Hanukkah Reflection
A SERMON GIVEN BY REV LINDA HART AT RICHMOND & PUTNEY UNITARIAN CHURCH
Stories, especially old ones that get retold again and again and again and perhaps most especially ones that have some grounding in something like history, are at best ambiguous. We usually tell the parts that we like the best and leave out the frightening bits. There are always subtexts, plots that run under the surface that we don’t notice until suddenly someone points them out. It’s like being in a coffee shop and telling your friend about a dream and then suddenly realising that it is way beyond strange and that what felt somehow right and normal in the middle of the night when you were dreaming, has left you feeling as if you are standing in the middle of the street in your underwear. The Hanukkah story is like that at times.
The outline of the story is probably familiar to you: the Greek empire is expanding and a particular governor decides to eliminate the pesky local religion. Many simply submit to the orders and stop their practices but some hold out. The government claims the temple and repurposes it for their own religious rituals and – at least according to the former religion – desecrate it by offering animal sacrifice, by allowing it to become covered with blood and dirt and by erecting idols to their own gods.
A small group of Jews called the Maccabees refuse to be assimilated and fight with all their might against the imperial power and – I suppose surprising to all of them – they win. They reclaim the temple and spend days putting it right: scrubbing the stains away, cleaning out the rubbish and the rotting bits of sacrificed animals. As they prepare to light the sacred flame, they realise that there is only a small amount of oil, only enough for one day, and that it will take nearly a week to make more. Still in faith, they light the flame and miraculously, it burns for 8 days until there is ample supply available again.
There are all sorts of places that this story could go astray. Told, as most stories of this sort are, by the winner, it glosses over the role of the Maccabees. In our day some might call them terrorists rather than freedom fighters, their battle righteous because they won rather than because they were right. They cleansed the temple, it’s true, but they cleansed their community too, killing off the assimilated Jews.
Ancient stories tend to be this way. Not clean but messy with the whole of the human condition: the violence and tribalism that is still a part of who we are, as well as the fierceness of protection and care, the longing to honour the sacred.
Today, in raising up a thread of the story, we don’t forget all the rest of it. In fact, I would argue that we must hold the complexity of ourselves: knowing what of our hearts are broken, knowing when we have betrayed what is right and true, seeing the violence and the loss, seeing all the whole of the human condition and still lighting a light in hope and promise. Seeing the whole of our own lives and still knowing that it is possible to rededicate what is holy within us.
When I bless and name children, I always give them a candle, and I say that the candle represents the spark of the divine that resides within them, and I offer it in the hope that the child may be able to see the light within everyone she meets, everyone he meets. It is a reminder that I think most adults need to hear, that the candle represents that of the divine that lives within us. That there is something holy and unnameably pure in us, no matter how we might have lost our way, no matter the clutter of hurts and difficulties that we have known.
We lift up the thread of purification of the holiday of Hanukkah. Rabbi Berenblat says of her annual experience of it ‘Maybe, if I'm lucky, a flash of awareness that I can rededicate the holy places in my own life as the Temple was rededicated of old.’ It is that moment, that flash of awareness, that we invite today.
In truth, there’s not any purification that is accomplished in the act of a small ritual like the one offered to you today. There is no magic in the act, no supernatural power that will sweep from the skies to make everything better or different. Whatever is accomplished in our act today comes from a recognition of our humanity in its flaws and strengths. Whatever is accomplished in our act today grows from our capacity to hold ourselves in compassion, and see that of the holy that truly resides within us, and then, as much as it is in us, to see that it is also in others.
Our story today reminds us that anything once put to a holy purpose is forever changed. Let us remember that we have all – every one, no exceptions – had a holy purpose, present from the moment of our birth. Yes, even you. Yes, even me.