Following Jesus while Walking away from Oppressive Holy Days

^{Photo by Zac Durant on Unsplash}

I apologize for showing up in your inbox twice today—or three times, not really sure what happened! I accidentally scheduled this to publish before it was finished. This is Part 4 of an Advent series on trauma and the liturgical calendar. See Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

There is nothing inherently holy about feast days. Whether December 25, or the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, there is nothing in the church calendar to prevent holy days from becoming unholy—commemorations of flashback fear instead of restful healing (Sabbath), violence instead of liberation (Passover), dark expulsion instead of bright vision (Tabernacles), or, as we’ll explore below, stoning instead of singing (Dedication).

In parts two and three of this series, we saw John invite his Christian audience to look at their former religious community through echoes of the exodus. The Ioudaioi are like Pharaoh and the Egyptians, no matter how much they pretend to be true disciples of Moses and faithful children of Abraham. This is part of John’s overall strategy of disinfecting the bacterial residue clinging to the Hebrew faith tradition of these early Christians. Those traditions included liturgical feasts and holy days tainted by trauma, and so that disinfecting work continues in John 10 and the feast of Dedication. John, a reformer according to Karen Guth’s framework, tells the truth about the evil attached to Dedication. Known more today by it’s Hebrew name, Hanukkah, Dedication celebrates of defeat of the blasphemous Greek overlord Antiochus Epiphanes IV by the Maccabees and the re-dedication of the temple which Antiochus had infested with desolation.

There’s a lot of scholarly debate about the intended connections between the episode in John 10:22-39 and the festival of Dedication mentioned in 10:22: “Then the Festival of Dedication took place in Jerusalem, and it was winter.” In my amateur opinion, I think the riddle is solved through John’s characteristic use of irony. We will explore some of the ironies in this show-down between the Son of God and the Ioudaioi, and connect that to the liturgical calendar trauma we’ve been considering.

Blasphemous Accusations

According to Stephen Motyer,

“John 10 is rarely read with appropriate attention to the themes of Dedication/Hannukah. Jesus is being related to Antiochus Epiphanes IV who, being a man, made himself God, and the Jewish leaders are taking on the role of the Maccabees who purified the Temple and defended monolatry.”¹

This is the direct, surface level significance of the allusion, focusing on intertextual links through the mention of “blasphemy” and “dedication.” However, “There is no direct one-line correspondence, but rather there are polyphonic echoes weaving through the narrative.”² When we attend to these polyphonic echoes, a surprising number of images weave together to form a complex song of hope, freedom, and safety.

1 and 2 Maccabees, which I had never read before until now, are complementary accounts of the Maccabean wars, especially the defeat of Antiochus Ephiphanes IV and the re-dedication of the temple in 165/4 BCE. The use of “blasphemy” and “dedication” in John 10:33 and 36 are clear echoes of Antiochus the blasphemer and the Maccabean re-dedication of the temple he had desecrated (cf 1 Macc 2:6-7 and 2 Macc 9:28; 1 Macc 4:36, 59). From the perspective of the Jerusalem elite, Jesus is like the pagan defiling blasphemer, and the Ioudaioi are like the Maccabean temple defenders and re-dedicators. But, as always in John, there’s a twist.

John’s Ironic Scalpel

Arthur Wright Jr. explains a twofold purpose of irony in John, as an “appeal” and as a “weapon”: “within sacred texts, irony has the ‘power for deconstruction and for building, for affirmation and subversion, for liberation and for scathing indictment.’”³ The appeal function “invites a reader to reject the surface-level meaning of a given statement or situation” and ascend to “the higher meaning of dialogue or events that are transpiring in the story.”⁴ As a weapon, “irony has the capacity to exhibit a judgmental attitude or offer a negative evaluation of people or ideologies.”⁵ Here are some of the ironic parallels drawn into this narrative through the reference to Dedication and the Maccabean revolt:

