First Parish Unitarian UniversalistImagining – A Sermon for Hanukkah
Rev. Cricket Potter
First Parish Unitarian Universalist – Canton
December 13, 2009
Reading
Our reading for this Sunday is from Parabola (Fall 2006), a quarterly magazine about the stories, rituals, and symbols found in the world’s religious traditions. This excerpt comes from an article entitled “Imagine That…” by Marc Gafni.
The Zohar, magnum opus of Hebrew mysticism, says it explicitly in many places: ‘Shekina (the feminine incarnation of the sacred) is imagination.’
In popular understanding, imagination is implicitly considered to be ‘unreal.’ Indeed, ‘unreal’ or ‘imaginary’ are virtual synonyms in common usage…. In marked contrast, the Hebrew mystics held imagination to be very real. It would not be unfair to say that they considered imagination to be ‘realer than real.’
The power of imagination is its ability to give form to the deep truths and visions of the inner (sacred) realm. Imagination gives expression to the higher visions of reality that derive from out (sacred) selves…. It is the imagination that is our prophet, bringing us the word of the (sacred) that speaks both through us and from beyond us….
The greatest crisis of our lives is neither economic, intellectual, nor even what we call religious. It is a crisis of imagination. We get stuck on our paths because we are unable to imagine our lives differently from what they are right now.”
Sermon
As someone who was not raised in the Jewish tradition and yet as a Unitarian Universalist minister who is called to guide us in exploring our sources of wisdom – Judaism being one of those sources – I approach Hanukkah with great care.
I don’t want to take the message of Hanukkah and blend it into the message of Christmas and Kwanzaa and the Winter Solstice so that it all becomes one generic jingle like “don’t worry, be happy, the light is here.”
I’ll share one very silly example that my colleagues on a ministerial list-serve sent around.
Continuing the current trend of large-scale mergers and acquisitions, it was announced today at a press conference that Christmas and Hanukkah will merge. While details were not available at press time, it is believed that the overhead cost of having twelve days of Christmas and eight days of Hanukkah was becoming prohibitive for both sides. By combining forces, we’re told, the world will be able to enjoy consistently high-quality service during the Fifteen Days of Christmukah, as the new holiday is being called. As part of the conditions of the agreement, the letters on the dreydl, currently in Hebrew, will be replaced by Latin, thus becoming unintelligible to a wide audience. Also, instead of translating to “A great miracle happened there,” the message on the dreydl will be the more generic “Miraculous stuff happens”….
All sides appeared happy….A spokesman for Christmas, Inc., declined to say whether a takeover of Kwanzaa might not be in the works as well….He then closed the press conference by leading all present in a rousing rendition of “Oy, Come All Ye Faithful.”
Seriously though, I was wrestling last week with this secular tendency to blend the holidays together as I thought about my sermon for today.
The last thing I wanted was to offer my own generic “Miraculous stuff happens” message.
This led me to engage in a long email conversation with my good friend and colleague, Rev. Leaf Seligman, who was raised in the Jewish tradition.
We talked about the many complexities of the Hanukkah story because it is so much more than a story of a pot of oil lasting eight days.
What really caught my attention was reflecting with Leaf about what could have given the Maccabees the hope and courage to fight what seemed like a hopeless battle.
I’m getting ahead of myself, though.
First, let me give you some history.
In the fourth century B.C.E., the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great took over the land of Israel.
In the years to follow, the Greeks tried to Hellenize the Jews, wiping out everything of Jewish culture and religion and replacing it with everything Greek.
The great Temple in Jerusalem was desecrated.
The traditional altar was leveled and replaced by a Greek altar on which Jews were forced to sacrifice to the Greek Gods.
All Sabbath observances were banned as was any study of the Torah.
Let’s just stop a minute and imagine what that might have been like.
Imagine this sanctuary having its lovely wooden pews and pulpit ripped out along with these beautiful and historic stained glass windows.
Imagine having all this replaced with metal folding chairs and tables, the pulpit being replaced by an ornate thrown with gaudy gargoyles around it, and these windows being filled in with plywood.
Imagine that you couldn’t gather on Sunday mornings anymore to learn and share as a community but you were required to come on Saturday nights and be subjected to lectured that were mere propaganda to you.
Over time, most of the urban Jews gave in and adopted the Greek culture and customs that were all around them.
I’m sure that it seemed the most practical and safe thing to do.
When conquered by Greeks, do as the Greeks do, so to speak.
They probably saw no other way other than to submit and accept the limitations of this life under foreign rule.
Yet, a small band of rural Jews led by an old country priest held out against the invading culture.
In time, this group of dissidents had had enough.
Led by this priest’s son Judah Maccabee, this group which became known as the Maccabees waged war against the Greek troops, fighting against all odds.
Their spirit and determination won out over the far greater force and technology of the Greeks.
In 164 B.C. E., the Maccabees succeeded, and they took back the city of Jerusalem and their once-holy Temple.
They found the Temple in a shambles with their beloved ritual objects long gone and the holy fire long extinguished.
They quickly took to purifying the Temple, ridding it of its Hellenistic trappings and rededicating it as they rekindled the altar’s sacred fire.
They found only enough oil to last for a day.
