There is no doubt that the importance often placed by mainstream society on Hanukkah is related to the fact that it lies close to Christmas. Many non-Jews will say that Hanukkah is the Jewish Christmas. Well, this is simply not so. Both are very different sacred times - one commemorating the birth of a child, the other celebrating the overthrow of an oppressive regime and a return to freedom.
So, this morning, I want to us to try and take a break from Christmas. This may be easier said than done. After all we are surrounded in this sanctuary by the symbolisms of Christmas. But let's try, and let's try for this reason. I think that in some ways we do an injustice to Hanukkah when we try to place it within the context of the Christmas season, especially considering the often strained relationship between Christianity and Judaism. I don't want to talk about what Christmas and Hanukkah hold in common. I want to explore what Hanukkah means on its own terms, and what it can mean for us as Unitarian Universalists when we look at it on its own terms.
Again, this may be easier said than done.
Unitarian Universalism is a religion in which many of us believe that there is a universal truth that lives in all religions. We have a tradition of looking for the universal meaning in a story. It is why we are comfortable using a variety of sources from a variety of religions in our search for truth and meaning. We believe that there are common threads in all religions that point the way to universal truths that can help us to understand life itself and our purpose for being here. Sometimes this is very helpful, because it helps us to feel connected to something greater than our small worlds and reminds us that we are all sisters and brothers, regardless of our differences. But sometimes, I think that in our search for universal truth we lose sight of the particularities of different religions, and this does a disservice to those religions. We may water them down, downplaying the parts we are uncomfortable with, elevating the parts we are comfortable with thus taking them out of the larger context of the religion from which they come.
In our picking and choosing, we are sometimes guilty of cultural appropriation, meaning that we reformulate aspects of a religion or culture for our own purposes.
So this morning, I am not looking for the universal truth that emerges out of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah. I want to look at what is special and particular about Hanukkah, and how it can challenge us as Unitarian Universalists to live out our beliefs more faithfully.
So where to start? Well, how about with the basics.
HANUKKAH BASICS
Nearly 2200 years ago, the country we know today as Israel was under the control of the Greek-Syrian ruler Antiochus IV. One of the ways he attempted to control those he conquered was to assimilate them into Greek culture. He forbade the Jews to practice their religion. He forbade them to read the Torah. He replaced their high priest with his own. Anyone who resisted was arrested and killed. Women, men and children lost their lives. Under this intense pressure, some of the Jews assimilated. But others resisted by taking up arms to protect their community and their religion. One of these was Mattathias the Hasmonean, and then later his son, Judah the Maccabee, who, with his four brothers, succeeded in bringing together a band of men to resist in armed revolt. It was a revolt steeped in perseverance and stubborn hope, for the Maccabees were hopelessly outnumbered by the Greco-Syrian army. After three years of a guerilla-type resistance, this small group succeeded in reclaiming the temple on Jerusalem's Mount Moriah. It was a time of rejoicing and also a time of grief, because in the rundown state of the temple they saw how close they had come to losing who they were as a people. The temple was overgrown with weeds and thorns, in disrepair and filled with garbage. The Maccabees wept and tore their clothes as a sign of their despair. But then they began to rebuild, and when they finished, they rededicated the temple by kindling the temple light. They found only one day's supply worth of oil, but miraculously the light burned for eight days. And that is why, at Hanukkah, eight candles are light, one more each day, to celebrate the miracle that the Maccabees had succeeded in regaining their freedom.
The basic facts of this story are simple. A people is taken over by an outside power, they resist, and win. But these basic facts unfold into a much more complex story that gains resonance when you think of the history of the Jewish people, a people continuously struggling to exist. How many times were the Israelites expelled from the land they had claimed? How many generations lived under the yoke of a foreign power? How many generations faced persecution in Europe, from the Dark Ages until the 20th century? What kind of welcome did the first Jewish immigrants receive in the New World? How long did it take for North American doors to open after learning of the persecution under Nazism?
Can you see why a story like Hanukkah would resonate so deeply? It even applies today. How fiercely is this story embedded in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict? Regardless of what any of us may feel about that conflict, can we fail to see how deeply their sense of history is inscribed into the political complexities of the state of Israel? The story of the Jews is the story of a people, usually hopelessly outnumbered, finding their way and surviving, sometimes through passive resistance, and sometimes through armed conflict. Time and time again, they have oil enough only for one day, and yet the light burns for eight. This is one truth of the Hanukkah story.
