In this teaching, Jesus reframes Hanukkah — this festival remembering the Temple’s renewal and rededication — and through the lens of faith, we discover that Jesus is not only the new Temple, the very place God’s glory resides, but he is renewing and reconsecrating the people of God to be his flock. Those with ears to hear are called to listen and believe the shepherd’s voice. Unbeknownst to the crowd, Jesus was offering a wholesale reconsecration not of a Temple or any build

Though our scars don’t ultimately define us, Jesus’ scars do. By his bruises, we have been healed—once and for all. We can look at his scars for our hope in the troubling moments of our life, while also recognizing that our mission is to go towards the broken and scarred places in our world. Nothing is outside of God’s redemptive power.

What makes Christianity unique is that Jesus is the one God who actually comes out of the pages of mythology. He comes out of the legends of bygone tales, and is born in a time and place we know, while Caesar Augustus reigned, and while Quirinius was governor of Syria, and Herod ruled Judea. Jesus lived, died, and was resurrected within history. The other gods can’t do that, they are bound in the books in which they reside. They are prisoners of ink and paper.

This psalm begs us to put down the mask and stop running away. At some point, we need to face the music.