Hannukristmas Unity

John 10:22-42

Hannukah is a celebration of the re-dedication of the Temple of God. The coming of Jesus is the new Temple, a tabernacle in the flesh.

Jesus boldly claims to be Christ and God. He and the Father are One. This is the great revelation through which we understand Christmas backwards. Jesus is Emmanuel, God become us for us.

We have always been safe in His hands.

The Story of Hanukah

It’s that special time of year. Time for the holidays. And the magical celebration starts next week in the evening. I speak, of course, of December 24th, the first night of Hanukah.

Hanukah is a festival of lights. Instead of one day of presents we get 8 crazy nights!

130 years before the birth of Jesus, the Maccabees liberated Jerusalem from the Syrians. It is a great story, the rebellion against the Empire. At one point they steal the plans to the Death Chariot and send a burning arrow down the exhaust port and… sometimes I confuse Star Wars and history. A long time ago on a continent far away…

But this guerilla warfare works and the rebellion builds and they liberate Jerusalem from the Syrian Empire.

And they rededicated the temple to Yahweh after it was desecrated.

For eight days they held a Festival of Dedication. And then, in the years following, they celebrated the rededication of the temple in an eight-day Festival of Dedication, or Hanukah.

They were not able to worship… and then liberation… and they were once again able to worship in the temple.

That is worth celebrating. And more than a hundred years later, they are commemorating that victory. The privilege of being able to worship their God once again, in their holy place. To be able to offer sacrifice, enter the Holy of Holies.

Jesus and the Father Are One

John 10:22-42

22 At that time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter,

Winter is coming… The Feast of Dedication is Hanukah. Now we see the context of this is so beautiful. The Jewish people are celebrating the liberation of the temple, the rededication of the Holy Place of God. The Temple to Yahweh… and then…

23 and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon. 24 So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” 25 Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me, 26 but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep.

Now this is not Jesus’ main point, but it is a profound point. Not the causal direction here. Jesus says, not “it is clear from you not believing that you are not counted among my sheep” but instead the opposite: “you don’t believe because you are not among my sheep.” There is a strong note of election here. It has to be taken in connection with everything else Jesus’ says about salvation and being his and responding to his voice… but there is this strong note of predestination in the language here. And I have a firm rule of not arguing with Jesus.

From Jesus’ perspective, he knows and recognizes the sheep who are his and is not surprised when his sheep hear his voice and follow, and neither is he surprised when those who are not his do not receive his words. That may be a difficult perspective for us to wrap our heads around… but there is a beauty to it, and Jesus calls it out.

27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

Jesus knows his sheep. And his sheep are safe in his hands. Safe from the thief, from the Destroyer earlier in the chapter. Safe and held and known. If you are his, he has given you eternal life and no one, nothing, nothing ever can snatch you out of Jesus’ hand. That is some beautiful gospel there…

Why, because Jesus’ hand is the Father’s hand…

29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. 30 I and the Father are one.”

This is a huge climax in the book of John. There has been this rising dissension among the people, rising tension between Jesus and the Jewish leaders, and it builds to this moment. In the discussion, Jesus is immediately saying that he and the Father are one in mind and heart, in intention, one in hand in holding the sheep.

But the claim is far more reaching than that. He is claiming to be holding the sheep in his hand, giving them eternal life, and that is certainly a divine prerogative. A divine calling. No one could hold life and give life but God. And the hand of the Father and the hand of Jesus are used interchangeably. And then, if that wasn’t clear enough, Jesus comes right out and claims: I and my Father are one.

And no one there was confused about what Jesus was claiming.

31 The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. 32 Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” 33 The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.”

34 Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? 35 If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken— 36 do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?

Jesus is buying a bit of time here. He knows, because they are not his sheep, that these particular Jews, likely Jewish religious leaders, are not going to really hear and receive who he is… so he slows them down on a kind of semantic argument. The “Son of God” phrase he has been using is not blasphemy, using gods little g to refer to humans seems to be done in the Psalms so it isn’t inherently blasphemous…

But then he doubles down on his unity with the Father:

37 If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; 38 but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”

So Jesus repeats himself. Absolute clarity. He and the Father coinhabit one another. Jesus in the Father and the Father in Jesus.

