+Z’ev

Today’s assigned readings:
1 Maccabees 2:29-43,49-50, Acts 28:14b-23, Luke 16:1-13

Then the enemy quickly attacked them. But they did not answer them or hurl a stone at them or block up their hiding places, for they said, “Let us all die in our innocence; heaven and earth testify for us that you are killing us unjustly.” So they attacked them on the sabbath, and they died, with their wives and children and livestock, to the number of a thousand persons.
1 Maccabees 2:35-38

The story in the 4 Books of the Maccabees is hard to reconcile with Christianity. Today’s reading is a perfect example. It seems that several groups of devout Jews removed themselves from the pagan culture growing around them. They moved off into the countryside around Jerusalem (just as the Prophets had done earlier, and just as Christian monastics would in later years). There they set up communities and tried to live in a pious manor as their ancestors had done. (I think partly here of the Qumran community, and the Essenes - they may or may not be the same folks.)

When the Pagans and Paganised Jews arrived, they challenged the devout to a battle on the Sabbath. The Pious refused even to defend themselves and so they were slain by the heathens rather than defile the law they were called to live. But…

When Mattathias and his friends learned of it, they mourned for them deeply. And all said to their neighbors: “If we all do as our kindred have done and refuse to fight with the Gentiles for our lives and for our ordinances, they will quickly destroy us from the earth.” So they made this decision that day: “Let us fight against anyone who comes to attack us on the sabbath day; let us not all die as our kindred died in their hiding places.” Then there united with them a company of Hasideans, mighty warriors of Israel, all who offered themselves willingly for the law.
1 Maccabees 2:39-42

So rather than keep the law they sought to live, they decided to defend the law now - even if it meant defiling it - so that they could live the law later.

Since Hanukkah is one of two festivals mentioned in the NT (the other being Passover) this is a festival Jesus celebrated and that without recorded comment. So I wonder how to read this feast, and how to read this book.

Jesus told us to “resist not evil” and to “turn the other cheek”, to “pray for those who persecute” and to “bless those who curse” us. While you might consider yourself my enemy, I am not to judge you and to imagine that whatever comes between us is my fault. The only person excluded from the Altar (granting the Gospels a close and literal reading) is the man whose brother or sister has anything against him.

What would the Maccabees have said to any of this?

I think I know: “Let us fight against anyone who comes to attack us on the sabbath day; let us not all die as our kindred died in their hiding places.”

The Orthodox Church celebrates some martyrs of the Maccabean revolt on 1 August (incorrectly identifying them as “Maccabees”), clearly urging in this story that people willingly die for the faith. But the message of Hannukah is that we should be willing to fight for the faith.

So I wonder at Jesus’ teachings, in the face of Roman Occupation of Jerusalem and the later official (State) Church’s response to issues of war and violence. What would Jesus have thought about the war over icons? Or the Crusades? What would Jesus have thought about the current issues between the allegedly-Christian west and Muslims? What would Jesus have thought about the congregation of Anglicans filing lawsuits against each other? What would our spiritual ancestors - those who lived through the first 300 years of Church - have thought about us today?

In some ways, of course, the Maccabean decision makes a lot of things easier: Here’s the law; live it literally and when challenged, fight and die for it.

Apart from any parallels we might see between the Maccabean choice and religious extremism today, I wonder how people today might see this choice. As Jews celebrate Hanukkah today, do they see the parallels? Were the Maccabees an early type of Al Qaeda? Was the Hasmonean monarchy a last-ditch effort to establish a Jewish sort of Wahhabism that resulted, eventually, in Judaism moving beyond that military state thing? (And do we see in today’s Israel a return to that?) Was Jesus’ teaching of radical peace, in part, a response to this “muscular Judaism”?

Where would Maccabees have been in today’s world? Fighting in front of Abortion Clinics? Fighting in front of the Al Asqa Mosque? Standing in front of funerals with signs that say “God Hates Fags”? Or using guns to shoot those who would try to take communion while rejecting church teaching?

And what would Jesus have thought about such things?

And when you answer that last question, remember that Jesus celebrated Hanukkah without comment in John.

Much Love,

Huw