Smelly Christians

John 11:38-44, 12:1-8, 2 Cor 2:14-16

This morning’s sermon – continuing our series on incarnation and knowing God through our senses – is ‘on the nose’.

In Australian slang that could mean it stinks (I hope not!) but, as I mentioned in the pastor’s note, the scarcity of worship resources referring to this sense indicate that ‘smell’ has less of a religious following than ‘sight’, ‘hearing’, ‘touch’ or even ‘taste’.

I hope to turn some of that around this morning. I hope this sermon is also ‘on the nose’ in the exact, precise sense of ‘on the nose’; that this morning we will inhale the life-giving essence of how God relates to us, and we to God, and how ‘through us [God] spreads in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him.’

Smell is a very direct sense. I’m not sure what smells you would have been first aware of when you came into the church..., but for you to smell the timber in this building, the flowers, or the incense… chemical molecules from each of these things travel up into your nose. And at the top of your nose are cells called olfactory sensory neurons - actual neurons, brain cells, located at the top of your nose - which can identify possibly 100,000 different odours.

More amazing is how much of our human genome, the gene pattern that makes us who we are, is dedicated to our sense of smell. Humans have about 25,000 genes in our genome and 2% of them – 1 out of every 50 genes – is devoted to this. Scientists say there is an evolutionary commitment to the sense of smell. As Christians we might want to add - borrowing Paul Collins’ expression ‘matter matters’ - that smell ‘matters’ to God.

This was clearly the understanding of people in the ancient world. The laws and regulations for offerings for offerings in Leviticus (that many of you in small groups will read in relation to this study) conclude again and again with the words, “This is an offering by fire of pleasing odour to the Lord.” In ancient Hebrew cosmology; God dwelt above the firmament of the sky and the rising smoke and rising fragrance was a way of making direct contact with God – of getting up God’s nose! This is a way of thinking that we still borrow from time to time in our language and practice of worship.

The incense we lit this morning was a demonstration of the fragrance and smoke rising to God... On Thursday, Merilyn, Graeme and I hosted the ‘Southside’ ministers for lunch and I figured with an Anglican or two, a Catholic and a Serbian Orthodox priest there was some incense expertise in the room. I was asking about incense sticks and there was some murmurs that these were Buddhist – except from Father Francis, from Manuka Cathedral, who is Indian by birth. He said in India people of every faith use incense sticks, and described how Christian families would light a candle, and place two incense sticks in front of it, and how the fragrance of the perfume would fill the house, and the whole family would know – from the smell – that this was a time of prayer, of communion with God. ...And so, he very kindly gave me the incense we are using.

In 2 Corinthians 2 Paul takes this idea of the smell of offerings, and speaks of us, as Christians, being so identified with Christ’s sacrifice of his life, that we “are the aroma of Christ to God”.

I think there is also a very primal, intimate sense here that just as a newborn smells its mother, just as a mother can apparently smell her own children, just like Zach wrapping his arms around me the other days and saying, “I love you. You smell like my mummy.” – to God we smell like God’s own son. With all our different cultural odours – which we use to identify who’s ‘familiar’ and who’s ‘foreign’ (it was humbling to discover in Japan that westerners are said to smell like sour milk) – with all our different smells; to God we smell like family.

Mary’s action in John 12:3 displays a similar intimacy; anointing Jesus’ feet with costly perfume, spreading the perfume and wiping his feet with her hair. Mary is identifying with Jesus, and reinforcing the link between them, with the fragrance.

The commentators reflect that in the days of rough handling and torture and death that followed, the smell of nard would have lingered on Jesus’ feet and brought to mind – for him – the memory of that night of fellowship and love in Bethany.

But the importance of the fragrance, the aroma, isn’t just that it identifies us with God, but also that the smell of God might through us spreads to every place, and every person, “among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing”.

Smell is mysterious. The olfactory sensory neurons in our noses are linked into the brain's limbic system, the area closely associated with memory and emotion. Each time we encounter a new odour – usually in our childhood – our brains forge a link between the smell and the memory of an event or person, place or thing. When you encounter that smell again, the link is already there. What does Perkins Paste conquer up? Or freshly mown grass? Or the smell of chlorine?

A few weeks ago a group of us went to a workshop at Morling College. The speaker told a story about a church that decided to change its seating. The rigid old wooden pews (that Elizabeth mentioned last week) were to be replaced by re-arrangable, ergonomic chairs, but there was vigorous opposition from several older men. After much talking and listening it was discovered that for them, the smell of those pews, the oil in the timber, was linked to the night each of them had heard an altar call and decided to follow Jesus. The smell of the pews evoked for them that life-changing decision. The church decided that they would go ahead with the chair purchase, but that a few pews would be kept in memory of those men, and their memories.