39 Again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands.

40 He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing at first, and there he remained. 41 And many came to him. And they said, “John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.” 42 And many believed in him there.

Theological Cognitive Dissonance

Jesus has pulled back the curtain on the very nature of God from eternity. He has revealed that he was preexistent to the Incarnation, by saying “before Abraham, I AM”. And here he has claimed both divine privilege, giving eternal life and holding his sheep with his hand, which is the same as the Father’s hand, and then just went ahead and claimed total unity with the Father. So now we have the Father and the Son… which are One.

But he has also revealed that he has a will and is a person, and he submits that will to the Father, in obedience to the Father.

And it is from this idea that we get this very distinct, very difficult, very mysterious doctrine of the Trinity. In later texts, as the Holy Spirit is given and revealed, we understand that it isn’t two persons in one, it is three.

Ways to Understand Jesus

But people have always had difficulty with this doctrine and so they sought other answers.

In the following centuries, people would try so many ways to explain away this profound truth. Because it is this revelation that gives us the doctrine of Trinity. That God is three in one. And its difficult and confusing.

And so people wondered.

Modalism.

People wondered if maybe Jesus was kind of God in a different form… or mode. Like a transformer, he just shifts from aspect to aspect. But this distorts the kind of real ongoing relationship Jesus describes as he submits to the will of the Father, and the Father loves the Son. It doesn’t reflect what Jesus has revealed.

Adoptionism.

And so people pick up on this idea that Jesus was kind of adopted, adoptionism, that Jesus was so obedient to the Father that the Father adopted him as His Son and glorified and raised him into a kind of divinity… but this doesn’t reflect what Jesus said about “before Abraham, I AM” and “I and the Father are One”. It doesn’t reflect what Jesus has revealed.

Arianism

And so people thought, well Jesus must have been preexistent, and in relationship with God… and therefore lets say he was like God. Like a little g god. Very similar to God the Father… but like a right hand man. Like a first level angel.

But Jesus was so clear here. “I am in the Father and the Father is in me”… “The Father and I are One…” and while you could kind of water those statements down… it is deeply and profoundly important that we understand what Jesus is really saying here:

That He is One in substance, in actual being with the Father.

And it comes down to Hanukah. And it comes down to Christmas.

It is Hannukristmas. Christmakah?

Jesus is God…. God became Man

Now there is a beautiful irony here. Jesus has revealed that he is in fact God. And people’s minds are blown by this, they are wrestling with it, not understanding it, horribly offended by it.

How strangely backward that is.

We understand Christmas entirely backwards from this revelation. Immanuel. God with us. They didn’t get it. Sure, his Mom thought he was special, child of destiny and all that. But as they came to understand, as Jesus slowly revealed more and more of who he was, and then finally something like this: “I and the Father are one”… they understood the radical event that had taken place thirty years earlier.

But from the divine perspective it was always this. God himself, became flesh. Immanuel.

This is John’s Christmas story.

John 1:1-5

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

God himself came to earth. God himself took responsibility upon himself to rescue the world. He didn’t send his right-hand man. Someone who was like him. He didn’t adopt a likely promising young human Jesus because he seemed like he could pull it off.

God prepared for millennia, and then when the time was right, he entered the cosmos he created through him and for him, as a vulnerable, fragile, entirely human, baby boy. And they called him Jesus.

This is Christmas.

And John’s Prologue in chapter 1, his Christmas story, goes on to say:

John 1:14

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Literally he tabernacled with us.

The Word became flesh and the Tabernacle and the Temple just became obsolete. Jesus would call himself the Temple, to be torn down and raised up in three days. The very presence of God among earth.

For eight days the people celebrated that they could once again worship in the Temple, in the presence of God.

And at that very festival, celebrating the rededication of their 2nd temple, 150 years is a 33 year old man, who reveals to them that he is in fact the very presence of their God. That here is a greater opportunity to worship Yahweh, for Yahweh has tabernacle with us.

Yeshua. And his name means Yahweh Saves.

Hanukristmas

This is what Hanukah looked forward to in its own way, the rededication of the Temple was just a step, the desire to be and worship in the presence of God.

In Christmas we look back to the profound realization of all that the Temple ever dreamed it could be. The Presence of God with us. For us.

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Merry Christmas.