
about Jubilee growing up, it wasabout, you know, liberation and
setting people free. It wasn'tuntil I till I got older, and,
you know, our understanding ofthe world thickens, that I

(02:59):
actually realized that, oh,Jubilee isn't just this
beautiful, operatic idea that wehear about with the prophet
Isaiah, but it actually is veryconcrete set of policies that
have to do with loans, labor andland, and the specific policy
that I think most people Firsttrip over is the idea of

(03:20):
collective debt forgiveness.
Because one of the big things,if you know anything about
Jubilee, you know that on the50th year, when the shofar is
blown, everybody's debt getsforgiven. And you know, if
that's the top line, there'sbeen a lot of questions about,
well, that's not realistic. Anddid that ever really happen? And

(03:41):
are there any receipts for that?
And that's just utopianrhetoric. I mean, that's a lot
of what I grew up with, youknow, when I first started
learning about Jubilee. But myhusband and I do development
work overseas, and so actuallyfor us, we really cared not just
about liberation in the operatictones, but what it actually, you

(04:05):
know, we were looking forconcrete wisdom for the kind of
work that we do. And so as I dugdeeper into the text, you know,
we see that Moses was havingthese conversations about
neighborliness and what it wasgoing to look like when they
moved into the promised land,and among them was these deep
conversations aboutindebtedness. You know that that

(04:27):
there was this recognition thatif anything was really going to
destroy the neighborliness thatthey had built as they traveled
through the desert, it was goingto be debt. And so conversations
that we see, both in Deuteronomyand Leviticus talk about these
practices of freeing people fromdebt, which actually it's not
commercial debt, it's personaldebt, releasing people from

(04:50):
their indebtedness.
Conversations around labor, it'sletting people go free. But
again, people who were enslavedbecause of their indebtedness,
they were in right servants.
They became somebody's servantbecause they owed them a debt
they couldn't repay or land thatwas lost in the rough and tumble
of the economy. So when thatshofar blew, yes, debts were

(05:10):
forgiven. People got to go backhome, they were no longer
enslaved, and they got the landback that family, land that had
been lost. Well, that is goodnews. I mean, there's a reason
that Jesus preached about it inLuke four and said, This is good
news for the poor. You get yourmoney, you get your you know,
the your that weight ofindebtedness is relief. But of

(05:33):
course, it also is hard news,because somebody is not going to
get repaid. Somebody has to letgo of the land deed. So I've
always felt like Jubilee. Thesepractices are both good news for
the poor, but they are reallychallenging or hard news for
those of us who have a differentstanding in the economy. But as
I started to really lean in tothe deeper history beyond the

(05:57):
biblical text, because thequestion was always, well, this
was not practiced. We don't havereceipts for this as a way to
kind of say we don't need toreally, we don't need to really
do it. Because I think peoplehave a gut sense that if this
was, if this really is somethingwe're called to do, if this is a
true biblical imperative, Whoa,that is going to trouble the

(06:20):
waters and so as I looked,actually, we do have receipts.
They're not really in the textas such, although I see winks
and hints throughout the text,which I explore. But actually,
if we look back to Sumer andAssyria and Babylon, we actually

(06:42):
do see actual records, artifactsthat show us that debts were
forgiven, that the when a newemperor would come in, one of
the first things he would do isannounce, well, he would say,
I'm going to proclaim justice.
Proclaiming justice was debtforgiveness, which I also think
opens the door to some veryinteresting conversations that

(07:06):
the biblical idea of justice ismore rooted in that
understanding it's abouteconomic justice, but they would
proclaim justice, and yes, itwould curry favor with the new
leader, because everybody youknow could lighten the load. But
there were also some verypractical reasons about
recalibrating economies thathave gotten stuck or hung up,
and at some point, the onlything you could really do was to

(07:29):
wipe the debt clean and startover. And there were some other
reasons, you know, they weretrying to make sure that there
wasn't a rising creditor classthat could rival them and
compete for power. There wereall those dynamics. But we
actually do have records thatthis was practiced by all the
neighbors that would have beenaround the tribes of Israel, and

(07:52):
they would have been pullingfrom these traditions. Now, what
I now know is that Israel didinnovate. They brought some
fresh ideas, but they werepulling from things that were
already happening around them,and they didn't feel the need to
give us receipts. First of all,the Bible is a theological

(08:15):
document, right? But also, theydidn't even need to prove it or
let us know how it happened,because it was happening
everywhere around them. So thatwas like answering a question
nobody was asking at the time.
But now we can look back andsay, oh, there were receipts,
and so this was practiced, andso kind of how does that then

(08:35):
push us to think about Jubileeand economics for us as
development practitioners, wethink about it all the time
because we're working in one ofthe poorest economies in the
world, in East Africa. But it italso has implications for us.
There is, there is no part ofour life that economics don't
really touch, right?

Joshua Johnson (08:55):
So how do we think about Jubilee in a Western
economic mindset, as opposed tomaybe how it was lived back in
the day. What are we gettingthat throws us off because of
our place and our time inhistory? Sure.

