Re-Dedication

    We are currently in the middle of Hanukkah 2020 and while this holiday always seemed to me as an exotic and odd form of Christmas growing up, and was seemingly only marked by those that had a dark house on Christmas save a menorah in the window sill. Hanukkah is the festival of lights that is a Holiday that was added to the feast of tables because of a very poignant story to the point that we find ourselves today. The miracle that spurred and found the celebration of Hanukkah as it exists today came at the end of the Maccabean Revolt. During the Maccabean Revolt the Jewish people successfully gained a short term freedom from the Seleucid Empire. They wished to rededicate their temple, which required Eight Days of worship and burning of lamps. They only had a days worth of oil in their lamps. God allowed for the lamps to burn all eight days despite the lack of oil. They had fought hard through a particularly difficult revolt and faced impossible odds and certainly knew that the fight was no where near over. But their fight was more than simply one of political and social independence, it was a war of culture and religion to recover their distinctiveness as the Jewish people.

    In the short time of reprieve, between oppression, between battles, the Jewish people at that time wanted to celebrate and rededicate themselves to the worship of their God. It may be difficult for outsiders to see the significance of this moment, as they would simply trade their oppressors from the Seleucids to the Roman Empire just a hundred years later. Just 70 years after that the temple they were rededicating would be destroyed once again. They had a moment to breath before diving straight back into diversity and the conflict of the day. God miraculously gave them the ability to rededicate themselves to worshiping him so that they would preserve their culture through almost certain annihilation. Such a small distinctive people able to fend off an empire to continue their lives as God ordained, this is not a common story in our world. The more common story are the cultures we can dig to see, but have no place in the present. They were eaten by larger cultures, made treaties with their peers and made lots of compromises. Through all of these possibilities God protected his people. Even when their very existence in the world was threatened during Holocaust. Anne Frank spoke about the darkness all around her during that time, “Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.” The light that continued through the eight days of of the Maccabean temple rededication, is a hope that the Jewish people have held onto through the most difficult of circumstances.

  The world is currently in one of the darkest periods in terms of daily death in nearly a hundred years. The Covid-19 pandemic is almost a year old, and while the vaccine is currently in production and shipment across the United States, many of us are back into quarantine and are dealing with some challenges that perhaps we haven't yet during this pandemic and that is the return to dark days after making it through dark days. It seems like too much, and while all of us are not directly effected on the daily, it seems to be changing so much of what we are accustomed to this year, so much that we feel the loss of traditions, practices, and comfort of family that would normally be a part of the Holiday season. It leaves me wondering when will this end and how can I make through and survive the best that I possibly can and be there for those I need to be. So Hanukkah gave me a thought that I didn't get from the cavalcade of advent and preparation for Christmas this year. In the brief reprieve between one dark day and the next we have the option to rededicate ourselves to hope.

     What would that look like now? I'm sure that if you have the tradition and the belief then Hanukkah can be that time of re-dedication, but what about the rest of us? I can appreciate God's preservation of His people, but it doesn't quite spark the fire I need to move forward. Growing up I saw many people go to the altar to rededicate themselves to their relationship to Jesus and in some cases, I've had friends that felt the need to be re baptized, in order to rekindle their relationship with God. I hardly knew the reasons why they felt the relationship with God had lapsed. Whether they had sinned, or strayed, fell behind, stalled out, or plain lost the passion they used to have. I have had moments in my life when I have felt all of those things, and while an altar call in itself never fixed it, it seemed like something to do when it felt like there was nothing I could do. A re-dedication has to do with a new designation of a space, place, or soul back to what it once was dedicated for.  I once had a Braum's ice-cream restaurant in my neighborhood that turn into a Mexican restaurant, then an Italian restaurant, and finally it became a Braum's ice-cream restaurant all over again. They didn't change their menu from what it was before, or acknowledge that it was other restaurants before, regardless of where it had been, it was now a Braum's again. God understands what dark times does to us, to our souls. He understands that we have the propensity to stray and stray often when times get tough. When we live a life of grace, we don't have to shame ourselves into that re-dedication. God is waiting to offer it for those that are willing to come home.

    I don't know why any of you would feel the need to re-dedicate, but cards on the table, I am tired, and last Wednesday almost prophetically, before the schools shut down in our area, I offered a meditation for our kids, that maybe I would come to need more than them, on Matthew 11:28-30. "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” What an invitation from the Savior of the World. Hearing it then, reading it now is water for my thirsty soul. An invitation that I desperately need. A time to talk, to begin again and find the hope, the light I left back somewhere when the Covid numbers started rising, and people began to have wildly inappropriate and disproportionate reactions to the state of the world. All the while forgetting that we have common values, ideas, and that we need each other. But Jesus is still there ready for me to come back for another re-dedication. He still has a place to come to for me.

    We can learn a lot from the tradition of re-dedication and the celebration of hope. It seems that one process can beget the other. It is through the coming back and designating our lives again for God's purposes that we can escape for a moment the difficulties of the times, and then gives us the strength to once again lean into the challenges of the present.

    May you discover your ability to rediscover, and find rest coming back to Jesus again and again. May you find that by steeling yourself again to your purpose that hope is once again in reach, knowing that God's protecting you as if you were one of his chosen.