“The reader knows that Jesus is the true Temple (2.21), and John wants him/her to see that the Festival of Dedication finds its fulfilment in the consecration of Jesus by the Father (10.36). The Jews, on the contrary, show themselves to be followers of Antiochus because they are ready to desecrate the true Temple of God (2.21) by taking up stones, not to build an altar as the Maccabean Jews did, but to stone Jesus (10.31) [cf 1 Macc 4:43-47 where the “defiled stones” placed on the alter by Antiochus IV were removed, the altar torn down, and a new one built from “unhewn/whole stones”]. Even though they walk in the porch of Solomon, the first of the Temple builders in Israel's history and the first to dedicate the Temple, the king whose name means 'peace', they have no peace in their hearts towards Jesus. There was no security from the wolf (10.12) in the old Temple of Jerusalem. Antiochus the pre-eminent wolf (in this context of the Feast of Dedication) entered the holy place and desecrated it and even though the Maccabaean Fathers dedicated the refurbished Temple anew, it now offers no security for the sheep of Jesus. It has been destroyed (2.19) and the sheep have been scattered (10.12; cf. Mt. 26.31; Zech. 13.7).⁶

The ironic message of the Gospel, vis a vis the feast of Dedication, is that these religious leaders are the blasphemers. They are the defilers. They spoiled the temple and expelled God’s anointed ones.⁷ These same religious authorities, “who threw the [healed blind] man out of the synagogue, were acting as Antiochus Epiphanes IV did in the past: shutting doors, putting an end to the true worship of Yahweh, and desecrating the temple (cf. 9:34-35).”⁸ They infested the temple and religious ritual with worldly empire.

Imperial Religion on Repeat

The comparisons continue. Let’s consider how John’s audience might have connected this Dedication festival narrative to their traumatic history and knowledge of the Maccabean wars. But because that is not our history, it will require some lengthier exploration of Maccabees.

As I’ve discussed here and here, John’s threefold repetition of “snatch” (harpazō 10:12, 28, 29) alludes to Ezekiel 22:25 and 27 which uses the same metaphor to describe Israel’s leaders as “roaring lions catching prey” (v. 25) and as “wolves catching prey” (v. 27). Significantly, v. 27 specifies the purpose of that snatching/catching: “so that they gain through greed.” Harpazō is used a few times in the books of Maccabees to describe, not animal predation, but imperial plundering of Jerusalem and the temple treasury (1 Macc 13:34; cf 13:14-16; 4 Macc 4:10). That echoes Jesus’ repeat mentions of the “thief” (10:1, 8, 10) and “robber” (10:1, 8).⁹ The religious leaders, in the very midst of celebrating liberation from the thieving oppressive Seleucid empire, have become thieving oppressors themselves. Only, they weren’t stealing money, they were stealing Christ’s sheep.

The violent irony might also be seen in 1 Macc 13 where Simon, one of the brothers of Judas Maccabeus, fights against Trypho, an officer of Demetrius I and Alexander. Trypho later declared himself king after he killed seven-year old Antiochus VI, the son of Alexander whom Trypho had initially pushed forward as heir to the throne. Trypho demanded money from Jerusalem owed to the empire in exchange for the release of Jonathan, the imprisoned Maccabean brother who replaced Judas after he died (13:14-16). Simon sent the money, but “Trypho broke his word and did not release Jonathan” (13:19).

Then, Trypho invaded Judea and “circled around by the way of Adora.” The word for “circled” is used in John 10:24 when the Ioudaioi “surrounded” Jesus and said, “How long are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” As most Bible translations note, their first question is literally “How long are you taking away our life?” This echoes Jesus’ words in 10:18, “No one takes [my life, tēn psychēn mou] from me, but I lay it down on my own.” That echo between Jesus and the Ioudaioi is typical Johannine irony, but there might also be an allusion to Simon. When Simon learned of Trypho’s intent to invade and destroy Judea, he boldly declared his courage to face death and protect his people: “And now, far be it from me to spare my life [pheisasthai mou tēs psychēs] in any time of distress, for I am not better than my brothers [who had all already died fighting against their oppressors]” (1 Macc 13:1-5).

