"Hanukkah: Taking a Chance;
Taking a Step"
A Hanukkah Homily by Rev. Charles Blustein Ortman
December 13, 2009
READINGS: ANCIENT & MODERN
The First Reading is From the Babylonian Talmud:
What is the reason for Chanukah? For our Rabbis taught: On the twenty-fifth
day of Kislev the eight days of Chanukah begin, during which lamentation
for the dead and fasting are forbidden. For when the Greeks entered
the Temple, they defiled all the oils therein, and when the Hasmonean
dynasty prevailed… they made search and found only one cruse
of oil which lay with the seal of the High Priest, but which contained
sufficient [oil] for one day's lighting only; yet a miracle was
wrought therein and they lit the lamp therewith for eight days.
The following year these days were declared a Festival with the
recitation of … hymns of praise and thanksgiving.
Our second reading is the poem, "Chanukkah" by Unitarian
Universalist minister Lynn Ungar:
Come down from the hills.
Declare the fighting done.
Be bold-declare victory,
even when the temple is wrecked
and the tyrants have not retreated,
only coiled back like a snake
prepared to strike again.
Come down. Try to remember
a life gentled by daily acts
of domestic faith-the pot
set to boil, the bed made up,
the table set in calm expectation
that when the sun sets
we will still be here.
Come down and settle.
Unlearn the years of hiding.
Light fires that can be seen for miles,
that dance and spark and warm
the frozen marrow. Set lamps
in the window. Declare your presence,
your loyalties, the truths
for which you do not expect to have to die.
It would take a miracle, you say,
to carve such a solid life
out of the shell of fear.
I say you are the stuff
from which such miracles are made.
HOMILY:
I'm going to trust that most of us are at least somewhat familiar
with the basics of the Hanukkah narrative. There's Antiochus, the
nasty Assyrian king, and the brutish Greek Empire, who harshly occupied
the land of Judea. They defiled anything Jewish they could lay eye
or hand on, and persecuted the Jews for any outward manifestation
or expression of their religion.
The elements of the Hanukkah story include a downtrodden people
who have been conquered. The very heart of their religious home
- the Temple, site of the sacred Torah - has been taken over and
defiled. Many of the once faithful Jews begin to lose their way,
even identifying with their captors.
Darkness abounds. The story is filled with darkness. The light
in the hearts of the people is nearly extinguished. Nearly extinguished,
they are all but defeated in the face of insurmountable odds.
Yet, even when things are at their worst, when the struggle seems
most impossible, courage is somehow found and hope is rekindled.
And from that small light of hope, the people learn once again who
they are. They learn to claim and take their place once again in
the world. What was lost is found, and out of the great darkness
a miracle of great light abounds.
The story of Hanukkah gives us a collective and a personal reminder
to take courage, to have hope, to go the struggle and to find our
own way through the darkness, to find our own way through the seemingly
insurmountable odds. Our Congregation, our state, our country and
even the world, all have issues that question our very sustainability.
We have questions that we must face and collectively find our way
through. We each have our own life issues that we must face over
and over again, until we go deeply enough, darkly enough into them,
in order to accept who we are in those struggles and therein, to
find the light of hope.
Hanukkah reminds us to consider our plight, as a people. I have
to imagine that there are many comparisons that might be made between
the traditional Hanukkah story and the story of our own occupation
of Iraq. There are certainly comparisons that might be drawn to
the growing darkness within our environment and the small ray of
light that shines this week in Copenhagen.
I know that I don't often speak about the war in Iraq, and perhaps
I've been negligent. I have spoken many times on the issue of our
environment. But still, neither of these are issues that capture
my heart is this morning. There is another matter though, that has
been burning at me this past week, let alone the past several years.
I trust I am not alone in facing this struggle here. And I find
it to be quite inescapably comparable to the Hanukkah story. Before
going to that concern though, I want to talk a bit about what I
think is at the very heart of the ancient story, that might be worth
our attention. Lynn Ungar wrote:
Come down. Try to remember
a life gentled by daily acts
of domestic faith-the pot
set to boil, the bed made up,
the table set in calm expectation
that when the sun sets
we will still be here.
I think the pivotal point in the story of the Macabees occurs when
they ignite the lamp in the temple. They've been through hell all
the way up to that point, and still they are facing a hopeless situation.
Their rituals call for the lamp to be lit as part of the rededication.
And though it will take eight days to render new oil, they go ahead
and light it with only one day's supply anyway.
I don't know about the miracle of one day's worth of oil burning
for eight days. I have to say it sounds a little fantastic to me.
The miracle though is that they took the chance, took the next step
in living out their lives with the integrity that was required in
order for them to reclaim those lives.
I can't speak about whatever miracles of warfare that might have
occurred to allow them a military victory. I'm a Conscientious Objector
and I must confess that I do not have a military mind. But I am
a religious person and I do understand something about the power
of ritual, the power of intentionally repeated behavior, devoted
behavior that can often times enable us to stand up in the face
of impossible odds. When we despair, we do nothing. When we act
though, we step toward our future. In just taking the next step,
we create hope in that future.