Kelley Nikondeha (09:57):
Well, I'll start off with a story. It's,
it's kind of one of the onesthat anchors the book, but it's
when it became, when I startedto have to wrestle with the very
question you are asking. So wehad started a bank for the
working poor. So Burundi, whichis the country where my husband
is from, 97% of the populationis unbanked. Don't have a bank

(10:21):
account, keep the money in alittle coffee can buried in
their closet or in theirbackyard. My mother in law used
to do so they don't have accessto any of the basic banking
things that we you know, savingsor safe place to put your money,
etc. So we started a bank forthem to help get them into the

(10:41):
economy. And we. Were maybe sixmonths old, so we were a very
young financial institution, butwe were credentialed through the
central bank. I mean, we had togo through all of the paperwork.
Took us a year to get all thedocuments in place and be
approved and be able to takedeposits, et cetera. Six months
in, there's a fire in theCentral Market. This is like the

(11:05):
heart of Burundi's economy. Allthe goods came in, you know,
from the port and from othercountries into this marketplace,
and they went out, you know, toall the other little rural, up
country markets. But this wasthe hub. The fire on a Sunday
morning burned this entiremarketplace to the ground in
about five hours. And luckily,it was a Sunday morning, so

(11:28):
there weren't many people in it.
Most of them were getting readyto go to church. But it
destroyed every Yeah, itdestroyed the economy, but it
also was a challenge for us,because 70% of our the people
that were banking with us in ournew little enterprise. 70% of
them, their business was in thatmarket, their inventory, their

(11:48):
that was their location. Thatwas so that was the place that
they had, that was all theirinventory. And a lot of them
still had their little cashboxes in there because they were
learning to trust us. So theydidn't have all of their money
with us, yet they were, youknow, so they also lost money.
And you know, my thought was,well, this is when Jubilee comes

(12:10):
into practice, because the Biblesays you forgive the debt,
right? This is what Jubilee forthese people would be. Is we
were a bank, we could write offthe debt. And my husband said,
if we did that, we would haveour certificate of Operation
pulled so quickly by the CentralBank, we'd be shut down, because
you actually can't do that as abanking institution in Burundi

(12:33):
or anywhere else, right? Andthat was when I first realized
that I couldn't have that verywooden you know, if it happened
this way in the Bible, it has tohappen this way now that that we
are talking about, you know, anancient world versus a modern
world, very different economicdynamics, and so I had to be
willing to think differently.

(12:58):
And, you know, my first thoughtwas, oh my gosh, have we kind of
gone into the land that isbeyond Jubilee. Is Jubilee no
longer efficacious in our world?
Does it no longer have anymeaning other than a metaphor?
And that really, that reallyfrightened me, because I was
like, I've really believed this,you know? So I felt like I was
really frightened that maybe wewere, we were moving beyond the

(13:21):
reach of Jubilee and and thewisdom of the texts. But for me,
part of that journey, my husbandhad to work on the ground with
the actual people who had lost.
And that's a story in and ofitself. But for me as a
theologian, it was okay. So ifJubilee isn't in our current

(13:43):
world, the ability to wipe offthe debt as a bank, what does
that look like? And so part ofwhat we discovered in the next
set of years was actuallyJubilee is about re entering the
economy after you know thatnobody should be permanently
locked out. You know, if thatthat 50 year cycle tells us

(14:04):
something that every 50 yearsthere needs to be some kind of a
reset. I mean, that was theirunderstanding, but I think that
still holds true, this idea thatthere is always going to be an
ebb and flow in our economy,whether it's natural disasters.
I mean, for them, it was faminesor pestilence or war things,
right? There's always things, orthe loss of a patriarch, or

(14:29):
these kinds of things. But whatdo we have here? We had covid
which shut down moderneconomies. We've had hurricanes
that have shut down entireregions of our country, like
there are just these big thingsthat are going to impinge, as
well as personal things, on thedynamics of our economies. And
so to have that understandingthat there always needs to be

(14:52):
mechanisms for reset, becausethis is the truth of the
economy, that is one thing thatfor all the people who talk
about Jubilee being utopian, Iactually find it's quite clear
eyed in its recognition that theeconomy undulates. It moves like
this, and we have to have waysto let people back in after the

(15:14):
rough and tumble of a bad set ofyears. And those things might
feel drastic, but that is whatis going to meet the moment. So
I think Jubilee speaks to thatneed for reset. It speaks to the
fact that nobody should bepermanently locked into poverty.
I think it speaks to theimportance of reentry, that

(15:35):
there need to be viable ways forpeople to get back in after
they've been kicked out, or getin at all. I mean. I know in
Burundi, we have a huge problemwith youth employment that's
getting them in the economy tobegin with. And I think we have
similar challenges here. I thinkthere are these deeper movements
in the Jubilee canon, you know,that push us to think about all

(16:00):
of these kinds of things thatare all part of how we engage
with our economy as asindividuals, as organizations,
especially if we want to seetransformational work in our
communities, I

Joshua Johnson (16:12):
think with some people, especially in our
individualistic Western culture,yeah, I actually think that the
system, I think most peoplethink that the system of
insurance deals with some ofthose issues, saying that, hey,
if you're responsible enough toget the insurance, or that you
know, the hurricane insurance,the flood insurance, whatever

(16:34):
type of insurance it is that youare secure against, whatever you
know you have FDIC insurance inyour bank. So you right? And so

(17:47):
there's, there's an insurancesystem, but it feels like a if
I'm good enough as anindividual, I'm going to opt
into some of that. How much ofthat insurance system is Jubilee
adjacent? How much of it isstill systemic problems that
actually keep people in poverty.
How do we deal with an insurancesystem? I know, like in Burundi,

(18:11):
they probably don't have aninsurance system at all. I know,
you know, when I lived inJordan, we didn't have an
insurance system. Like, it's,they don't do it at all. So for
for us, so let's think about itwider, like, how, how do we
record with, like, insurance andthat getting people back on
their feet, right?

