Hanukkah 2017 begins at sunset on Tuesday, December 12, and ends at sundown on Wednesday, December 20. Today we tell the story of the oil, and honor the courage and faith of the Maccabees as they confronted the persecution and forced assimilation of the Hebrew people.
Sermon
Hanukkah dates back to the Jewish struggle for cultural identity against the urban chic of the Greek culture 200-100 years before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. The Greek emphasis on the individual, its political power, civic culture, ideas and values were irresistible to wealthier educated members of the ruling class throughout the east and Palestine.
Antiochus Epiphanes was King of the Syrian branch of the Alexandrine Empire. He decided that Judaism along with any other non-conforming cultural practices must be purified to replicate the “citizen religion of the great empire”. On penalty of death, all Jews were ordered to cease observing the Torah; instead they were required to follow an imposed, “purified” Judaism. An Athenian expert was sent to direct the practices of the universalized Judaism. Monthly sacrifices to the gods began. Sacred prostitution was set up in the temple. A statue of Zeus was erected inside the temple and his name was associated with the Temple.
Offerings included the sacrifice of pigs on the altar. All the Hebrew laws of purity were systematically violated. Circumcision, kosher food and Shabbats were forbidden. Pagan rituals and sacrifices were instituted not only at the Holy Temple in Jerusalem but also at shrines throughout the land.
Many Jews, filled with admiration for the worldliness and power of the Hellenistic culture followed the directions and obeyed the decrees. But other Jews, deeply committed to the Torah were filled with fury at the oppressive decrees and with revulsion at the cooperation of their compatriots.
Mattathias, a priest deeply committed to the Torah stabbed a Jew who sacrificed in the new cult, killed the king’s agent and pulled down a sacrificial altar, starting a revolt called the Maccabean War. The war was an anti-colonial revolt against Antiochus Epiphanes and a civil war within the Jewish community.
Mattathias and his five sons, the Maccabean, gathered a small band of followers. They could not confront the whole Syrian army in conventional warfare, so, they used guerrilla warfare; hiding behind trees, sneak attacks in the hills and forests against the army of Antiochus and his collaborators from within the Jewish Community.
After Mattathias died, his son, Judah Maccabee led the revolt. He was supported by the masses who resisted assimilation but there were still many Hellenist Jews who rallied to the Syrian government’s side. Jews who had been drifting into Hellenism were in the crunch, seeing their brothers defending their home soil, seeing the destruction of local Jewish populations made many
remember that they were primarily Jews. These moderates joined with Judah to recaptured Jerusalem in 166 BCE.
With this victory, Judah set out to rededicate the Holy temple. This meant, among other things, to rekindle the sacred, eternal flame. Sacred oil had to be prepared as fuel for the flame, but it would take eight days to prepare it. According to the miracle story, enough oil for one day was found in the temple. The lamp was kindled, and miraculously, the oil burned for eight days! Long enough to prepare a new supply of sacred oil.
There is no telling of the miracle of the oil in the Hebrew Bible.
1st and 2nd Maccabees gives a detailed accounting of the decisions Judah made, the different Jewish traditions he tried to unite and the laws of the Torah which he confronted in order to reestablish the temple and to declare a holiday. Most of all, the scripture emphasizes the communal joy and acts of celebration- when Judah cleansed and rededicated the templ