Ritual can provide us with an idea of what we might do. The Macabees
lit the lamp in the temple. Having a burning lamp did not save them;
lighting it did. What was important in that action was the step.
It allowed them to move out of bondage and into self-determination.
The ritual was not the miracle; it was the vehicle. The miracle
was in the faith and hope expressed in the action, in the step,
in the audacity of lighting that lamp.
I had a very good friend back in Illinois. She died just a couple
of years ago, but back then she and I collaborated on a number of
performance kinds of endeavors. A few years before I met Lucy, her
husband had died. She wrote a book about how she reclaimed her life
from that devastating experience. Sometimes when we see people who
have just incurred a great loss we think, "How can that person
even get out of bed in the morning?" I know I've had that thought
about others many times.
Well, the day after her husband's funeral, my friend Lucy could
not even get out of bed. She couldn't get out from under the covers
for days. She lay there, sobbing, unable to move. And that went
on until she began to remember her life, her two daughters and their
home. She remembered that she was a writer and a fabulous cook.
She got out of bed and began to resume her daily activities, her
daily rituals: cleaning, caring for her girls, baking and cooking.
She started to write her newspaper column again. Little by little,
she began to find herself reclaiming her life. And it was through
her actions, through the hope and the faith stirred by them that,
step by step, brought her back into her life.
Emily Dickenson wrote:
The bustle in the house
The morning after death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted on earth.
The sweeping up the heart,
And putting love away
We shall not use again
Until eternity.
I know that many of us here have experienced significant losses
through this past year. Our congregation has had far more deaths
than usual. A number of you sitting in these seats now have received
significant new medical diagnoses, or have experienced the debilitating
advancement of older conditions. Some of you have lost jobs or significant
portions of your income. Some of you have lost loved ones or have
lost at love.
I don't know how we battle against those injuries in ways that
might allow us to come out the victor. But I think the Hanukkah
story does provide us a way of coping with those struggles. Who
knows? Maybe even a way of giving us heart! Maybe even a miracle!
Light one candle, my friends, and remember who you are. And then
go on to do what you do, so that you might reclaim the temple, reclaim
your faith and your hope, reclaim your life.
"Light fires that can be seen for miles,
that dance and spark and warm
the frozen marrow." --Ungar
I said earlier that I would get back to a current event that relates
closely to this ancient story of Hanukkah. Many of us here have
been closely connected to the struggle for gay rights and marriage
equality. I have been proud to be in this struggle with you.
I don't know if I've ever explained to you why I have such a deep
commitment to marriage equality. Many years ago, when my own children
were little, in a very significant way, I learned about the incredibly
high suicide rate among gay and lesbian teenagers. I had no idea
if my kids were going to be gay or straight, but I did know that
as a parent I had a responsibility to change the world and to make
the world as safe for them as possible, should they be gay. As I
grew into my ministry, I knew by extension that I had that same
responsibility for all of our children, and in truth for all children.
My work for marriage equality is an aspect of my response to that
responsibility.
Anyway, the struggle for marriage equality in many ways is like
the struggle of the Macabees against the Greeks. Our gay and lesbian
brothers and sisters have been told that they cannot be who they
are, cannot love who they love. They have been denied full citizenship
and their families suffer from having been denigrated to a separate
and unequal status.
At this moment, even though we thought we might, we do not know
what the outcome of this struggle will be here in New Jersey, as
the year closes out and a potential window for victory closes with
it. I can tell you that I for one am very cautiously optimistic.
But here is what I can gleen from this story of the Macabees.
If our legislature votes to provide all the citizens of New Jersey
with full marriage equality, that will be good reason to light a
candle and to celebrate. And then, of course, it will be time to
pay attention to other injustices that yet need to be addressed.
If our legislature votes no, not to enfranchise the state's gay
citizens, which will be by the way a religious vote, showing the
worst face of religious privilege and prejudice, but if our efforts
for equality at this time prove to be unsuccessful, that too will
be good cause for us to light a candle. We'll have no need to curse
the darkness, but we will need all the strength of our ritual, all
the strength of our religious community, all the strength of kindred,
justice-seeking people, in order to take the next step, and the
one after that, and the one after that.
The light of our lamp might waver from the impact of the blow,
for a moment, but we will not be defeated. In the end justice will
win out. As insurmountable as this struggle may seem, together we
will do what we need to do, to build faith and to encourage hope,
until justice has been won.
"It would take a miracle you say,
To carve such a [faithful and hopeful] life
Out of the shell of fear.
I say you are the stuff
From which such miracles are made."
In our personal lives or in our collective life, when we despair,
we do nothing. When we act though, we step toward and into our future.
The Macabees lit the lamp in the temple. Having a burning lamp
cannot save us; the act of lighting it though, can and does. It
is the step that reminds us of who we are and allows us to move
ourselves out of bondage and into self-determination. The ritual
is not the miracle; it is a vehicle. The miracle is in the faith
and the hope expressed in the action, in the audacity, in the lighting
of the lamp, in the taking of the step. Even in the face of the
most insurmountable odds.
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