Come down from the hills. Declare the fighting done.[i]

 

The story of Hanukkah is the story of a great military victory for the Jewish people. Judas Maccabee and his brothers had, with a small band of fighters, miraculously defeated the mighty armies of Antiochus IV Epiphanies, the Syrian Greek king of the Seleucid empire who had conquered Jerusalem during the second century BCE.[ii]

 

By 167 BCE, Antiochus had banned the practice of Judaism and defiled the Temple in Jerusalem. And by then, the Maccabees and other Jews who had not assimilated to the Greek or Hellenistic way of life, had had enough. As the story goes, over the course of three years, the Maccabees took back the territory that had been lost to Antiochus and, eventually, they regained Jerusalem and the Temple at its center.

 

They entered that holy place that had been ransacked by their oppressors and prepared to rededicate it to the worship of their God. The word Hanukkah is derived from the Jewish word for dedication. They righted the menorah and found a vial of oil with which to light the sacred lamp – a vial that would last only one night. The ancient texts of the Talmud tell the story of the miracle that occurred next: the oil went on to burn for eight days instead of one.[iii]

 

Why this miracle in the midst of a story about an unexpected military victory?

Well, some scholars believe that perhaps the rabbis of the 4th century CE who composed the Talmud needed something more than the military prowess of the Maccabees to justify their claim
that fasting and mourning were not allowed during the festival of Hanukkah. The eight-day miracle of light would have provided the religious and legal justification needed to legitimize the festival.[iv]

 

Now, I am not a Talmudic scholar. I am not of Jewish heritage. I am thoroughly an outsider looking in. And, to me, (for what it’s worth) the most profound telling of the Hanukkah story that I have come across is in Rev. Lynn Ungar’s poem that we read this morning.

Because you can picture it, can’t you, in her words? Fighters and their families emerging from the hills after years of hiding out. Returning to the Temple, their holy of holies, only to find it wrecked. What does it take and what does it mean, she asks, to rebuild a life – what does it take to rebuild a people – after years of war, of fear, of resistance? It would take a miracle, comes the answer.

 

And what does the story of Hanukkah deliver?

 

A miracle.

 

Eight days of light from the oil sufficient for only one. It was, perhaps for those experiencing those eight days, and certainly for those telling the story hundreds of years later, proof of divine power and goodness. “Rock of Ages,” they might have said, “Praise thy saving power.” “God will provide,” they might have said, “and care for God’s people. And we will rebuild.”

 

And they did. The defeat of the Seleucid armies ushered in the Hasmonean dynasty, a period of relative peace, prosperity, and stability for the Jewish people that lasted for generations.[v]

 

Each year, throughout the difficult and so often profoundly painful history of the Jewish people around this world, the festival of Hanukkah commemorates this miracle.

 

The miracle of declaring the fighting done. The miracle of coming down from the hills and resuming the “daily acts of domestic faith” – that faith that says:
“You tried to destroy us but we will survive.

We will still be here.

We will make a life again.

We will thrive.”

 

This past Wednesday, November 28, 2018, when Columbia Teacher’s College professor, Elizabeth Midlarsky entered her office, she was met with bright red swastikas and an anti-Semitic slur spray painted on her office walls. Midlarsky is Jewish and writes about the Holocaust. This has happened to her before – a decade ago. But this time, she said, “They got me. I’m afraid.”[vi]

 

The Anti-Defamation League reports that “the number of anti-Semitic incidents was nearly 60 percent higher in 2017 than in 2016, marking the largest single-year increase on record…”[vii]

 

According to the ADL report: There were 1,986 anti-Semitic incidents reported across the United States in 2017, including physical assaults, vandalism, and attacks on Jewish institutions.
That figure represents a 57 percent increase over the 1,267 incidents in 2016. Every part of the country was affected, with an incident reported in all 50 states for the first time in at least a decade.”[viii]

 

The scars of the shooting at Tree of Life Synagogue in October are still raw and now blood-red swastikas at Teacher’s College.  Hanukkah is not abstract for American Jews this year, and it cannot be abstract for us either. The danger of the coiled foe is as real as it has ever been.

 

~

 

Why am I telling you this? I know you don’t come here on Sunday morning for statistics or reports and certainly not for a recap of the news.

Why do you come? I invite you to ask yourself that this morning. Why do you come to USNH on Sunday morning? What are you looking for? What do you need?

 

We call our Sunday morning services a “worship service.” What does that mean? What or who are we worshiping? And how do we reconcile the fact that that answer might be different for every single person sitting here this morning?

Well, in good Unitarian Universalist fashion, let’s do some digging, some inquiry, you guessed it, some word study.

The etymology of the word “worship” is that it comes from the Old English “worth-ship,”
a word whose root means “the condition of being worthy.”[ix]

Worth-ship.

We gather here on Sunday morning to consider that which has worth, that which is worthy of our attention, our praise, our honor. For some of us, this may be God. For others, it is the community itself. Certainly, the events of the world, the injustices we witness and the justice making we lift up are worthy of our attention. We use this time to give ourselves over to the mystery of life
and to remember to breathe, to sing, to pray and meditate, to be together in our praise of that which is both mysterious and yet somehow known to us.