Because we link smells with memories and emotions, not all of us like the same smells. For some chlorine might recall long, lazy summers by the pool, for others a more negative pool-related memory. Lilies might agitate you without you knowing why.

Paul relates the fact that we can respond very differently to the same smell to his experience that some reject the message of Christ, and others are drawn to it. For some the aroma of Christ is like those dogs that can sniff out cancer, identifying that their lives are stagnant, progressing towards death; for others the fragrance is salubrious; progressing towards life.

A number of years ago, when I was at university, Dorothy McRae-McMahon, the then minister at Pitt St Uniting Church, came and spoke with us about their involvement with the Anti-Apartheid campaign and efforts to remove anti-Asian graffiti around the city. This resulted in vary nasty opposition from a group by the name of National Action who repeatedly poured sump oil and printing toner, rang church members and made death threats against them and their children, knocked on people’s doors in the middle of the night and threw bags of vomit and faeces at their houses or stuffed them in their letter boxes. The curious thing Dorothy said, was:

“...although it may sound mystical, when they used to come to my door in the middle of the night, I would always smell this sickly sweet odour. Quite apart from the faeces and vomit, there'd always be that same odour and when I reflected on it, I realised it was the smell of a dead body. I sensed they were people of death... They were so consumed by hate that I could smell death around them. That affirmed in me the conviction that even if they killed me I was still a person of life.”

It was as though the odour of God spread through the actions and witness of this church had a chemical reaction with the destructive and hurtful actions of others, identifying the fragrance of death.

What we say, what we do, who we are, gives off a fragrance; a fragrance that will repell some and attract others.

Twelve or thirteen years ago when Aron and I were living just south of Tokyo we spent the day with a friend who was teaching in a university further south. He took us for a walk around the grounds of the university and at one point I stopped and said, “This smells like Australia!” It turned out eucalyptus trees had been planted around that area and the air was full of eucalyptus...

If you crush or tear a eucalyptus leaf the smell becomes much more fragrant. In the same way, these three friends of Jesus, Martha, Mary and Lazarus, who we’re told at the beginning of chapter 11 Jesus loved; experience the crushing of suffering and sacrifice that leads to their lives becoming far more fragrant than before. Mary’s act of devotion simply underlines the fragrance of each of their lives.

- Lazarus, who also undergoes the experience of death and being raised to life, whose tomb – free of the smell of death - is laid down as an olfactory memory for Jesus’s disciples and women followers which rushes back when they come to Jesus’ tomb.

-  Martha, whose declaration of faith is unswayed – even in despair.

- And then there is Mary, willing to abandon everything to cling to God: possessions - the pound of nard is perhaps the most valuable thing she owns; reputation - respectable Jewish women did not unbind their hair in public; and position, choosing to anoint not Jesus’ head, but his feet, like a servant.

The songwriter Sydney Carter describes the events in this way...

The house in Bethany was filled with the fragrance of the perfume, but the aroma goes further than that. The church fathers spoke of it as a deed that has filled the whole church with its sweet memory. It is a beautiful act, one that we are drawn to, and also, one – perhaps Judas is not alone – that makes us uncomfortable; aware of how cheap, how practical and convenient, how easy our offerings to God are. The passage draws a sharp contrast between Judas, who liked to take, and Mary, who loved to give. Each of our lives are full of fragrant potential, but it is only in giving ourselves – offering our sacrifice – that our perfume is released into the world.

God loves each one of us. May this house be filled with the fragrance of our lives, and may we give people a whiff of God in every place we go this week.

Prayers of Intercession

Loving God, this morning we hold in our hands a small fragrant piece of your creation

And we are reminded of the small and fragile part of your creation that we are.

We pray for all endangered species, for biodiversity to flourish,

for environments affected by pollution and overdevelopment;

and that we, your caretakers, will hear the first part of that word,

not just the second.

Loving God, this morning we fold or crush in our hands a small fragrant part of your creation

And we are reminded of our lives are so easily torn and crushed

We pray for those who are caught up in violence in our world,

We pray for those grieving the natural tearing of the earth in Japan,

And we ask for those we love who experience grief and pain at this time that their lives might perfume for us, as we become perfume for them.

Loving God, this morning we smooth out in our hands again a small fragrant part of your creation

And we are reminded of all the smells of this world – and this place – we love

We pray that we will add to the wonderful fragrance of your world,

That the fragrance of our lives will fill every home we enter, enter every place we go, go into all the world.

We pray this in the name of your Son whose smell we share, for we too are your sons and daughters.

Amen.

Benediction

May God bless the world in which you move,

and bless your home and bless your friends.

May God bless the eyes with which you see,

the ears with which you listen,

the nose with which you smell.

May God bless the way you use your hands,

Bless the way you employ your tongues.

As a gift from the living God in Christ Jesus,

Grace, mercy and peace be yours, today and always. Amen