Homily for Hanukkah: Candles of Hope

December 8, 2002

By Lone Jensen

How does one light candles in the hot sun? Wait till after dark, I suppose, when they can be seen clearly. What we need here is a desert theology, a new language that does not speak of snow, or cold, or ice, or the dark bleakness of winter. Are we really waiting for the light to return, or for it to go away just a little bit? What we long for in winter around here is life giving, earth saturating soaking rains so that our desert will bloom abundantly. No dark gray, heavy, snow-laden winter sky looms over us to help us see how bright the candle flames are or how much our souls need to banish the darkness. We have no metaphors of cold and dormant nature to hide behind. The bright desert sunlight strips these holy days of all those comfortable allusions and leaves us with the bare bones.

So here I am picking at the bones. How do we as Unitarian Universalists make sense and meaning of Hanukkah? I mean as more than a tradition to respect; it is a given that we do that. And more, too, than honoring the memories of our many "Junitarians," as some of our members who grew up in the Jewish tradition call themselves. Though we want to do that too.

First of all, the lights of Hanukkah have nothing to do with the sun's return. Instead they remind us of another kind of inner light, the hope and courage of our human hearts. We may have banished the darkness of the night with our cities of light but we have not banished inhumanity, terror and cruelty from our world. It is because of the other darkness, that of the human heart, that we must light candles. To remind us that it does not have to be so. Some years we light the Menorah in peace and good will celebrating our gifts, our sacred community, our family and the joy of the human heart. Other years we have to light the candles in protest against the cruelties and violent darkness that is found in the human heart.

After the Bali and Kenya bombings and in the deep shadow of the unrelenting, ongoing senseless and horrific violence in the Holy Land, in Israel, in Palestine, how do we make sense of this festival of lights? I want to take a piece of earth, dark blood soaked soil, from that same land and ask why is this land so valued above human life? If violence or blood is the answer surely this should have been solved long ago. I long to see grape vines and oranges grow in peaceful villages where Abraham's young children, be they Jewish, Muslim or Christian, all one day play together. I pray to see, one day, joy and dances and ordinary everyday events, neighbors gossiping, old men drinking sweet dark tea in glasses and fig trees growing large and bountiful in peace, in peace, in peace! Salaam, Shalom, Arabic, Hebrew even sound so alike! How many more must die before we learn?

Hanukkah is actually a war story. It celebrates a military victory. This has always been rather hard for me to celebrate because I am at heart an unrepentant peacenik. But the Maccabees also fought for their right to worship as they saw fit. Religious freedom is still a powerful and poignant symbol in Israel. December there too, is full of holy days: Hanukkah fell this year on November 30 and Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, is just over. Both follow the lunar calendar whereas Christmas is fixed on the Gregorian calendar. Everyone wants to pray to God this time of the year it seems. Are they calling upon the same God beyond all the words and languages, or is this where the trouble lies? Oh, if God were a person I would encourage her to get a good lawyer and sue them all for libel. How can one believe that taking a life is ever in the name of God? What arrogance allows someone to interpret the voice of God for others? It seems to me these are all false Gods, these tribal deities that require blood as sacrifice. As if a sacred place could truly belong to anyone but a universal God or good.

Today we honor the spirit of Hanukkah. As a message of hope, that sometimes in this world, light does triumph over darkness, good does conquer evil, right does (at least occasionally) make might. We share in the ancient tradition with the candles as a symbol of the inward light that guides us through the outer darkness. As Unitarian Universalists we believe that within each person there resides a spark of good, but that spark must be nurtured or, like a flame in the wind, it will blow out leaving us to try to find our way in utter darkness.

In 165 BCE Israel was a province of the Greek Empire. All local religions were forbidden, and citizens were ordered to worship the Greek Gods. The goal was to unify the nation under not one but many Gods. Most people went along since Gods and Goddesses of all kinds were already abundant. A few more couldn't hurt. Besides the Greeks had won so their Gods must be powerful and therefore it would be wise to sacrifice to them.

Human nature has not changed that much. But some of the Jewish people held on to their belief in one Universal God, a God for all people. To the occupying rulers this was "godless atheism." To many people fixed on their brand of God and only their brand this universal ideal still is abhorrent. “My God or no God” is still a common war cry. The Maccabees however fought a war of resistance, won, and the temple in Jerusalem was rededicated. The word “Hanukkah” means “dedication.”

Which is what we do re-dedicate ourselves to a higher purpose. Once again there is plenty of darkness and despair in need of the glow of hope. But that is why we need traditions. We can say: “Yes, this year is hard, this year is dark,” but we have lit candles in greater darkness and we are still here! Last year we were still reeling from the events of September 11. This year is difficult but far better. There is comfort in the knowledge that we are part of a larger community, something greater than our individual selves. We can allow our souls to bask in the glow of those candles that we may to find the hope and the strength we need to go on.

