Rededicating Christmas

(“Hanukking” Christmas)

To the church in Diaspora[1].

DECEMBER 3, 2006: FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Jeremiah 33:14-16     I Thessalonians 3:12-4:2     Luke 21:25-28, 34-36

Introduction

Dark December Days

Today we exit Ordinary Time and enter into the Extraordinary Time of Advent in preparation for Christmas 2006. Today is New Years Day in the church. Today we also go from liturgical cycle B to cycle C for the Sunday gospel readings. This past church year the evangelist Mark supplied us with the gospel readings. This year it will be the evangelist Luke (three cheers! Luke is my favorite Evangelist!). Today we also exchange the liturgical color green for penitential purple. That’s a leftover from pre-Vatican II days when Advent, like Lent, was considered to be a strictly penitential season which frowned on any partying, gift-giving and decorating before the 24^th of December. Now Advent is considered to be a season of joyful expectation instead of penance, and now we may use the color blue for Advent in honor of Mother Mary and baby boy Jesus.

It’s December! Winter begins on the 21^st with the shortest day of the year offering us only 9 short hours of light and 15 long hours of darkness. After the 21^st the days will start growing longer! The physical darkness of these days is intensified by the high price of gas and healthcare (treated as a pure commodity). It’s intensified by the terrorism that’s afoot these days robbing our lives of any sense of normalcy and filling us with a malaise that something’s gone awry in the human family. The darkness is intensified especially by daily reports from blood-drenched Baghdad. No wonder December is “lamp lighting time in the valley”[2] for the human family. No wonder the human family lights lamps these days with a kind of vengeance.

Hanukkah & Christmas: feasts of lights

Soon the Jewish community will light its lamps for eight days straight in the celebration of Hanukkah. The word itself simply means "renewal" or "rededication” in Hebrew. The feast commemorates the purification of the temple in Jerusalem and its rededication after the Greek tyrant Antiochus Epiphanes desecrated it. On the site of the altar of holocausts he had built a pagan altar and there on the 25^th of the Jewish month of Kislev (December) had offered a pagan sacrifice to the Greek god Zeus Olympios. This is referred to as the "horrible abomination” by the prophet Daniel and by Matthew in his gospel (Dn 9:27; Mt 24:15). Three years later on the same date, Judas Maccabeus purified the sanctuary, erected a new altar, and undertook to rededicate the temple.

According to legend (this time of the rolling year is for legends) no consecrated oil could be found to light the temple menorah--the seven branch candelabra prescribed by Moses as temple furniture. [3] After diligently scouring the temple, Judas Maccabeus finally found a small jug still sealed with the high priest's seal and therefore not contaminated by the enemy. But there wasn’t enough oil in the jug to keep the menorah burning for the eight days of rededication, and to get a supply of consecrated oil would have taken a four-day journey to the City of Tekoa. Then a miracle happened: God let the oil in the jug continue to supply fuel throughout the eight days of rededication. Judas Maccabeus, his brothers and all people of Israel decided that every year on the twenty-fifth day of the winter month of Kislev, the rededication of the temple should be celebrated for eight days with joy and thanksgiving (I Mc 4:59; 2 Mc 10:5).

This year on December 16^th the Jewish community will light the first of the eight candles on the menorah. As they are lighted one by one the darkness is dispelled and the light grows brighter. It’s an eight-genuflection approach of the Jewish community to its Feast of Lights—Hanukkah.

Today, December 3, 2006, we Christians gather around an Advent wreath with its four candles for the four weeks of Advent. As one candle is lighted each week the darkness is dispelled and the light grows brighter. It is our four-genuflection -approach to our Feast of Lights—Christmas.

Hanukkah astray

Johannes Buxtorf, an ancient Jewish scholar, is quite critical at times about the manner in which his Jewish community would celebrate its feast days. Writing of Hanukkah he describes how the feast strayed from its original intent and inspiration. “They celebrate it today more by eating, drinking and having fun than by giving thanks to God for their victory over the enemy.” He speaks about the superstition and pettiness that cropped up around its observance. “They prepare a seven branch menorah and then light one light each day until the eighth night. The lights are not allowed to burn all night long. While the lights are burning no one is allowed to do any work in the house. The menorah itself must stand on the right side of the door, not less than ten paces from the ground, and not higher than twenty. And they often hold subtle and futile discussions on how long the lights should burn, who should light them, whether or not it is permitted to light one light with the other, and similar things.” Then Buxtorf sharply indicts them saying, “In the observance of our Feast of Lights they are very fussy about the outer light but are not concerned about the great darkness which abides in their hearts!”

