"Hanukkah: What's In It For Me?"
A Sermon by Rev. Charles Blustein Ortman
December 5, 2010
READINGS: ANCIENT AND MODERN
Our ancient reading is from the First Book of Maccabees, Chapter
4:
Early in the morning on the twenty-fifth day of the ninth month,
which is the month of Kislev… they rose and offered sacrifice,
as the law directs, on the new altar of burnt offering which 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 worshiped and
blessed Heaven, who had prospered them. So they celebrated the dedication
of the altar for eight days, and offered burnt offerings with gladness;
they offered a sacrifice of deliverance and praise. They decorated
the front of the temple with golden crowns and small shields; they
restored the gates and the chambers for the priests, and furnished
them with doors. There was very great gladness among the people,
and the reproach of the Gentiles was removed. Then Judas and his
brothers and all the assembly of Israel determined that every year
at that season the days of dedication of the altar should be observed
with gladness and joy for eight days, beginning with the twenty-fifth
day of the month of Kislev.
Our modern reading is by Unitarian Universalist minister and
poet, Lynn Ungar. It is an excerpt from her poem, "Boundaries."
The universe does not
revolve around you.
The stars and planets spinning
through the ballroom of space
dance with one another
quite outside of your small life.
You cannot hold gravity
or seasons; even air and water
inevitably evade your grasp.
Why not, then, let go?
SERMON:
Many of us here are connected to the Jewish tradition by birth
or by blood, by marriage, through relationships or even sometimes
by way of gastronomic appreciation. The latter is especially true
this time of year when visions of potato latkes, complete with sour
cream or applesauce, dance in some of our heads. So, I'm going to
trust that most of us here are at least somewhat familiar with the
basics of the Hanukkah narrative. Just the same, by way of a brief
review, I'm going to invite you to join me now in those thrilling
days of yesteryear...
In the 2nd Century, BCE, the Greek Empire, under the leadership
of nasty Assyrian King Antiochus IV, harshly occupied the land of
Judea. They defiled anything they could lay eye or hand on, persecuting
the Jews for any outward manifestation of their Jewishness.
Darkness abounds in this story. It is filled with darkness. The
light in the hearts of the people is nearly extinguished. Nearly
extinguished, they are all but defeated.
The elements of the Hanukkah story include a downtrodden people
who have been conquered. The Jews are denied their identity and
their right to practice the rites of their faith. The very hearth
of their religious home - the Temple, the site of the sacred Torah
- has been taken over and utterly defiled. Many of the once faithful
Jews begin to lose their way, even identifying as Greeks to appease
their captors. Many Jews, filled with admiration for the worldly
wisdom and power of the Hellenistic culture, began to follow its
practices and obey the decrees of Antiochus.
But others Jews were filled with anger at the oppressive decrees
and with revulsion at the cooperation of their Hebrew compatriots.
They rallied under Mattathias, the priest, and his five sons-who
came to be called the Maccabees, the name meaning hammer. After
three years of guerrilla warfare against the regular armies of Antiochus,
the Maccabeen forces finally won out. Now led by one of the sons,
Judah Maccabee, they recaptured Jerusalem and set out to rededicate
their Holy Temple.
So, from a time when things are at their worst, when the struggle
seemed almost insurmountable, courage was found and hope was rekindled.
And from that small light of hope, the people learned once again
who they were. They learned to claim and take their place in the
world. What had been lost was then found, and out of the great darkness
a miracle of great light came forth.
Actually, the story about the miracle of the one-day supply of
oil burning for eight days wasn't added to the history of these
events until several hundred years later, as the Talmudic Rabbis
grew more and more uncomfortable with the militaristic themes of
the original story. They decided that the narrative required a more
spiritual twist. And so these Talmudic Rabbis added the little bit
about burning the oil that lasted for eight days. Up until then
it was a miracle of might, but from the scripting of the Talmud
on, it was also a miracle of the spirit. A good addition I would
say, not essential but a nice touch just the same.
Either way, it's a pretty fantastic story. And even though it accounts
for only a minor festival on the Jewish calendar, it commemorates
a pretty major series of events and dynamics. Hanukkah provides
a reminder to take courage, to have hope, to go the struggle and
to find one's way through the darkness.