Kelley Nikondeha (18:31):
Well, I think insurance, obviously, I mean, I
have insurance on my house andon my car, right? I mean, we, we
opt into these systems, and theydo provide some measure of help
when things go sideways. But asyou said, you have to have the,
the capacity to buy in. You haveto have you have to know to buy

(18:54):
in, which sounds like a simplething, but, you know, I know a
lot of folks who, if they don'thave a family, a healthy family
system, they don't know that youbuy in to this. You know, I had
to teach my kids. I'm teachingthem now. I have two young
adults about buying into carinsurance. And what is that?
Like? Somebody has to teach youto opt in, then you have to have

(19:15):
the financial capacity to dothat and to maintain that. I
mean, when my daughter found outhow much a month you pay for car
insurance, she's like, I don'tknow if I can afford to drive
once I once I stop, yeah, as amom paying, and I'm like, yeah,
like, right. But so I think itspeaks to a bit about our social
location. Some of us are locatedin places where we can opt in

(19:38):
and we can sustain that and thathelp. Assurance can be helpful.
But that is not this, that isnot the story for everybody. And
so when you talk like you saidabout the systemic issues, it
doesn't help every it has helpeda lot of us, but doesn't help
all of us. And I think we'veeven, I've started hearing
stories coming out of Floridaand a little bit out of
California, where now insurancecompanies are are saying, Wow,

(20:02):
there are some things happeningright with with climate change,
that are really changing ourcapacity as a financial as an
insurance institution, to beable to to back you because you
live in a flood zone, you livein a fire zone like so, even
those mechanisms, while they canbe helpful, they do have their
limits.

Joshua Johnson (20:20):
If Jubilee is something and is like a reset
after 50 years, you thinkingabout this fire in Burundi of
the central market, what does reentering the economy? What does
resetting start to look like,practically for you on the
ground, when you're actuallyworking with real people with

(20:42):
real debt and real poverty?

Kelley Nikondeha (20:45):
Well, again, I'll tell a little bit of the
story, because that's what Ipart of. What I I am a lay
economist. The thing that makesme most nervous about having
this conversation with you thismorning is I am not an
economist. I'm a theologian andan armchair No, I'm more than an
armchair practitioner, but I'mnot an economist, but I have

(21:07):
engaged in the economy over thelast 17 years. So when the fire
happened on the Sunday, Mondaymorning, when my husband went to
the bank, and at that time, wejust had the one little branch.
We now have 12, but back then wejust had the one, there were
about 40 women at the gatewaiting to get in. So he goes,

(21:28):
he unlocks the gate, and hepoints, he tells them to go to
the back where we had an outdoortraining area with chairs and,
you know, et cetera, shadedarea. And so the women went out
there, and they just startedsharing their stories about,
wow, we lost everything. We losteverything. And one of them
stood up and said, I went to bedon Saturday night as a business

(21:51):
woman. She was she, she wasstarting to make money and
contribute to her family, andhad a sense of pride about that.
She says, I woke up Sundaymorning and I was poor again,
like it was that dramatic to herthat night and day, that before
and after the fire. And so thesewomen went around and they
shared their story, and theysupported each other, and they

(22:13):
cried together. And, you know,Claude had donuts, and Fanta
brought in, and they just satfor hours, you know, weeping
together. But then came okay,what are we going to do about
it? Now, these women representedthe most precarious of all of
you know, of all of our clients,what we would call high risk

(22:34):
borrowers. They didn't have anycollateral, and so they were
going to be the hardest ones toget back in. And on top of that,
we also had people who were inthe hospital, because some of
them were there on Sundaymorning and had to escape and
got burns. And so the first planwas, Is everybody okay? So all
the loan officers were chargedwith find out where your people

(22:56):
are. If they're in the hospital,you go and you visit them, you
know, and you don't ask aboutthe money, you don't ask about
the you ask if they're okay,yes, if their family's okay. We
got together bunches of food,and it was like we deliver food
to everybody's house. All of ourpeople make sure they have a bag

(23:17):
of rice, make sure they havecassava, make sure they have
beans, because we you know. Andagain, he kept telling them,
don't ask them about the loan.
We are caring for people. Theseare our neighbors, right? There
is a the immediate sense ofactually caring for the well
being of one another. Then forthe next three months, each loan
officer met with their portfolioof people, and they came up with

(23:40):
individualized plans. What doyou need to get back into the
economy now, some of our folkswho had a little more capacity
and were a little further alongin their journey, were like, you
know, hey, I can bring morestuff in from Kenya. I just need
what can we extend the timehorizon for us to repay the
loan? And can we maybe get alittle bump, you know, to just

(24:02):
get, you know, a little advanceto get us, you know, that, you
know. And so everybody had avery individualized plan of what
they needed, whether it was thetime horizon, an advance,
lowering the rate, so that theycould, you know, like everybody
had a way to get back in and, Imean, I think that was really
crucial, you know, thateverybody got time and got an

(24:24):
individualized plan. And thenthere were these high risk
mamas, and no, they they did notknow how they were going to get
back in. And they were the onethat, you know, Jubilee requires
a fair amount of creativity.
And, you know, it was okay, howdo we help them, because the

(24:45):
collateral was a big issue. Ifwe were going to extend fresh
loans to them, they needed morecollateral. I mean, all these
things we had to demonstrate tothe central bank. And so that
was where we brought in peopleto do some fundraising, to
create a fund that wouldbasically be their guarantee. We
had to bring in people likecarpenters to help them rebuild

(25:08):
kiosks in other markets, likethe very basics of they actually
need help building a new standin a new place. Maybe they were
just selling mandarins ortomatoes or mangoes, so it
wasn't like they were bringingproduct in from abroad. But, you
know, they actually needed thehardware and they needed help.
So we had a fund that helpedthem and other women from other

(25:28):
banks. Actually, we had enoughthat we were able to help others
get back in and so for us, likeevery every context is going to
be different, but the Bibletalks about, you know, part of
Jubilee is when you set somebodyfree. You don't just set them
free and say, you know, Godbless. You know, the biblical
imperative is that you actuallyhave to give them some things to

(25:51):
walk away with, something thatthey can rebuild with some
money. You know. I mean,remember, with the conversations
about reparations, is that, youknow, when slaves were set free,
they were supposed to get, what,40 acres and a mule. It was that
recognition that you can't justtell people you're free and then
not give them any means torebuild and re enter the

(26:13):
economy. And so that same thing,I think, is part of the Jubilee
conversation, is, how do we youknow, in every context, we'll be
different, but for us, it wascarpenters and loan
rearrangements and bags of food,and, you know, checking in on
people, and you know that theirwell being as a person mattered.

