LET THERE BE LIGHT A Hanukkah Sermon
James Ishmael Ford
5 December 2004
First Unitarian Society

The Text
Blessed is the match consumed in kindling the flame. Blessed is the flame that burns in the heart’s secret places. Blessed is the heart with strength to stop its beating for honor’s sake. Blessed is the match consumed in kindling the flame. Hannah Senesh

There’s a story, I don’t think it’s all that old, but it could have been. At the turn of the last century, that is the turning of the nineteenth into the twentieth, somewhere in the eastern part of Germany a Hassidic rebbe, following the nature of Hassidic spiritual leaders, had a vision. It was a terrible vision. He saw what would happen to the Jews of Europe over the next fifty years.

Shaking with terror he began to fast and to pray for a solid week, hoping to intercede on behalf of the people. Finally the prophet Elijah was sent to him. The prophet said, “Rest your heart my son, the unnamable One proclaims a new age in Jewish history that will follow those terrible times. Let me show you.” And in a flash Elijah and the rebbe were on a street corner in New York City this very year. It was Hanukkah and there were menorahs in every window. They even walked by a synagogue with a sign out front announcing a Hanukkah party.

The rebbe exclaimed, “Amazing! If they do this for such a minor holiday, I can barely imagine what they do for the Sabbath!”

I’ve been told a taste for irony isn’t becoming in a minister. Sadly, it’s just one of a rather long list of ministerial shortcomings I parade most every day. I’m just grateful I serve among a community long on forgiveness. At the same time with that taste for irony I find I really really like Hanukkah. It is as the joke suggests an extremely minor holiday in the Jewish calendar, one that has only grown here in North America because of its rough proximity to Christmas.

In fact this holiday is rife with ironies as we unpack it. The story is, among other things, one of traditionalists standing against assimilationists. But most scholars suggest Hanukkah is in fact itself rooted in ancient pagan festivals celebrating light at the darkest time of the year. In that sense its roots are as pagan as are the roots of the Christmas holiday. Then to compound the ironies, its history was first recorded by the Greek-speaking, think assimilationist, Jewish community and then preserved as part of their Holy Scripture by the early Christian community.

In fact the early rabbis were wary of the Maccabees for two reasons; first their pyrrhic call to arms, and then their dangerous blending of priestly and kingly power during the brief Hasmonean dynasty. The rabbinic commentators choose to focus their attention, as limited as it actually was, remember “minor holiday,” on one particular thing. As the Reconstructionist rabbi Arthur Waskow notes, “To the rabbis, it was crucial both to call for courage and hope, and to do so in a sphere other than military resistance, which they… viewed (with the tragic lens of historic hindsight) as hopeless and dangerous and self-destructive.

“So the story the rabbis told about the Light was the story of the rabbis themselves – absorbing that the Maccabees’ military victory had saved the nation, but that getting stuck there would be self-destructive. They needed to bring the Higher Consciousness of courage for Enlightenment into the people’s arsenal of spiritual ‘weaponry.’” As it were.

I’m taken by that seeking wisdom in the story, in not being bound too tightly by the text or the history, but allowing the telling to be shaped by our deeper calling; to be a vehicle for our freedom. After all this is the amazing thing about us as human beings. We do not have to repeat the mistakes of our ancestors; or for that matter we need not repeat our own mistakes. We can look within and we can push, and we can find new ways of engagement. I suggest we here in this place at this time should do something similar to what the rabbinic commentators did. These are, after all, dangerous times. And we need any hint of wisdom we can find. And this is a very good place to find such guidance.

A word or two on method: those who do dream work often suggest a way into self-understanding is to see how we are all the players in the dream. We can do this same thing with the great stories of our ancestors. It can be powerful to see ourselves as both the Good Samaritan and the poor beaten and robbed man. In that spirit of pushing the story, and seeking wisdom for our own time and our own place, today I’d like to focus specifically on the flame that lights the candles and consider what it might mean for us.

The other day I was giving a talk at Wellesley College. I’d been invited by both the Unitarian Universalist and the Buddhist chaplains to make a presentation on what it was I had gleaned from Buddhism that most influenced me as a Unitarian Universalist. The talk was one thing, I do love holding forth. But actually what was most important was pulled out of the question and answer period. What people really found most difficult and compelling was the idea that we are not fixed and permanent. This is the ancient insight that is so important to me today: I am not a passenger in a bus, but rather I am the product of genes and history and, most importantly, of my choices. And every moment I can change. To use a linguistic metaphor for this critical insight: you and I are not nouns. Rather we’re verbs. We’re the product of many things, many strands, many currents, or if you will, many flames.