So, I want you to try to imagine Judah Maccabee for a minute. I
wonder if there is an element or dynamic from our own time that
we might add to this narrative. Judah Maccabee walks into the Temple
following those long years of battle, deception, defilement and
intrigue. He has been a prime example, through it all, of courage,
strength and faithfulness. At the conclusion of the victory over
the Greeks and the unification of his own people, he enters into
the temple. He walks up the aisle until he stands before the Arc
of the Covenant. Perhaps he kneels in deference to the majesty of
the moment. He turns his gaze in a heavenly direction and proudly
inquires, "So, what's in it for me?" I don't imagine that's
how the story can't end in any helpful way. He had kept his eye,
all the while, on the larger picture throughout all the challenges.
He wasn't interested in what was in it for him as much as what was
in it for his people.
I'm remembering a Hanukkah celebration we had in our home when
our kids were little, but not so little. They were grade school
and middle school-aged. At the time, we were living up in Massachusetts.
It was the third or fourth night of Hanukkah. We started out by
lighting our menorah and saying the baraka. Whatever else we ate
that night, we probably had latkes, too. I was younger then myself,
and it was a lot easier to burn off the calories from several latke
suppers then than it is now.
Anyway, we got to the end of our dinner and it was time for presents.
We used to do the bigger gifts on the first and the last nights.
The middle nights were a bit more modest in their ostentation.
On this particular night, we had our annual grab-a-handful-of-change-from-the-bucket-night.
I've had this one gallon, galvanized bucket where I've thrown my
change at the end of the day forever. Each year we'd bring it out
during Hanukkah and let the kids dig in with one hand and keep whatever
they were able to take hold of.
That year the grab didn't go so well. The term "money grubbing"
comes to mind. Each of our kids took their turn using considerable
time to position their hands just so in order to maximize their
grab. There was arguing and quarreling about whether or not coins
dropped on the table counted, about the unfairness of the differing
sized hands, and about everything they could think of to fight about.
The experience didn't even come close to being fun.
Our little practice of providing Hanukkah gelt as a part of the
celebration had turned into a pretty disgraceful show of greed and
envy. It all made me a bit heartsick, but I can't really blame our
kids for going there. We had set them up. Our kids just did what
kids do, "You want me to take money? I'll take money. Watch
this!"
What was supposed to have been a celebration of light, and courage,
and hope, and struggle through the darkness had turned into an exploitation
of darkness, instead. It encouraged the promotion of an attitude
of - what's in it for me? Interesting, isn't it that a holiday inspired
by selflessness should lead to such selfishness. That was the last
year we had bucket night.
I don't think my family's experience is unique. I imagine there
are others in this room who may have had some similar experiences.
Last year one of the more popular holiday commercials was a BMW
car ad that showed footage from a vintage home video of a little
boy ripping open his present and then running around and screaming
hysterically in triumph. Again, I don't think it's the kid who's
at fault, but the parents who created the situation, recorded it
for posterity and then showed the video to the world as a model
of the way things ought to be at holiday time.
These past few years have been pretty dark ones in many ways. Our
country is involved in at least two wars. And while we may be supportive
of our troops who fight those wars on our behalf, I don't know very
many people who feel we should have engaged in them in the first
place. Two years ago our economy tanked. And while many of us are
sympathetic to efforts under way to get the economy back on its
feet, I don't know very many people who don't feel that we were
sold down the river by a renegade group of self-serving bankers
who betrayed the public trust, bankrupting the entire economic structure
for their own personal gain.
The list goes on. We needn't look too far to see a great deal of
darkness around us. We needn't look too far into the environment
to see the dark clouds of pollution and the extinction of all kinds
of plants and animals. We needn't look too far into our food chain
to see that we have been poisoning the very sources of our sustenance.
We needn't look too far into the institutions of our culture to
see the very dark clouds of oppression in our schools, our prisons,
and in the marketplace.
We do live in some very dark times once again, and any close look
into the makeup of that darkness will expose individuals or groups
of individuals demanding, "What's in it for me?"
Russian novelist, dramatist and historian Alexander Solzhenitsyn
once wrote, "It is not because the truth is too difficult to
see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest
and most comfortable course for us is to seek inside where it accords
with our emotions - especially selfish ones."
Selfishness and greed are hardly new to the human experience. Why
did Cain kill his brother Abel? The short answer is selfishness.