Continuing the echoes, on the way to Judea Trypho was delayed because “a very heavy snow fell, and he did not go because of the snow” (1 Macc 13:22). This might be a strecth, but the word for snow, chiōn, is related to the word for winter in John 10:22, cheimōn. Because echoes keep adding up, it seems a possible further connection, especially given John’s habit of using physical setting details for their symbolic/typological potential (eg 3:1, 9:7, 13:30, 18:1). We will circle back to this wintry context at the end.¹⁰

Trypho killed Jonathan, returned to his land, killed young King Antiochus VI, took the crown for himself, and “brought great calamity on the land” (1 Macc 13:31-32). In response, Simon fortified Judea and sent for aid from King Demetrius, whom Trypho had attempted to supplant (and ultimately succeeded). The explanation of this relief request adds to the echoes to John 10: “Simon also chose emissaries and sent them to King Demetrius with a request to grant relief to the country, for all that Trypho did was to plunder” or “seize,” harpazō. Demetrius granted the request, re-established peace with the Jews, and Simon took back two cities: Garazon and Jerusalem. “In those days Simon encamped against Gazara and surrounded it with troops. He made a siege engine, brought it up to the city, and battered and captured one tower” (1 Macc 13:43). There’s that word again, “surrounded.” Then, we hear echoes of John 9:34 when Simon “expelled” (ekballō) the unclean people of both Gazaron (13:47) and Jerusalem (13:50) and “cleansed the houses in which the idols were located” (13:47) and “cleansed the citadel from its pollutions” (13:50).

Surrounding and expelling. This is exactly what the Ioudaioi did to the healed blind man and to Jesus. But there’s more. Jesus does the opposite of Simon in this siege. “Those who were in the citadel at Jerusalem were prevented from going in and out to by and sell in the country. So they were very hungry, and many of them perished from famine” (1 Macc 15:49). The language of “going in and out” recurrs in John, including the near context in 10:9: “I am the gate. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture.”¹¹ Simon prevents the people from “going in and out,” But Jesus allows the sheep to “come in and go out,” and the fates are reversed: the people perished from famine, and the sheep find pasture, ie, food.

Whether we examine the likeness between the Ioudaioi and the Seleucid empire, or between the Ioudaioi and the Maccabean priest leaders, the comparisons are negative. It’s bad news all around. They are stuck in the world of empire, where might is right and holiness requires harm. In contrast Jesus is the Good Shepherd.He doesn’t let his sheep and sheepfold be plundered. And more than that, he cleanses and re-dedicates the temple so that his sheep are safe.

Reforming the Temple

When the Jews celebrated their liberation and praised God in the re-dedicated temple, “They also rebuilt the sanctuary and the interior of the temple, and consecrated the courts” (1 Macc 4:48). “Consecrate,” hagiazō, is used in John 10:36: “Do you say, ‘You are blaspheming’ to the one the Father set apart (hagiazō) and sent into the world, because I said: I am the Son of God?” While the connection isn’t immediately clear in Jesus’ words, the language of “consecrating/setting apart the courts” finds an echo in John 10:1 and 16, where the English translation “sheep pen” is actually the same word for “court,” aulē. Hardly a coincidence.

Furthermore, the only other time John uses hagiazō is in Jesus’ prayer in ch. 17:

• “Make them holy—consecrated—with the truth; Your word is consecrating truth.” (17:17)

• “I’m consecrating myself for their sakes So they’ll be truth-consecrated in their mission.” (17:19 The Message)

In consecrating himself, Jesus also consecrates his people, the sheep of his aulē. John 17:19 is immediately followed by echoes of Jesus’ claim in 10:30 to be one with the Father (17:21-23). So this suggests a real connection between the consecrating/setting apart of 10:36 at DedicationHanukkah and the consecrating/setting apart of the people given to Jesus by the Father (17:6).

Here’s where the Maccabean connection helps draw out John’s presentation of Jesus as the new and better temple dedication. The Jews’ temple treasury was snatched/plundered by a pagan religious empire (1 Macc 13:15, 34; cf 1 Macc 1:20-24). In John’s time, the Christians were being snatched/plundered by a supposedly elect religious empire. After re-dedicating the temple, the Jews “fortified Mount Zion with high walls and strong towers all around, to keep the Gentiles from coming and trampling them down as they had done before” (1 Macc 4:60). In John’s time, Christians were locking themselves in closed rooms to hide and protect themselves from the Ioudaioi (John 20:19, 26).