 

And this morning, we humbly derive our lesson from the act of faith that is lighting the Hanukkah menorah. The act of faith that says light is worth of our attention, our praise, our honor – even, and especially, in the midst of oppression, when the tyrants have not retreated,

and, instead, lie in wait.

Lighting candles in the darkness is not only a declaration of the belief in a powerful God, who may have miraculously made oil last eight days instead of one, it is a powerful act of resistance and of hope.

 

So, what about this eight-day mystery, the miracle of the oil that lasted? Who knows what happened? Some of us may find ourselves explaining away any supernatural occurrence:

there was more oil in the jar than they thought; it was especially potent oil; the Greeks must have left different wicks in the lamp.

 

But, maybe (just this once), we give ourselves over to the story. We let the miracle stand,

and instead of asking what actually happened, we ask ourselves: What does the Hanukkah story tell us about miracles?

 

In a video on Aish.com, a Jewish educational website, Rabbi Rav Gav Friedman offers a beautiful Hanukkah reflection, and he suggests that perhaps instead of eight candles on the menorah, there should be seven, because the first night the oil was lit wouldn’t have been a miracle, right?

 

They only had oil to last one night and it lasted that first night. To be expected. It was the other seven nights that were miraculous, so it should follow, he says, that there should be only seven candles on the menorah.

 

But there are eight candles, not seven, Rabbi Friedman reminds us, and this is an indication that the first night is miraculous too. Because light, itself – oil, itself – the very act of being able to kindle a light at all is, itself, a miracle.[x]

 

~

 

I have told you before the story of how I came to believe in miracles.

 

It was my father who taught me to do so.

 

My father is a physician, a hematologist specializing in Sickle Cell Anemia.

 

One night, while I was serving as a chaplain in a busy New York City hospital, a young man I had gotten to know well and deeply cared about was very sick on the ICU with a Sickle Cell episode.

 

As I left the hospital late that night, I called my father. “Dad,” I said, “He probably won’t make it, right?”

 

“We don’t know, Meg,” my father said. “He could.”

 

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I’d never seen someone so yellow with jaundice. His liver was shutting down; his lungs were giving out; his stomach was so distended he was nearly twice his actual size.

 

“But it would be a miracle,” I said, “and, Dad, you know what we think about miracles.”

 

“A miracle, Meg,” my reverent, agnostic, scientist father said, “is something unexpected.
We have to be realistic, but we cannot take people’s hope. We just cannot do it. We can never stop believing in miracles.”

 

“We can never stop believing in miracles.”

 

The young man made it through the night. He lived another month—beyond the expectations of his doctors and his nurses—and his chaplain.

 

A miracle is something unexpected—oil lasting eight nights rather than one.

But what if we shift our perspective just enough so that we are able to see the miracles all around us?

What if we are able to see that first night of light as a miracle in and of itself? The breath we take each morning upon waking. The beauty of snow falling from the sky—forget the traffic and the shoveling—and marvel, for just a moment in the miracle of each unique crystal gracing our hair
and our sleeves and maybe even our tongues with magnificent beauty. Miraculous.

The child who bounces through our life and the social hall—miraculous.

The moment we share with a loved one on the edge of death—miraculous.

 

All of life—when we train ourselves to see it differently, with attention and gratitude—all of life becomes an unexpected, miraculous, mysterious gift of which we are each the recipient.

For some, this gift are God-given, bestowed upon us by the divine, for others life is a gift from the universe, for still others, it is just the way life goes.

Wherever and however we understand the gift of life as coming from, the challenge is to open our hearts to receive it with grace and humility and gratitude.

And then, to declare the gifts of life worthy of attention, of praise, of honor, and set aside time—be it Sunday morning or some other time—to pay attention, offer praise, and to honor the miracles that surround us always. I say this knowing that it is not easy. And perhaps especially not this time of year. In this season of twinkling lights and cheery music, so many of you are struggling with so many things: mental and physical health concerns of your own and those whom you love, losses that are felt especially poignantly in these dark days.

You are caring for spouses and parents and children; you are facing financial woes and family conflicts.

You are worried and anxious and stressed about the state of the world and the state of affairs at the border and in Yemen and in the Ukraine and in so many places around the globe. You see the rise in anti-Semitic incidents and police shootings of black and brown people and voter suppression run rampant and you wonder, what can we do? Your hearts are strained and aching.

 

What can we do?

 

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.[xi]

 

What do we do?
We kindle lights in the darkness.
We set lamps in the windows.
We stand in solidarity with our Jewish siblings and those of other faiths.
We bear witness.
We resist through daily acts of domestic faith.
We surrender to the mystery and see miracles everywhere.
We learn.
We remember.
We love.
We live.
We thrive.

 

May it be so.

 

[i] Chanukkah, by Lynn Ungar

[ii] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6FBX53ZblU

[iii] https://thetorah.com/uncovering-the-truth-about-chanukah/

[iv] https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/hanukkah-history/

[v] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasmonean_dynasty

[vi] https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/11/29/they-got-me-im-afraid-swastikas-spray-painted-jewish-professors-office-columbia/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.8a944b398058

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] https://www.adl.org/resources/reports/2017-audit-of-anti-semitic-incidents

[ix] https://www.etymonline.com/word/worship

[x] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z35dI01fouw

[xi] Chanukkah, by Lynn Ungar