Scripture: I Macc.4:36-37.52-59. Psalm response: I Chronicles 29:10-13.
Luke 19:45-48. Lectionary # 501:

God's house is a house of prayer and should always be such. We learn this
from both the first reading where Judas Maccabeus rededicates and
sanctifies the altar and the Temple of Jerusalem some 200 years before we
hear of Jesus cleansing the Temple of the money vendors and affirming with
force that God's house is a house of prayer not of commercialism. The zeal
for the house of the Lord burned in both the heart of Judas Maccabeus and
that of Jesus. The narratives are helping us to focus on the message, the
same message. The celebration of the Feast of Hannukah is due to this
rededication of the Temple by Judas Maccabeus wherein a miracle of a tiny
vial of oil continues burning for eight days. Today a candle is lit for
each of the succeeding days starting from righ to left; blessings are said
and psalms are prayed while children sing and play games and receive gifts.
This feast often happens in the latter part of December thus coinciding
with the Feast of Christmas. Jesus has now entered the Temple of
Jerusalem and has ended the long journey narrative of Luke wherein we are
instructed as his disciples in the full scope of discipleship. Jesus
prophetic and dramatic actions will lead him closer to his death; he
compares his body to the Temple telling the opposition that when his body
is destroyed, he will raise it up in three days.. Naturally, neither his
disciples nor his opponents understand this saying and poke fun of him
saying that the Temples is already being restored by Herod the Great, how
can Jesus who is not yet 40 say he will destroy it in three days.
Literalism leads to such conclusions. In the Fourth Gospel we read, "But
he was speaking of the temple of his body. when thereforehe was raised from
the dead, his disciples remembered what he had said this; and they believed
the scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken." (John 2:21-22). Both
Judas and Jesus burned with zeal for the house of the Lord and reverently
prayed there. We are to follow their example in our own sacred places and
spaces of worship and continue to make of them a house of prayer. No small
task in our busy world with so many options during the day. Amen.