To find real hope takes more than a sense of obligation or guilt. The world will not change by being told how bad it is any more than we will. Life giving hope grows from a sense of belonging. By ourselves we are but one small link in a long chain of women and men who helped to heal the world. We need to know we are not alone. But hope is also joyful. “Life is good,” we say, “despite the hurts, life is good.” Rabbi Harold Kushner writes: “Religion sets high standards for us and urges us to grow morally in our efforts to meet those standards. Religion tells us, ‘You could have done better, you can do better.’” But listen closely to that message. Those are words of encouragement not condemnation. We misunderstand the message of religion if we hear it only as a message of criticism. Yet that is often how it is heard. As if we will never be good enough. But there is another way to look at this.

The psychologist Carl Roger said: “There is something I do before I start a therapy session. I let myself know that I am enough. Not perfect. Perfect wouldn't be enough. But that I am human and that is enough. These are healing words. This world will always hold more ugly goblins of injustice, racism, prejudice and suffering than we can ever chase away in our lifetime. In that sense it will never be enough. It is only from a place of healing ourselves that we will have the energy to heat the world.”

So in these tender and anxious days, these holy and holly days where old memories come unbidden and the world is as much as ever violent and war like, in these uncertain days let us also remember to be gentle with one another as we light our candles of hope. Now I confess I am not a neutral observer here. I am a un- recovering candle addict. Should electricity ever go out in my house we would have enough candles for weeks, if not months. The act of striking a match, holding it to the wick and watching the flame grow is to me like a prayer. There is something about the quiet warmth and glow of a candle flame that makes even sorrows easier to bear. Oil for a lamp that burned for eight days seems very natural to me.

It is in extraordinary times that we discover our deepest held beliefs, sometimes to our own surprise. It is within fear that we find courage. Courage is never the absence of fear. Courage is when we chose to act despite the cold grip around our heart, the sweaty palms and the stomach turning involuntary somersaults. Courage is to not allow fears to guide our actions or go against what we know is right. When we are brave we stand firmly for what we believe, even when there are serious consequences. These are extraordinary times. How many civil liberties do we have to lose before we chose to act?

Bruce Gordon was a soldier in the so-called forgotten war, Korea. He was drafted but eager to do his duty. As a tank commander his job was to destroy enemy targets. Most were sandbags and fortifications. One day he saw an enemy soldier.

He recalls: "Without thinking I jumped into the tank and fired a round in that direction. I had assumed that as the first round landed the man would run for cover. Instead l scored a direct hit, on the first shot. It was the first official ‘Killed in, action’ for my unit. I was called into the headquarters. People congratulated me and cheered everywhere I went. But inside I felt terrible." For days all he could think of was that dead soldier. Then he was told that an enemy soldier was standing in plain sight one hundred yards from him. "I found him in my scope. I stared at him unbelieving, angry that he was so careless. He looked like a man who had just gone up for a fresh breath of air and certainly not like a sly enemy bent on my destruction. The observer was shouting at me to, ‘fire, for God's sake, or he will get away!’ I simply said to him: ‘I am not going to do it!’ I wasn't going to drop another 35mm shell on another human being. Next my Company Commander's voice came over the intercom: ‘I order you to fire on that man!’ ‘Yes, Sir,’ I answered and quickly adjusted my gun so that I would miss the man by a great distance. The Commander visited me the next day. Standing on that winding dirt road separated from no man's land and the enemy only by hillside bunkers we debated issues of war and peace, death, beliefs and humanity's greatest loyalties. He suggested my problem came from shooting at people from inside a protected tank but I insisted it was a matter of reverence for life. He said I would feel differently if I had seen the mutilated bodies of our men killed by that same enemy. I said I could feel no anger at the enemy who had killed these men for I was doing the same thing. Finally he said, ‘Well, it is up to you.’ I said,-‘No, it is up to you. I am not going to kill any more human beings.’”

Years later Bruce Gordon reported that he had always been proud of that act. “I felt I was finding out for the first time who I really was. I felt that in life I was going to be a careful voyager, valuing my own life, taking no unnecessary chances. No hero certainly. But I felt that when issues arose of right and wrong I was going to put my life on the line and let fate do what it will. That feeling gave me enormous strength.”

It is a fundamental principle of our Unitarian Universalist faith that how we live it is the most important test of our beliefs. Now I am not saying this should be your choice. It may not be. We have many Unitarian Universalist men and women in uniform. We must also support them. What I am saying is once you discover your truest choice stand by it! Kenneth Phifer writes: “It is a testament to the enduring strength and vision of the human race that rather than curse the darkness, time and time again some men and women have chosen to light a candle that a way may be found out of tyranny and oppression.” We need candles of hope. We need faith. “Faith,” someone said, “is nothing but all of our fondest hopes strung together.”

Let us keep faith with one another and remind our children that the real joy of this season is handed down carefully, tenderly from one generation to the next.

Light your candles of hope. Be of good courage. But let one of your candles be for peace. In some Jewish synagogues the traditional greeting is: “Next year may we meet in Jerusalem.”

My greeting to you this morning is: “Next year as we meet, may the world, and Jerusalem too, be at peace.”

Amen