Defend. Purify. Rededicate.

November 22, 2019

From today’s reading…

Judas and his brothers said,

‘Now that our enemies have been crushed,

let us go up to purify the sanctuary and rededicate it.’

So the whole army assembled, and went up to Mount Zion.”

No, not that Judas.

Before Iscariot sold out Jesus for a bag of silver, Judas was a good name. Today’s Judas was also known as Maccabeus, the son of Mattathias, who was prominent in yesterday’s reading.

Today we skipped from 1 Mac 2 to the second half of 1 Mac 4, which is a little unfortunate because Judas whooped a lot of large armies in those one and a half chapters.

But today we see that as soon as they kicked the bad guys out, they returned to their roots, their foundation, which was their faith.

For eight days they celebrated the dedication of the altar

and joyfully offered burnt offerings and sacrifices

of deliverance and praise.

200 years later we see in today’s Gospel from Luke 19, Jesus doing much the same thing as Mattathias and Judas.

Jesus entered the temple area and proceeded to drive out

those who were selling things, saying to them,

‘It is written, My house shall be a house of prayer,

but you have made it a den of thieves.'”

The old foretells the new. The new completes the old. Both are needed to understand the full story, which is that God rewards those who…

Stay the course.Keep the faith.Endure.