Joshua Johnson (26:36):
It would be really nice. I'd love to have 40
acres and a mule.

Unknown (26:41):
That would be great, right? I don't know. About the
mule, but I could take the 40Acres.

Joshua Johnson (26:46):
40 Acres. I could definitely take the 40
Acres. The question for me, thenis, like you're talking about
this economic system, debt rerepayment and forgiveness. How
do you think that if you now seethe Jubilee passage in Isaiah 61
as as an economic passage whenyou see Jesus as he rolls out

(27:09):
that scroll in Isaiah and Lukechapter four, and he shares this
passage and says that this hasbeen fulfilled in your hearing,
yeah, how does like seeing thatas an economic passage even
shift the way that we view theministry of Jesus and what he's
trying to say.

Kelley Nikondeha (27:28):
I think it's quite fundamental to my my
understanding of the Gospels atthis point, because if we
understand Luke and the storyLuke is trying to tell about
Jesus and Jesus's work, theinaugural sermon is about an
economic practice like, right?
It's like what you know, thatit's not about discipleship,

(27:49):
it's not about the fourspiritual laws. It's not about,
you know, going to heaven. Likeit. The first thing he says is
that the good news is somehowrooted in an economic practice
like, okay, let's, let's back upand rethink this. And I, I think
that really what Jesus was doingwas inviting them into a jubilee

(28:10):
campaign, a jubilee way ofseeing the world. So I think
part of the backdrop that weoften don't calculate is that
for all the for all the year,the centuries prior and the
Empires prior, debt relief waspracticed, you could assume that
at some point relief was comingyour way or coming to your kids,

(28:31):
if, if not, you. Rome was verydifferent. Rome was one of the
first empires, at least in thisarea, in the Levant that said
we're not practicing debtforgiveness as an empire. They
were fine with empowering acreditor class. I mean, think
about the rich young ruler,right? They were fine with

(28:52):
actually empowering thatdynamic. And so there was no
talk of debt forgiveness inRome. And a matter of fact,
there started to come outstories that if, if a public
figure talked aloud about debtforgiveness. They were they were
done, they were gone, they werekilled. And so this is part of
the backdrop where Jesusstanding up in the synagogue and

(29:14):
saying that debt forgiveness wasactually part of the good news.
He wanted to talk about thesewere dangerous words for him to
say in a public space to a bunchof poor people, because all of
his neighbors in Nazareth inthat region would have been
impoverished, and it would havebeen good news to them, but it

(29:35):
would have been dangerous newsfor the rabbis. It would have
been dangerous news for some ofthe higher ups in the in the
little town that wanted to avoidRome breathing down their neck,
you know? And so I think that'san interesting way. At the end
of that passage, we see thatJesus gets pushed to the end of
a cliff. And there's a few otherthings in the story that are

(29:56):
happening, but I now read thatand think, yeah, part of the
reason was probably scare himwithin an inch of his life,
because if he keeps saying stufflike that, Rome is going to
notice. And we see what Romedoes. You know, we see it in
neighboring Severus. They comein, they decimate the place.
They take the kids as as slaves.

(30:19):
They rape and pillage the women.
They kill them, like we don'twant Rome to see or know what's
happening in our little hamlet.
So Let's scare this guy withinan inch of his life so that he
will not right draw attention.
These were dangerous times, eveneven a violent economy, right?
Rome wasn't only a dangerousmilitary. It was a dangerous
economic terrain, becausewithout debt relief, it was a

(30:42):
kind of violence. And I think wesee this in our own country, as
more people are struggling withindebtedness and way, you know,
so many support, so many of oursocial network, social
underpinnings, are beingquestioned. It does feel like we
are doing economic violence,economically to one another, and
that was certainly the terrainand so into that, Jesus just

(31:05):
lobs this grenade of we're goingto talk about it. We're going to
talk about the thing that youguys all carry, which is the
weight of indebtedness. And Ithink when you think about it
that way, I've talked to friendswho aren't even followers of
Jesus, who are like, man, ifsomebody sat and told me that we
are going to talk seriouslyabout the stress that my body

(31:26):
holds because of the debt, youknow, the mortgage and the
student loans for my kids, andthe money I owe here and here.
Man, I would listen to thatperson, because they're talking
about something that materiallyaffects the quality of my life.
And I think that's. Like, Ohman, Jesus knew exactly where
people were. He knew exactly whothe stress they were under, and

(31:48):
he spoke right to it. And hesays, We have to talk about
debt, that is, you know. And sothen you look at the Lord's
Prayer where, you know they'rehow do we pray? Well, we pray
about the food that we eat everyday. Snap, benefits, hello. Does
that matter to people? Price togroceries, sure, but we also
pray about indebtedness. Now, Iwas raised Catholic, and I was

(32:12):
taught the prayer that you for,you know, Lord, forgive us our
transgressions, right? Well,transgressions is a different
kind, like, like, maybe I hurtsomebody's feelings, or we
gossiped or whatever. Butactually the root of that prayer
is money debts. Lord Jesus wantsus to pray that our indebtedness
will be forgiven and that wewill forgive the debts that

(32:36):
other people owe us that we willbreak the system. If you ever
have watched Game of Thrones.
This is where Let's break thewheel. Right? Let's I want to be
the kind of person who not onlyhas relief from the debt I
carry, but I'm the kind ofperson who will not entangle

(32:57):
other people in that very cycleof indebtedness. And all of a
sudden, right, like I start tosee Jesus was very much an
economic practitioner, talkingabout debt, talking about not
entangling each other in debt.
So, you know, like, these werenot easy policies, even then,
you know, a lot of the lot ofthe leading Jewish minds were