Jesus does something radically different: he allows his sheep to freely come in and out of the sheepfold. There is no defensive or offensive posture. Not only does Jesus promise to keep his sheep safe, he promises to create a sanctified sheepfold, a temple remade from the blasphemous stone rubble of religious oppression. In that sanctified, re-dedicated temple, worldly imperial shepherds are not tolerated (John 18:10-11). The only shepherds allowed in Jesus’ sanctified sheepfold are those who enter by the gate (10:2), that is, by Jesus (10:7). What does that mean? Shepherds who enter through the Jesus-gate are cleansed (katharos, 13:10), just like the sanctuary was cleansed by the Jews at the rededication (katharizō, 1 Macc 4:36, 41, 43). Shepherds who enter by the Jesus-gate lay down their life for the sheep as Jesus did (10:11, 15, 17, 18; 21:18), and as the Maccabean priest brothers did (1 Macc 13:1-5).¹² There is goodness in the Maccabean vision that Jesus can redeem, provided it is first cleansed of empire (John 21:7).

Semper Reformanda

That, at least in visionary form, is how Jesus reforms the memory of Dedication. I say visionary because the work is not done. It is already and not yet. Jesus led the way by consecrating himself (17:19). He has conquered sin and death (1:29; 11:25). He cast out the ruler of the world (12:31). But as John’s Christian audience knew so well, oppressors keep coming. Sin and death and the ruler of the world remain until the lake of fire consumes them forever (Rev 20:10, 14). One Seleucid ruler was defeated only to be replaced by another. The way of the serpent rears its ugly head in both a Judas (13:2) and a Peter (8:44), those outwardly appearing to be ordained shepherds. Therefore, the cleansing and rededicating work of reformation is an “always” calling upon the new-temple people of God. The temple/sheepfold will continue to face ravenous wolves and wall-climbing robbers until the “not yet” temple is the Triune God, “Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb” (Rev 21:22).

As a liturgical celebration of temple renewal, Dedication points to the need for semper reformanda work on the church calendar itself. Indeed, because it is a commemoration of freedom from religious oppression, Reformation Day might be the contemporary Protestant analogue. Just like Dedication, Reformation Day easily becomes a day only for remembering past reform. We remember Luther and Calvin, the reformers who valiantly fought against corrupt Roman Catholics, like the Jews remembered Judas Maccabeas and his valiant brothers who fought against the Greek imperial idolators. But the Ioudaioi had become more like the imperial idolators. Similarly, Protestants today are capable of becoming, and in many places have become like the corrupt Roman Catholics of the 16th century. They love power and control and glory (John 7:18; 11:48); they decry as blasphemy what is biblical but novel to their ears (10:34); and they force those faithful to Jesus to go out from their hand.

That last line is a literal rendering of 10:39: “Then they were trying again to seize him, but he went out from their hand.” The word for hand is cheir, which could be related to the word for winter, cheimōn. If not related, they at least look similar, and create an inclusio and kind of skeleton for this passage. If you can indulge a little more textual analysis, it’s a fitting way to end this post:

• “It was winter” (cheimōn 10:22).

• “No one will snatch them out of my hand” (cheir 10:28).

• “No one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand” (cheir 10:29).

• “Then they were trying again to seize him, but he went out from their hand” (cheir 10:39).

When winter covers the earth with the hand of snow, many images are suggested: sins as white as snow (Isaiah 1:18); the Son of Man with hair as white as snow (Rev 1:14); a winter wonderland; a white Christmas etc. But winter can also be a dismal cage. Like a land that is always winter and never Christmas. Like an army surrounding a city and keeping all inside, cut off from supplies and sustenance. That is what happens when festivals of liberation and renewal devolve into events that, at best, sustain the status quo, or at worst, give extra financial support to religious empires.

Jesus, by his Word and Spirit, is ever present, ever working to renew and cleanse the temple people of God (10:34). To set them apart by the truth anew, just as he set himself apart as truth in the midst of liars and thieves and wolves (17:17-18). And, just as he walked freely away from the hand of wintry religion, so too his sheep remain free in the safe hands of the Father.