Cain had made a miserly sacrifice to the Lord in comparison to Abel's
generous one. Cain's was not acceptable, while Abel's was. Cain
got miffed and, bam! Abel got offed. Selfishness has been around
for a very long time.
What is new to the mix of our unfolding human story is that social
institutions have grown so enormously. This has served humankind
so well in so many ways. But when these enormous institutions are
a detriment, their impact is colossal. When greed and selfishness
are woven into the fabric of them, the collision can be devastating
- thus the fall of the economy; thus the wars which seem to be intractable;
thus the environment on the fast course down the toilet drain.
We can look at individuals within these systems and say that we
have been set up, like my kids were in the Hanukkah gelt grab, or
with the other kid in the BMW commercial. It's not our fault! But
if we are not responsible for any of it, then who is? No one, and
no one is accountable.
If no one is held responsible, then there is little hope that anything
can be done about the economy, or the wars, or the environment,
or oppression, or any of the other elements making up the dark clouds
that circle over our heads. And those clouds are circling whether
we pay attention to them or not.
Judah and the Maccabees did not say, "What's in it for me?"
Instead they said something like, "You know, things don't have
to be this bad. Things can be a lot better. I/we are going to do
what ever it takes to make things better."
20th Century New Zealand statesman James Allen once wrote, "...
selfishness must be discovered and understood before it can be removed.
It is powerless to remove itself, neither will it pass away of itself.
Darkness ceases only when light is introduced; so ignorance can
only be dispersed by knowledge; selfishness by love."
One of the messages of Hanukkah, this minor holiday with some major
religious themes, is that we are not and cannot be in this on our
own and for ourselves. There is a larger good to reckon with. Just
as the oppression by the Assyrians of the Jews called upon the Jews
to remember their authentic selves in relationship to one another
and their tradition, so too are we called to be our authentic selves
in relationship with the events of our day, with our brothers and
sisters, with our world, and to the larger good that holds us all
in connection. That may be a new definition of universalism for
this age - we are called to be our authentic selves in relationship
with the events of our day, with our brothers and sisters, with
our world, and to the larger good that holds us all in connection.
What's in it for me? The answer to that question is, not much,
unless what's in it for me is defined by what's in it for us all.
The Maccabees would not have found light to dispel the darkness
of their times had they followed the miserly path of Cain. Nor can
we. It's not likely that we will dissipate the clouds that darken
our days - no matter what those clouds may be made up of , whether
it be our collective social clouds or our more personal ones that
besiege us, if we fail to embrace the gracious and generous course
of Abel, if we fail to recognize the bonds that bind each all.
While these days are dark and we still have time to see and think
and respond, there is so much that waits to be seen. There is so
much for us to think about, and there is a universe of responses
awaiting our selection and our action. Lynne Unger wrote:
The universe does not
revolve around you.
The stars and planets spinning
through the ballroom of space
dance with one another
quite outside of your small life.
You cannot hold gravity
or seasons; even air and water
inevitably evade your grasp.
Why not, then, let go?
Why not, then, let go? Why not let go of the idea that the earth,
the Sun, and all the universe revolve around any of us? Why not,
then, embrace our unfolding reality that we are a part of something
much larger than ourselves. And to that largeness we owe our awe,
our gratitude and our service.
So may we be so bold as to add our part the way we want it to be
to the legacy of this seasonal story. May this season be a celebration
of light, and courage, and hope, and struggle through the darkness.
May it remind us that one light can kindle another, and another,
and another, until out of the darkness a loving and enduring brightness
occurs.
A Holiday Prayer, (CB Ortman):
Spirit of Life and of Love,
At this time of season,
We pray in thanksgiving for all the blessings that are ours.
And we pray that we might learn to open our hearts even more.
May we learn to be generous givers, as well as gracious receivers,
for it is in the giving and the receiving
that we come to feel blessed.
Help us to be instruments of peace, purveyors of hope and bearers
of faith,
so that with peace and hope and faith
we might better help to fill our world
with truth, beauty justice and compassion.
Help us learn to live with love,
When love comes easily,
And help us even more when it comes as a greater challenge.
May the miracle that brought light into the darkness so long ago,
engender yet another miracle born in our hearts each day.
Amen.
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