(33:18):
trying to find ways aroundJubilee practices. You know, how
can we get out of it. And Idon't think that that, you know,
that wasn't what Jesus wasabout. He was like, No, we need
to talk about money. We need totalk about debt. We need to be
opting out of the systemwherever we can, you know. And I
think this is something that,really, you know, when Jesus
says this Jubilee starts today,well, I don't think he meant he

(33:43):
could topple Rome and Rome'seconomic policies, but we could
start at grassroots, like wecould start, you know. So I have
a friend who is is, well, wehave had a few friends, both
here and in Burundi, who havelived with us during hard
seasons in their life and and bygiving them, you know, a place

(34:05):
to live and not charging them,we have given them breathing
room so that they can collectthemselves before they get out.
Right? Just recently, we had aconversation. One of our friends
is renting a home from us, and,you know, I don't know if I can
afford it anymore, so we go backto the drawing board and say,
well, we don't want her to gointo debt, so how do we protect

(34:26):
her? What can we do? And wefigured out a way to kind of
just feel like in a phone call,it's like, Oh, tell her we can,
if we do this, and we do, youknow, we can do these things
where she can stay in a goodplace, to live at a threshold
that she can afford. And we'vejust had some things lighten up
on our end so we can absorb alittle, you know? I mean, like,

(34:48):
this is not how you make money,but this is how you are
neighbors to one another, right,where we are. Like, how do we
make sure? Like, how do I notentangle people in debt to me?
And so I think these are some ofthe ways we can start thinking
and practicing Jubilee. And thenyou before you know it, you are
becoming a jubilee practitioner.

(35:09):
You are starting to see thingsdifferently.

Joshua Johnson (35:12):
I think even in Luke four, as they're hearing
Jesus talk, they're gettingreally excited about what he's
saying, right? Because when youthink about my debt being
forgiven, yeah, that's easy,right? Because I'm thinking
about myself of like, oh, thatalleviates a lot of pressure.
And then Jesus goes on to say,it's really not just about you,

(35:35):
it's for all people. It's foryou know, remember the Syrians?
Remember the Lebanese? Like,remember everybody else that's
around you? Yeah, this is alsofor them as well. And now I'm
thinking, Oh, I actually have toforgive some debts, and it's
going to be hard for me, andit's going to hurt me. And so

(35:55):
Jubilee economics is not just anice ideal. It's painful because
I think I deserve what I have.
So how do we deal with the painand the difficulty, the hardship
of sacrifice when it comes topracticing Jubilee? Well?

Kelley Nikondeha (36:15):
And that was, I think, early on, when my
husband and I started to wrestlewith it. We were living in
Burundi. And you know, that is aculture where we are, where they
lend money to what to eachother. Here in America, debt, or
in the West, debt, is moreimpersonal. We tend to use banks
and other mechanisms to accessmoney. But I know in Burundi,

(36:39):
money is very personal, and soyou are actually more often than
not getting money. From youruncle, your you know, your
mother, you're getting moneyfrom each other, and you are
really beholden to each other.
And so I was like, man, if we'regoing to take this seriously,
like, there's a lot of peoplejust because we had access to
to, like, a Western salary, wewe had, we didn't have a lot,

(37:02):
but we had more than most of ourour family and our neighbors,
and it was really hard to thinkabout, are we really going to
forgive those debts? What doesthis mean going forward? Because
if every if word gets out thatwe forgive debts, right? But,
but that is something that wehad to wrestle with, you know,
is let's, let's not expect thesedebts to be repaid. Let's try

(37:24):
and practice this as best wecan. Again, I still think there
is this understanding ofeverything is not a one for one,
you know. So there are timesbut, but we are. The way that we
loan money when we need to isvery different, you know, we
tend we loan what we know we canafford to lose. You know, where
we're like, okay, you know. Andyet, the same time, you know, we

(37:48):
are trying to help some, some ofour friends, some of our younger
folks. You know, that's alearning opportunity, but we
give very gentle, you know,gentle way for them, you know,
to learn. But we've had toforgive a lot of personal debts
in Burundi to try and practicethis and to learn. You know,
what is that like? But like Isaid with my girlfriend just
this week, it's like, oh, well,I don't want her to go into

(38:11):
debt. So how is there any waythat we collaborate because we
care about each other? Itrewires the way you think about
how money, how many moves andthat, that it's not hoarded,
which is so against my Americansensibilities. But I really do
think we are challenged to tonot hold each other in in deeper

(38:32):
cycles of debt.

Joshua Johnson (38:36):
I mean, there's a lot of things I think we've
been arguing about, andespecially in the United States,
in the last decade or so, onearound race and reparations,
people are like, Well, thathappened long time ago, and it
wasn't my generation. So yeah,we need to pay any anything now.
So that was, that was a longtime ago, and these people, they

(38:59):
weren't slaves, and so why wouldwe pay them anything? And then
we're having conversationsaround land. How far does it go
back to? Like, restore land toowners, like, what does that
look like? And who owns thelands? And how far back do we
go? These are difficultquestions, you know, because

(39:19):
people have been on this landthat I'm on and that you're on
for a long time ago that weren'tus. So how do we deal with
things that are more, I don'tknow, like more ancient past
than even the past 50 years, twogenerations deep. It's like more

(39:40):
like eight generations deep,yeah.