Yet miraculously, the flame lasted for eight days until more oil could be brought to Jerusalem.
The oil and flame lasting eight days is celebration and miracle enough.
Yet, what drew me was the larger human miracle of those men who refused to give up or give in.
They held onto a vision of what they hoped and longed for, and they persisted against all odds.
A word my friend Leaf used several time in our conversation about the Hanukkah story stuck out for me: the word “imagination.”
Perhaps those Maccabees refused to get drawn into the Greek lifestyle because their faith enabled – or even called – them to have a different vision.
Perhaps it was this visioning, this imagining if you will, that helped them have the courage and determination to fight back and eventually win.
Here’s where our reading comes in as it speaks to the deep source and power of our imagining:
“The Zohar… says that, ‘Shekina (or the feminine incarnation of the Godhead or sacred) is imagination. In popular understanding, imagination is implicitly considered to be ‘unreal’…. In marked contrast, the Hebrew mystics held imagination to be very real. It would not be unfair to say that they considered imagination to be ‘realer than real.’ The power of imagination is its ability to give form to the deep truths and visions of the inner divine realm.”
The deepest truths and visions.
A vision that is realer than real.
Things that we have hoped for but may have forgotten amidst the challenges and limitations of our current situation.
A future we once dreamed of but have begun to let go of as we face into the reality of our status quo whatever that might be – family quarrels, health issues, financial troubles, or inner struggles regarding our own worth and place in this world.
I hear these struggles in many of your lives right now.
Your doubts, your worries, your exhaustion are all so real.
It can feel that there is now way out - that what is can only continue on without much hope for change.
Yet, from my experience, our power to imagine, our power to open up to what is possible and what we long for can give us the strength and vision for a new way.
I know I have shared with you my experience from a serious sports accident when I fractured several vertebra.
For a long time, I didn’t know how much I would recover physically and what my life would look like.
It was a definite place of unknowing.
Along with learning to be grateful for the very fact that I was alive and not in worse shape, I also realized that I needed to see past what was and ponder what could be.
What was of utmost importance to me?
Having been reminded all too powerfully that life truly was a gift, what did I deep down feel called to do with that gift?
My imagining, my taking the time to listen to the voice deep within me, led me to dreams I had pushed aside for a long time as I had assumed they were unreal and unachievable.
Amidst the whir and whirl of life, it was easier just to accept limitations than to consider what achieving my dreams might ask of me.
But the more I sat with those dreams and imagined the possibility of them coming to life for me, the more I felt called to do something besides going on as I had.
Those two dreams, those longings, were to become a mother and to fulfill my sense of call to ministry in our Unitarian Universalist tradition.
At the time, I didn’t know exactly what each would require of me, but the growing vision of it all gave me the hope and strength I needed to begin.
And now on my journey as a mother and a minister, it’s a vision I still need to revisit often because I can lose sight sometimes as we all can.
I need to pause and take time to envision how I can stay true to my dreams as I face into the sometimes overwhelming demands of them.
And, I see how we need to honor our imagination and give that creative power within us the time and energy it deserves.
It is this creativity that helps us to see new ways, new models, new possibilities for ourselves and the world.
It is clearly something that all the great leaders of our time have drawn from.
Think of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, to name a few.
Each one imagined a new way of being.
Each one had a vision of a better way of existing together that was far more expansive than the world they knew.
As the great scientist Einstein once said,
“Imagination is more than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
What a beautiful way of describing the spirit of imagination.
From our responsive reading earlier, we shared these words:
Friend, I have lost the way.
The way leads on.
I must retrace my track or make my place here, stand still, set my face, stay here forever…
None stays here, none.
I cannot find the way.
The way leads on.
The way does lead on, but sometimes we lose sight of it.
We have to open our hearts and minds, or we can get stuck.
Perhaps we are stuck from despair or fear or a sense of feeling lost
Perhaps we need to make the time to imagine how the way leads on.
So, I want to give us all the opportunity to do some imagining right now.
I invite each of you to open your heart and mind to what you yearn for that seem missing or out of reach in your life.
Imagine what you long for at the deepest level -
wholeness, acceptance, inclusion, forgiveness, healing, love.
Allow yourself to imagine the possibilities.
Imagine, even, just the first step or half a step of what that possibility might look like coming to life.
Remember, knowledge is limited.
Open up to something wider, deeper.
I invite us all now to enter into a few moments of quiet imagining together.
Time of silence….
Thank you for indulging me and for taking this time to engage in something we rarely give time for in our fast-paced culture.
“Despair,” the poet Adrienne Rich writes,
“when not the response to absolute physical and moral defeat,
is…the failure of imagination.”
One of the greatest gifts we can offer ourselves and the world this holiday season is the gift of our hearts and minds awakening to our own creativity.
I firmly believe that the spirit of the Maccabees calls us to this visioning and ultimately to seeing that vision through.
What new possibilities can you imagine for your own life, your family, the larger world?
What new vision can we ultimately work toward together– in small, do-able, but steady steps – for the larger world?
We celebrate the possibility of transformation in all the different traditions of this season.
Today may we draw inspiration from the Maccabees to imagine, believe, and see the way forward.
May it be so.
Amen.