Thanksgiving true

Last Thursday the nation celebrated what is perhaps its most cherished feast--Thanksgiving. Garrison Keillor, that folksy author of Lake Wobegon, who writes profoundly of simple things, praises Thanksgiving as the nation’s one feast that has been true to its original inspiration. All our other feasts have strayed but not Thanksgiving. It still send us “over the river and through the woods” to grandmother’s house, loaded down not with gifts but with only ourselves. It still gathers sons and daughter and grandchildren around the family table to give thanks for the basic blessings of life, like family and friends, like having a roof over our heads, a warm bed to sleep in and food aplenty to eat. Thanksgiving remains true even to the very menu itself: traditional turkey (whether you like turkey or not), cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie and sweet potatoes.

Christmas astray

Christmas isn’t as true and faithful as Thanksgiving. It strays many miles from Bethlehem, the city of David, where the Savior was born for us, and where the poor infant for whom there was no room in the inn was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger (Lk 2:10-12). Christmas isn’t pure and faithful as Thanksgiving. It strays many miles from Bethlehem as it has us running here, there and everywhere except to the crèche where we find the reason for the season.

Rededicating Christmas

Buxtorf would probably indict us also for the manner in which we observe our Feast of Lights. “They are busy,” he would probably say, “decorating everything with a million lights for their Feast of Lights, and “all the while they are not concerned about the great darkness which abides in their hearts! They turn their season into an orgy of busyness. They are busy with parties they have to host or attend. They are busy with Christmas cards they have to write or answer. They are busy with shopping for gifts they have to buy for themselves and others. They are busy with trips they have to make and visitors they have to accommodate. They are busy hurrying and scurrying here and there and everywhere except to the crèche where they would find the reason for their season.”

A crusade for the first Sunday of Advent

I used to crusade against the busyness of Christmas--the hurrying and scurrying, the buying and selling, the giving and receiving of gifts. I’ve outgrown that crusade of my younger days; I realize that many people make a living from that. Furthermore, it’s always better to crusade for something than against something. What we crusade for on this first Sunday of Advent is a rededication of Christmas as Hanukkah was a rededication of the Temple. What we crusade for this morning is a hurrying and scurrying that will also take us to the crèche where we will find the “reason for our season” and will make some sense out of Christmas.

Conclusion

A story to rededicate Christmas

This time of the rolling year is especially for telling stories. That’s because at Christmas the Word became flesh (Jn 1: 14), and what is a story but words that are clothed in flesh. When we have a lot of shepherds and sheep, oxen and asses, stable and straw, kings and coffers and whole choirs of angels hovering over a babe and singing "Gloria in excelsis Deo," then we, indeed, have a lot of flesh. Then we, indeed, have a lot of story which we don't hear with our ears but gaze upon with our eyes. At least at Christmas time we should stop speaking with words and words and still more words and start speaking with stories. Years ago at Christmas 1974, I read a story in a United Presbyterian magazine. It speaks to me about rededicating, “Hanukking,” Christmas. A missionary lady named Jane Mook tells it:

One Christmas day I was in a remote village of India and the congregation was gathered in a schoolroom for worship. From one wall a faded picture of Handy smiled down benignly. There was no minister. The school teacher read the Scriptures and led in the long, long Tamil hymns. At the end of the service there was a stir in the rear of the room and a young woman slipped forward -- a girl she was really - - thin and shy. She carried a tiny baby, surely not more than a day old. As she approached the battered desk that served as an altar table, she reached into the folds of her sari and drew out a single egg. With utmost care she laid it on the table and bowed her head. "For the birth of her child," whispered the teacher to me. "It's her thank-offering to God."

An egg! Not a coin, but a life-sustaining egg! The diet of the Indian villager is notoriously deficient in protein. This woman needs this egg, I thought. In the economy of her village, this one egg costs a woman like her about three hours on the road or in the fields. Even if she is lucky enough to own hens, she sells their few eggs and buys rice to fill the stomachs of her family. A single egg -- a worthy and sacrificial offering.

So this Christmas, as we wearily shop for gifts for ourselves and others, as we festoon the tree with tinsel and lights, as we scowl at the assault of canned Christmas carols on our ears, as we prepare our 18 pound turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, peas, cranberry sauce and mincemeat pie [ as we stampede the shopping malls to get our hands on one of those prized Play Station 3 (retailing at $500.00)] I shall remember a single egg (Jane Mook, A.D. Magazine, Dec. 1974).

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[1] Diaspora is a Greek word meaning dispersion. It refers to a religious group who for one reason or other has left its homeland and has taken up residence as a minority in a foreign land.

[2] There’s an old song that goes, “When it's lamp lighting time in the valley, then in dreams I go back

to my home. I can see that old lamp in the window. It will guide me wherever I roam.”

[3] The temple menorah was a seven branch candelabra. The Hanukkah menorah is really

an eight branch candelabra. The discrepancy is explained this way: In celebrating Hanukkah

the Jews added one more light to the seven so that they could use this one added light

for profane purposes, like lighting other lamps throughout the house or lighting the fire

in the hearth.