Kelley Nikondeha (39:42):
Well, that's where I feel like, again, you
know, I am not an expert in, youknow, in some of these things, I
think, as a jubileepractitioner, I really do think
the more you start in the smallways to practice, you do start
to kind of rewire the way youthink. Like I noticed my
instinct, you know, is isdifferent than it was 10 years

(40:04):
ago, because you start right asyou practice, you rewire the way
you understand. And I've I'vewatched people, because I have
friends in South Africa, and Ihave friends up in Canada and
places other places well, andalso friends in Israel and
Palestine who are strugglingwith these are very real and
present issues for them in waysthat I feel like, in America,

(40:27):
we're still we're notnecessarily we talk about land,
but I feel like, like my friendsin Canada are really at a
different place of having theseconversations. And I've, you
know, I hear like I heard astory of a woman who wonderful
Mennonite community, and sherecognized that she was on the
land of, you know, of a triballand. And of course, she

(40:52):
inherited the land from herfamily. So, right? We're talking
generations that this has beenin her family, she and her
aunts, I mean, but somewherealong the line, this land
belonged to somebody else, andshe now she didn't have kids,
which made it, in a sense,easier, because she wasn't
depriving them of aninheritance, so to speak. But
she recognized, oh, this. Thisactually isn't most deeply mine

(41:15):
to keep or to decide whathappens to like, you know. So in
her will, what she did was shegave the land to the tribal
community, to the like, to theelders for so that when I pass
on, in a sense, this land isgoing to go back to you, and you
as tribal elders can decide howto use this land for your right

(41:38):
and and to me, that was like,wow. That is a jubilee
practitioner, right? She is it.
Her own little bit of the story,her own little plot of land.
She's like, okay, you know, I'mgonna live here till I die, but
this, this then has to go back.
And I can do that, you know? AndI so, like, part of me is like,

(42:00):
I'm more encouraged by thesesmaller stories, because I think
when we think systemic, it'svery easy to say it's too big,
it's too messy, and we shutdown. And once we shut down,
it's like, we opt out, like, Oh,it's too big, and we don't touch
it. But, but on a smaller scale,I think then we we start to see
these little moves that we canbe making to start to shift the

(42:23):
ground. And I've heard storiessimilar to that Palestine and
Israel. I've heard stories likethat in South Africa where, you
know, there, yeah, there'strying to remember the exact
story of this family in SouthAfrica, where it was Afrikaans
family, so white family, andthey recognize that, oh, like

(42:44):
we've had this fan this land,and we have these people who've
worked the land, a coloredfamily, so they realized now,
they didn't decide to give theirland away because they lived off
the land, and their jobs wereall related to the land, but
what they chose to do was theythey paid differently. They, you
know, because they recognizedwe're not going to pay them a

(43:05):
low wage. We're actually goingto pay them a real living wage,
you know, like, that's somethingwe can do. And then they
decided, well, we're sending ourkids to college. We're going to
send we're going to pay fortheir kids to go to college.
That is part of our way of ofcontributing to their family's
future, is that their kids willget to go to college, just like

(43:28):
our kids, and we will bearbecause we can afford it. We
will pay that. So they aretrying in there. I heard that
story, and I thought, well,they're trying in their own way.
Now that wasn't giving the landback, but they cared about the
wages of the of the parents, andthey cared about the future of
the kids. And to me, like, Okay,this is where I say Jubilee
requires us to be creative, andlike Isaiah, to imagine, how can

(43:52):
it be different, and how do Iparticipate in that, in Jubilee
ways?

Joshua Johnson (43:58):
I mean, it seems like everything that you're
talking about now is we'retrying to wrestle with what it
looks like to live Jubilee andJubilee economics. It feels
like, how do I love my neighboras myself? It feels like another
thing that Jesus says is, like,love your neighbor. This is why
Jesus said to the rich youngruler, like, what are the

(44:20):
greatest commandments of yourneighbor as yourself? That's so
loving our neighbor. How hasthat like really, truly living
out the command of loving yourneighbor? How does that has that
changed the way that you dodevelopment work in Burundi and
seeing it as maybe even justseeing that we are all

(44:44):
connected. We're all made of theimage of God. We're all like a
part of this system together.
Has that shifted all how you diddevelopment work?

Kelley Nikondeha (44:57):
I am proud of the work that we've done over
the last set of years. I'm proudbecause, you know, my husband is
probably much more Jubilee inhis imagination, and I have
really learned alongside him.
But yes, I mean, I think eventhe way he has handled the bank,
like the fact that he's like, Idon't care right now. I don't

(45:17):
care about the money. What Icare about is that these people
are fed, and that they they knowthey're okay, and they know
we're not gonna come after themfor the money and put them out
right like, Yes, we had to work.
We had people we worked with inthe states to get some an influx
of capital, you know, tobecause, of course, the money

(45:39):
has to come, and we have to dealwith that side of it, but the
impulse to care about eachother. I think in our
development work, again, we'velearned so much from from Isaiah
and the poetry of Isaiah. Andwhat I believe is a companion
book lamentations, where part ofbeing human is suffering these

(46:01):
losses and creating space tolament together. And I think
when I watched my husband thatday like that, he opened the
gates, and he sat for hours, andhe allowed himself to feel the
pain with these women who hadlost everything. Now we might
have been losing the bank, butwe weren't losing everything in

(46:21):
the same way they were. But heallowed himself to sit with him
in that and and I tell you, itrewires you. And I noticed that
in so many of the the things wedo in Burundi, so many of the
initiatives that have been themost transformational have
started with him going somewhereand crying with people and

(46:41):
creating that space to lament,to get. Or to share that pain,
and then it's like the spiritstirs something. Like we weren't
planning on doing a porridgefactory, but look at, I guess, I
guess we're gonna do that now,because, like these surprising
things are stirred in that placeof lament. It's, I think Brooke
Mong used to say that the lamentis the seed bed of hope, that

(47:06):
when we open ourselves up to ourneighbors and their pain and the
struggles of surviving, thespirit stirs things up, and then
we can do some transformationalthings together. And so I do
think we approach our workunderstanding that these are our
neighbors, or as you know, asthey would say in the Old

(47:26):
Testament, these are our kin.
They are us, and so we have totreat them that way. And I think
it's, you know, I know peoplewho work for all those wonderful
NGOs, the big ones that we seepublicize and that have
sponsorship programs, and youknow all that, and they do great
work, and they, a lot of themare people we collaborate with.