And that’s what I want to consider today. I think of the flames. I look at the Menorah and notice how each candle is in fact a flame lit by others. I find myself thinking about that flame. And I think about us, you and me. Each of us are flaming candles. We are brief and bright, lit by others, and then our lives lighting other candles, kindling other flames. So what is this flame that enlivens us? Where does it come from? And because I am a Unitarian Universalist and see myself as in some deep and true sense as ultimately free and responsible, I find myself asking most of all how do I take responsibility for what burns in my heart?

In a sermon on Hanukkah, the wise and good UU minister Charles Ortman quoted Hannah Senesh, a young woman who during the Second World War, left the relative safety of Palestine to help rescue Jews in Hungary where she was captured, imprisoned, tortured and finally executed. Hannah composed a blessing for the match that strikes the flame. Here’s how it goes. “Blessed is the match consumed in kindling the flame. Blessed is the flame that burns in the heart’s secret places. Blessed is the heart with strength to stop its beating for honor’s sake. Blessed is the match consumed in kindling the flame.”

In that same sermon Charlie retold an account by an English rabbi Aryeh Carmel. I’ve found it a compelling story, pointing to what that flame might be. “It was past midnight. I was walking through the deserted city to my hotel on the other side of the river. The night was dark and foggy and I couldn’t get a taxi. As I approached the bridge, I noticed a shabby figure leaning over the parapet. A ‘down-and-out,’ I thought. Then he disappeared. I heard a splash. My God, I thought, he’s done it. Suicide!

“I ran back under the bridge, onto the embankment, and waded into the river, grabbing him as he came past, borne by the current. I dragged him up onto the embankment. He was quite a young guy. He was still breathing. A couple of people noticed and I shouted to them to get an ambulance. They managed to stop a taxi and between us we half dragged, half carried the man into the taxi. I got in and told (the driver) to drive to the nearest hospital emergency room. I waited until the man was admitted, gave my report and got a taxi back to my hotel at last.

“I had ruined a good suit and knew I would have a terrible cold in the morning. I could feel it coming on. But anyway I had saved a life. I had a hot bath and got into bed but it still worried me. Such a young man! Why had he done it?

“The next morning, as soon as I was free, I brought a large bunch of grapes and set off for the hospital. I was determined to find out what was behind this matter. Maybe I could help.

“Why was I so interested in the guy? In this great city there were at least half a dozen would-be suicides every night. Their plight did not touch me. Then it dawned on me. Of course. First you give, then you care. I had given quite a lot. I had risked my life and gotten a bad cold in the bargain. I had invested something of myself in that man. Now my love and care were aroused. That’s how it goes. First we give, then we come to love.”

Actually Rabbi Carmel doesn’t precisely have it right. First we receive the flame of giving and love. There is no part of us that wasn’t passed on from somewhere else. We’re unique only in our particular combination of things. We are a brief and beautiful combining of many things, of many flames made one in our being. But, that said, he’s absolutely right. In our lives, we must open our hearts if we hope for the fulfillment of our promise. And we do this through action. We don’t discover that hidden flame of love until we reach out a hand. There’s an irony we all should try to live with.

This is another thing about our way as Unitarian Universalists. We understand the inner and the outer are in fact one thing. My hand reached out to another is the opening of my heart. By investing myself, something is awakened, a bigger flame is kindled. So, on a not insignificant note; many here in this room have given much of our selves to the Holiday Fare project. It’s an important fundraiser for our community. But, it’s also so much more. Yesterday, walking through this old building, I saw how it was made new and young and alive. It was done so by so many people reaching out and giving, and in that doing, revealing a flame.

Let me mix the metaphors a bit. My old friend another UU minister, Joel Miller, once quoted our mutual friend Marilyn Sewell when she was asked about the vitality of the congregation she serves in Portland, Oregon, one of our largest UU churches. She explains it is a community filled with “erotic energy.” Eros, not just sex. As Joel says, “It is the soul on fire: it is a community filled with life, filled with energy, choir music dancing in the soul, the congregation singing loudly, worship with laughter and tears. The erotic energy of the spirit is a sense among the people that they belong to one another and to something greater than one’s own self.”

It’s true for our sisters and brother in Oregon. It’s true here in this good place. We’re not nouns, we’re verbs. We’re flames, lit by another, and who burn brightly and who light other flames. It isn’t all easy. Peter Yarow’s “Light One Candle” points to some of those flames we’re given and may pass on: for those who act, for pain, for sacrifice, for wisdom, for strength, for suffering, for belief, for peace. They all burn in this room. They come together and all burn bright, showing a way through, for you, for me, for this whole blessed world.

So that prayer is true. “Blessed is the match consumed in kindling the flame. Blessed is the flame that burns in the heart’s secret places. Blessed is the heart with strength to stop its beating for honor’s sake. Blessed is the match consumed in kindling the flame.” May our Hanukkah celebration, be a celebration of that eternal flame burning in our hearts, and which we may pass on; of hope and justice and ever renewed life.

This is the hope of the world.

Amen.