But there is also another truth to the story. The focus of Hanukkah is not simply on human strength and perseverance. This story is not just about the Maccabees. It is the tale of a people deeply bound in a covenantal relationship with their God. Listen to this excerpt from the First Book of Maccabee:
…
When [the Maccabees] saw the army coming to meet them, they said unto Judah: '… shall we be able, being a small company, to fight against so great …. a multitude? ...' And Judah said:" … victory in battle standeth not in the multitude…, but strength is from Heaven. … He Himself will discomfort them before our face; but as for you, be yet not afraid of them." -- The First Book of Maccabees
The Hanukkah story is a story of a people delivered by God. Without God, their resistance would have been futile. I think it's this part of the story that Unitarian Universalists, with our strong need to find that universal truth, and with our ambiguous relationship with a Divine presence, have needed to water down, and we have raised up the sense of human perseverance and struggle to a level not present in the original story. In order to be able to approach this story, we have needed to put God on the shelf in the same way we put God on the shelf at Easter and at Christmas because it's just too difficult a place for many Unitarian Universalists to go.
I ask you, is this being true to the religious traditions that we seek to honor? And I ask you another question, perhaps a more difficult question to ask, and to consider. Is it being true to ourselves?
I think it is safe to say that many of us who claim Unitarian Universalism as our religion feel ourselves in the minority. Despite the fact that we are predominantly white, and predominantly middle class in culture and economic station, we often experience ourselves as marginalized people. We feel that way because of what we believe and the lives we choose to live. Particularly here in the Midwest, in St. Louis, the gateway to the Bible Belt, out here in West County, many if not most of the people we interact with on a day to day basis have religious beliefs and values that differ markedly from ours. Many of us do not have a personal relationship with God. Some of us absolutely do not believe in God. And even those of us who do, and there are many of us, believe in a God that often has little in common with the God of our neighbours. And so often we feel alone. It can be difficult to be transparent about our beliefs because we are in the minority.
LONELINESS OF MINORITY BELIEFS
I certainly know from the time I have spent with our youth, that they often feel uncomfortable at school because of their religious beliefs and political views, and fearful of saying what they believe and what they stand for. This is one reason why we need to have a strong youth program, and why this congregation is committed to making that happen. Our youth need a place where they can be themselves and freely explore who they are and what they believe.
So in the midst of the isolation that we often feel out there, what is it that holds us? What is it that keeps us going? Towards what do we reach when seeking a way out of that aloneness?
I wonder how many of us would feel comfortable with the prayer of the people of Beth El Congregation:
Holy One of Blessing, Your Presence fills creation. You have kept us alive.
No doubt this prayer means little to some of you. In fact, it may actually feel uncomfortable. And no doubt, there are others for whom this responds to a deep need to reach beyond themselves and into that infinite mystery that holds us through dark and light. And yet, we sit in the same sanctuary, Sunday after Sunday. We come to be together in this community to find a sense of peace, to find a sense of belonging, to find home.
You have sustained us.
You have brought us to this moment.
What is clear is that when we divest these holidays of God, some people in our churches will finally be able to approach the larger, universal truths that those holidays hold. Those universal truths may reach into deep places hungry to be touched. What is also clear is that when we divest these holidays of God some of our people will find those universal truths somewhat empty. Not quite enough. Not reaching into those deeper places that are also hungry to be touched. So how to we nurture peace, belonging, the feeling of being home?
Sometimes, when I think of all the diverse needs of you who come here, I feel like we have need of eight days' supply of oil and have only one, and yet somehow, time after time, that eight days' supply appears. What is it? What gives us what we need to be a religious community capable of integrity, depth and sustainability?
There are two larger truths to the Hanukkah story. One is that the Macabbees survived through great human effort. The other is that they were fuelled in their struggle by their faith in a God they believed stood behind them and with them and moved through them. They persevered because they found strength within and without. There are also two larger truths to our story. One is that our religion has been built and nurtured and sustained through great human effort and perseverance. We make our religion happen. But it is also true that we couldn't have done it alone. Whether you call that force the spirit of life, the essence of humanity, the Great Mother, or God, something greater than us stands behind us, and moves with us and through us.
It is this interplay of human perseverance and that great virtually nameless mystery that stretches one day's worth of oil into eight, over and over and over again.
Didn't I tell you it would be hard not to fall into that search for universal truth? But perhaps that is a truth all on its own, for it is in the particularities of our lives, and in the particularity and the specialness of the religious pluralism that surrounds us that we do find those universal truths. Let us hold on and search for what is unique and special so that we walk our journeys with integrity, and let us also weave the universal truths that emanate from them into the fabric of our lives.
Posted: 12/15/05