(47:48):
But I do think there's somethingabout, I mean, Gustavo
Gutierrez, the liberationtheologian out of South America,
had talked about, do you knowthe names? You know you talk
about the poor, but do you knowtheir names? And my husband and
I know some of them, but myhusband knows a lot more. He
knows the names of these people,because they aren't just

(48:08):
projects that we fund. These arepeople. And, you know, we are
right now struggling. Theeconomy in Burundi is horrible
right now, and really hard torun a bank and support, you
know, support people and theirendeavors when the whole economy
is collapsing, and recentlywe've had to make some decisions
about whether or not we're goingto lay some people off to stay

(48:29):
viable. And I mean, I think heagonizes more than most, because
he doesn't see these as peoplejobs that we can easily cut. He
knows that each one of thosepeople represents a family, and
those families are going to bewithout like, he definitely
thinks, you know, like, theseare my neighbors. But these are,

(48:50):
these are 40 family, 40% of thefamilies that are part of this
bank, like, like, To him, it isvery personal. And I it is part
of, I think, what makes the workwe do deeply meaningful and
special, but also on days likethis, really hard, you know,
because we we do everything likehe's doing everything he can to

(49:11):
figure out, well, can they workat the porridge factory, or do
they have a skill set where wecan move them over here and
still keep them employed? Butyeah, it changes the way we we
work.

Joshua Johnson (49:23):
That's a huge thing. To know people's names,
know their families. That thenchanges the way that you do
business. We live, at least inthe West, we live in a machine
that really is about productionand and more money for for the
top and for the forcorporations. How can we start

(49:44):
to as individuals in the westernempire actually then start to
practice some of these Jubileepractices and economics when
we're part of the machine. Isthere a way for us to be
faithful and human, even whenthe machine is trying to run us

(50:07):
to the ground. Right?

Kelley Nikondeha (50:09):
I'd say I'm sorry that I'm going to say
something political, but as aliberation theologian, I think
you kind of expect that that'scoming. But I do think our first
vocation is to survive. I thinkwe often forget that, because in
the West, we assume that we'reall going to survive this. But
you know, in most of the world,it's not, it's not a given that
you're going to survive. That's,yeah, Claude used to say, that's

(50:30):
why we have so many kids, isbecause we know a lot of them
aren't going to make it. So youyou know you have as many as you
can, but you know, surviving isgetting harder, and I think as
we work, you know, to surviveand to care about each other, I
think we have to startrecognizing that that survival

(50:51):
happens with one another, youknow, like we have to be looking
out, not just for ourselves, asAmericans have been trained to
do, but to look out for ourcommunities, our neighborhoods,
and so for me, That has changedthe way that I vote. So I grew
up in a Republican household inSouthern California, and I was
taught by very good evangelicalparents that you vote with your

(51:18):
pocketbook in mind, and that ifeverybody votes with their
pocketbook in mind, we end upwith the best result. And it
took me a long time to unlearnthat and think, Wait a minute,
I'm in a different sociallocation that a lot of my
neighbors and I actually have alot of neighbors now I live in
Arizona. I'm in Arizona part ofthe time. A lot of my neighbors

(51:38):
here are in mixed status.
Families are undocumented. Theymay pay into the system. With
their taxes, but they're notgetting any services, and they
can't vote. So you start, thenarrative starts to thicken when
you start, Oh, but wait aminute, there are people who are
always going to be left out ifthat's the way that I vote. And
so several elections ago, Istarted to think, what if I

(52:00):
voted with my neighbors in mind?
And I thought more about who isadvocating for the kind of
policies that are going to makethis a better place for me and
my neighbors together, that weare going to survive this season
together fundamentally changeshow I think about food policy
and all sorts of other things inmy own like I learned my kids

(52:24):
went to elementary school herein Arizona, and I got to know
the office lady really well, andone day, I learned from her that
50% of the kids at my local,little suburban elementary
school were on food assistance,and I just never I was like,
what? And it totally changed theway that I engaged with my

(52:46):
school. I was donating likecrazy. I was always sending the
kids to school with three timesas many supplies, three times as
many Valentines, like right?
Because I knew you need to bethey need to be able to the
teachers need to be able to givethis to the families who need
because not all my neighbors aremaking it. It changed how I
supported my local food bank,like, right? Because I

(53:10):
recognized, oh, just because I'mdoing okay doesn't mean all my
neighbors are so, right? How doI show up, you know? So I think
the how we vote and whatpolicies we're willing to
support, you know, it's not asmall thing for those of us who
have the ability to vote, tothink about our neighbors. You

(53:31):
know, I was very concerned aboutall the things happening with
SNAP benefits. Recently, I'm noton SNAP, but I know a lot of my
neighbors are, so I was payingattention because I knew it
mattered to their viability, andtherefore it matters to me. And
so I, you know, I was like,Okay, we gotta up what we're
doing for the food bank. AndI've do, I need to be going to

(53:53):
the local school and asking, youknow, if I give you some, if I
can give you a little bit, canyou give it to the trying to
think, how do I tangibly, like,in very tangible ways, show up
for my neighbors. So yes, theway that I vote, but also even
just things like that, like, howdo these policies, how are they
impinging upon the actual peoplein my neighborhood? And am I

(54:15):
willing to to step in and help?
I mean, I'm also out there onthe streets protesting. So
because I think that's anotherway that you show people, you
know, we're in it together. Youknow, let's

Joshua Johnson (54:29):
look and see the people around us, and that then
we can, through your protest,through voting, we could
actually advocate for ourneighbors and the people around
us and actually then do tangiblethings with our schools and and
the people around us. So that'sthat is beautiful. Yeah, if you
could talk to your readers andthe people that would read

(54:50):
Jubilee economics, what hope doyou have for the people who read
it? What hope do you have forthis book?

