On Hanukkah

Advent Vespers, Week Three

1 Maccabees

Early in the morning on the twenty-fifth day of the ninth month, which is the month of Chislev, in the one hundred and forty-eighth year, they rose and offered sacrifice, as the law directs, on the new altar of burnt-offering that they had built. At the very season and on the very day that the Gentiles had profaned it, it was dedicated with songs and harps and lutes and cymbals. All the people fell on their faces and worshipped and blessed Heaven, who had prospered them. So they celebrated the dedication of the altar for eight days, and joyfully offered burnt-offerings; they offered a sacrifice of well-being and a thanksgiving-offering. They decorated the front of the temple with golden crowns and small shields; they restored the gates and the chambers for the priests, and fitted them with doors. There was very great joy among the people, and the disgrace brought by the Gentiles was removed.

John 10
At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered, “I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand.  The Father and I are one.”

Homily:

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

Growing up in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, I always enjoyed Hanukkah. For eight beautiful days leading up to the Christmas break, almost none of my friends came to school. Do you know what you get when only three people show up for seventh-grade geometry? Study hall!

We had the usual disagreements over whose was the better holiday. The trump card was that Hanukkah lasted for eight days, while Christmas was done in one. Nobody believed me when I insisted that there were, in fact, 12 Days of Christmas. “That’s just a song,” they said. To this day I’m still flying that same flag. Yet there was this tacit understanding that Hanukkah was not all that important a holiday to the Jewish people, and that it had only become a big deal in North America so that good Jewish boys and girls would not feel left out of the Christmas holiday extravaganza. Latkes and dreidels could be hard pressed to compete with December’s month-long onslaught of holiday cheer.

The unspoken assumption was that if it weren’t for Christmas no one would much bother to recognize Hanukkah. But the truth might actually be the other way around. If it weren’t for Hanukkah, it’s possible that we wouldn’t celebrate Christmas at all. What is the story of Hanukkah, and why should it matter to Christians? Ironically you won’t find the tale told in the Hebrew Bible. But it does show up in the Greek Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Talmud.

A little more than three centuries before the birth of Jesus, Alexander the Great conquered the known world. Everywhere he went, he brought with him Greek culture, Greek thought, and the Greek language. That’s why the New Testament and some Old Testament books are written in Greek rather than in Hebrew. Upon his death at the young age of 33, Alexander infamously willed his vast empire “to the strongest”—meaning that whoever could take it should do so. His generals fell to fighting amongst themselves, each carving out his own slab of Alexander’s enormous conquests. The one who got the most square mileage out of the deal, a domain stretching from Syria all the way to India, was a fellow named Seleucis, and over time his Seleucid Empire came to encompass God’s people Israel as well.

At first the Seleucids were rather well-disposed towards their Jewish subjects, yet as the generations rolled by the dynasty descended into madness. A psychopath named Antiochus IV came to the throne, and he set out to destroy Judaism as a culture. He would make them Greek by any means necessary. No more silly circumcisions or kosher dietary laws. No more monotheism or Hebrew Scriptures. The Israelites would be forced to worship statues of the Greek gods, and to offer up sacrifices that the Bible rejected as unclean. Refusal to Hellenize would be met by extermination. The Bible records such horrors in the books of the Maccabees, with entire families butchered and infants hung from their mothers’ necks.

The Prophet Daniel of old had spoken of an Abomination of Desolation, which now came to pass. Antiochus erected a statue of himself as Zeus in the one true Temple in Jerusalem, and sacrificed upon the holy altar pigs and other unclean animals forbidden by the Hebrew Scriptures. Bibles they simply tore up and threw into the fire.

This proved too much for the people of God. Under the leadership of a priest named Matthias, the Israelites rose up against their Seleucid overlords and waged a war of liberation against both the Greeks and also those Hellenized Jews who had betrayed their God and His people. Matthias’ son was known as Judas Maccabeus, “Judah the Hammer,” and he took back the holy Temple of God by force. The Maccabees tore down the pagan idols and cleansed the abominations of the Greeks. Alas, the holy vessels, including the menorah, the great golden lamp that represented the Tree of Life, had been carried off. So Maccabeus cast a new menorah from what materials he could find.

On the anniversary of the Abomination—the twenty-fifth day of the Hebrew month of Chislev, according to the Bible—the holy Temple was rededicated. Hanukkah literally means “to dedicate,” and the Maccabees celebrated this Feast of the  Dedication for eight days. According to the Talmud, the priests could find only enough consecrated lamp oil for a single day. Yet the oil burned miraculously for the full eight days of celebration, time enough to prepare a new oil supply. This proved to Israel that God continued to bless His Temple. And so to this very day, faithful Jews the world over remember the courage of the Maccabees and the fidelity of God on this festival of lights, of oil, and of rejoicing.

Now, the events of this story occurred less than two centuries before the birth of Jesus. A prophecy arose at that time that the Messiah, the promised divine King of Israel, would be born at Hanukkah, at the anniversary of the Temple’s Dedication. We would do well to remember that Hanukkah falls on the twenty-fifth of Chislev. And the equivalent on our calendar, lo and behold, is December twenty-fifth.

Recall that throughout His life Jesus worshipped at the Temple in Jerusalem. There He was first acclaimed by the prophets at only 40 days of age; there He taught the master rabbis in His Father’s house when He was but 12 years old. John’s Gospel tells us that Jesus would travel to the Temple in order to celebrate Hanukkah. And it was on one such occasion, with Jesus so clearly bound to the messianic hope of the Festival of Lights, that the people cried, “Do not keep us in suspense! Are You the Christ or not?”

Without Hanukkah, there would be no Temple. And without the Temple, everything about Jesus’ life—His birth, His ministry, His Crucifixion—would have been completely different. We would find our faith unrecognizable. Christians might well ask why the Church does not celebrate Hanukkah, given this importance, and given that the Feast of the Dedication appears in the Christian Scriptures, Old and New, rather than in the Hebrew.

But in many ways Christmas is our Hanukkah, our Festival of the Light. Christ is the fulfilment of all our hopes, prayers, and prophecies: the Messiah of Israel and Savior of the nations. As we burn our Advent candles and light our Christmas trees, let us remember along with our Jewish brothers and sisters, and with God’s faithful people of every time and place, that the Light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.