Series Summary

Francis Moloney’s summary of John 5-10 is similar to most commentaries regarding John’s engagement with the Jewish feasts:

“The overall thing that Jesus does, or that John does through Jesus, in these chapters is that he takes the ritual, the symbols, the biblical texts used, and the theology of the Jewish memory, and applies them to Jesus. In other words…what they have through their Mosaic tradition has not been lost, but they now have it perfected in another gift, and that is the gift of Jesus Christ.”¹³

That is a glorious, christological truth. But we’ve seen more. Not only does Jesus embody all that the feasts had celebrated, Jesus also heals all the various ways in which those feasts became sources of trauma. For spiritual survivors struggling to connect with the body of Christ through the liturgical calendar, that is good news indeed.

Question

How has spiritual abuse affected your experience of Christian holy days? How has Christ healed your experience of these days?

1 Stephen Motyer, “The Fourth Gospel and the Salvation of the New Israel: An Appeal for a New Start,” in Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel: Papers of the Leuven Colloquium, 2000, ed. Didier Pollefeyt, Bieringer, and Frederique Vandecasteele-Vanneuville, Jewish and Christian Heritage (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2001), 99, quoted by Andrew Byers, “Johannine Theosis: The Fourth Gospel's Narrative Ecclesiology of Participation and Deification,” PhD dissertation (Durham University, 2014), 193.

2 Alan Kerr, The Temple of Jesus’ Body : The Temple Theme in the Gospel of John (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 253.

3 Arthur Wright, Jr, Irony, Hidden Transcripts, and Negotiating Empire in the Fourth Gospel (Eugene: PICKWICK Publications, 2019) 34, quoting Sharp, Irony and Meaning, 34.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid., 35.

6 Kerr, The Temple of Jesus’ Body , 253-254.

7 That is, the healed blind man whose eyes Jesus literally “anointed,” John 9:6, 11, a subtle but clear addition to the overall characterization of the man as a stand-in for Jesus, explained in part 3.

8 Suraj Kasula, “A Shadow Replaced by Realities: The Theme of Temple in Relation to Christology, Pneumatology and Ecclesiology in John’s Gospel,” MTh(R) thesis (University of Glasgow, 2016), 53.

9 This might help explain, or at least add to, the significance of the word John uses for the “money-bag” which Judas was in charge of, glōssokomon (12:6, 13:29). It occurs nowhere else in the NT, and it is only used in the OT in 2 Chronicles 24 for the chest used to deposit money devoted to restoring the temple. Judas was in charge of the money box symbolically representing funds designated for the new temple-community Jesus created. With characteristic irony, however, John subtly portrays Judas as one who robs those rebuilding funds from the temple-community of Jesus.

10 Additionally, this could be a larger historical trope. In Josephus’ Antiquities, Herod’s siege of Jerusalem (37 or 36 BCE) is delayed by “the depth of winter” and takes place “when the rigour of winter was over” (Antiquities of the Jews XIV, 15, 12-14). Although most do not, a handful of commentators see symbolism in the winter weather. Duke suggests that “‘winter,’ while an accurate notation of the season, may be mentioned by the narrator as symbolic indication that during Israel's celebration of the temple, someone walks through its porticoes whose rejection by Israel signals the death of the holy place” (Irony in the Fourth Gospel, 186).

11 See 18:1-4, 15-16, 28-29, 33, 38; 19:4-5, 9, 13; James L. Resseguie, The Strange Gospel: Narrative Design & Point of View in John (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 63-75.

12 “It is high time for us to realise exactly what Christ means when He says, ‘I am the door,’ and when He calls people to enter by the door. Entering into Jesus Christ means letting oneself become part of Jesus’s death and Resurrection.” Walter Luthi, St. John’s Gospel: An Exposition (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1960), 128-129.

13 Francis Moloney, “Session 6: Celebrating Jewish Feasts,” at Broken Bay Bible Conference, Gospel of John: Joy Made Complete, September 12, 2014.