Kelley Nikondeha (54:55):
I just hope that we are priming our
imagination for a more Jubileekind of practice, while Jubilee
is a concrete set of practices,you know, it also is a set of
practices that set ourimagination on a different kind
of trajectory, I think Isaiahdoes that so beautifully. When

(55:17):
he was imagining a new city, away, the way a city could work
better, work differently, andJubilee was absolutely part of
what he was dreaming andimagining. And I think that we
need more of that as we are at aplace where I think a lot of
some people say we are in latestage capitalism. We are right
post capitalist. I mean all theagain, not an economist, but we

(55:39):
all can see that the that theeconomy, and I would say
economies, because I know theBurundian economy, I know right
now, the economy in Tanzania, Iknow the economy in Congo, like
a lot of economies, arestruggling. What is, what is
going to kind of come out of theash of what is, what is eroding
now? And man, we need someJubilee thinkers who are willing

(56:02):
to say, let's try some differentthings. Let's be willing to try
some different tools. I mean,back then, the tools were about
loans and mass debt forgivenessand letting people free if they
were indentured, and thecapacity to move land around.
Okay, so what are what dials andlevers are we able in a modern

(56:24):
economy to imagine differently.
You know, I know some people arereally looking at debt, medical
debt, right? We have now, wehave organizations that are
doing amazing work for givingmedical debt. I think
conversations around to call itour credit scores and whether
medical. Debt, and, you know,accrued the credit scores that

(56:45):
are connected to medical debt,you know, should they be, you
know, because that's a big partof how we do money now. Should
they? Should they count? Shouldthey not well, like these are,
they certainly are not biblicalin terms of, like, they didn't
have credit scores back then.
But the idea, the imaginationthat we bring to say, okay, is

(57:06):
this a mechanism we can rethinkand we can try different things
to bring about more breathingroom for people? Because if the
big nut we have to crack is theweight of indebtedness and how
that affects us as people, asneighbors, as communities, as
national economies, we need alot of different ways to imagine
how to dismantle or disarm theways that indebtedness hurts and

(57:31):
harms us. So I want, I thinkJubilee is a great place to
start cracking getting a bettersense of his, his historically,
how we've dealt with debt, butthen cracking up our
imaginations for what are waysin my own life, but in my own
community and people who are Imean, there's a gentleman who
wrote, you know, 500 years ofdebt. He wrote the history of

(57:54):
debt, and at the end of this 500year history, what does he say?
I think that old practice fromthe Hebrews, the Jubilee. I
think that's what we need to tryand he said, and I love that. He
was honest. He said, it's goingto be messy. It's going to be
messy, but out of the ashes, hebelieved, kind of like creative
destruction, out of out of theashes, something different, you

(58:16):
know, but that we maybe can'teven imagine right now. That's
part of the challenge. Issomebody says, Well, Kelly, what
do you want to see? I don'tknow. I mean, in a sense, we are
all still in a place where weare on the kind of on the verge
of being able to actuallyimagine, as we see this start to
not work. We can say, oh, sothere has to. Can we not just re
I don't want to make anythinggreat again. I don't want to

(58:38):
make Israel great again. I wantto make America. I don't I want
to imagine what is the new thebetter the next thing that is
going to help us live bettertogether. And I think Jubilee
allows us to crack open. Thechallenge is to crack open our
imaginations, but in very, verypractical ways. So, yeah,
imagine, but not just like piein the sky, like, okay, then try

(59:01):
it. Go out there and do it. Doesit work? Why didn't it work? I
mean, even say some of the debt,forgiveness for medical debt,
some of it hasn't worked. Okay,why hasn't it worked? And the
answer isn't, don't do it. It'snow, let's do it better. Let's
learn from what didn't work,because we know that debt is
bad, so how do we how do wemanage that? So I would love to

(59:21):
see readers feel like, okay, I'mwilling to give it a try. I'm
willing to imagine differentlyand to not be scared. I think a
lot of us are scared at thethought that the economy could
be wired in a different way. Wewe come at it with a lot of
fear, and it's like, what if wecame at it with curiosity
instead of fear? Like, whatwould it look like? You know,

(59:43):
and that maybe some betterpolicies, some better practices,
will come out of our curiosity,as opposed to our fear.

Joshua Johnson (59:50):
That's great.
Well, Kelly, your book, Jubileeeconomics, is available anywhere
books are sold, people could goand get it, wrestle with it, and
start to imagine a new futureand a better future. What comes
next? What does it look like toactually practice these things,
and how do we imagine somethingwhere we could actually survive
together in a way that itdoesn't look like crushing debt
for everyone, but it looks likeJubilee. So Kelly, this was

(01:00:14):
fantastic. Is there anywhereyou'd like to point people to?
How could they connect with you?
What you're doing. Where wouldyou like to point

Unknown (01:00:24):
people to? Oh, I,

Kelley Nikondeha (01:00:26):
actually, I stay at home with my corgis
often. So you want to kind ofplay with my little corgis. Now
I'm on Instagram, so that's kindof where I, you know, that's the
platform I can kind of handleis, you know, on Instagram, I do
have a website, but, you know,I'm not really kind of out there
online a whole lot. I like to,like be, be here with all the

(01:00:51):
books and doing all the work andworking with my husband on our
stuff in Burundi. But Instagramwould be, probably be the best
place. Perfect.

Joshua Johnson (01:00:59):
Kelly, thank you for this conversation. It was a
pleasure to have you on andlet's see Jubilee. Yes, you.