What does love smell like? Our text today taps our senses with this image of a fragrance consuming the room, the whole house actually.
Heather and I have some dear friends from our four years together in seminary in Chicago. During our first year, one of our friends’ fathers died to cancer, and it pulled her away from our community for a long time, as she journeyed home to be with him for his final days, and then to mourn and plan and be with family in the two or three weeks following. It was a long time that Sara was apart from us. And we wanted to do something for her when she returned. Someone thought it might be nice to simply clean and dust her apartment, so we did that, so that she would have a fresh clean place to come home to…and then another friend of ours insisted that we bake bread in her oven. So that when she returned from burying her father, at least she would return to the smell of fresh bread. She still talks about that wonderful fragrance to this day. She might not remember every comforting and loving word that she received from us in those days, but she remembers the smell. Love definitely has a certain and wonderful fragrance.
What does love smell like for you? What are some of the smells that that assure you that you are loved? When I’ve asked this question before, the smell of good things baking and the smell of flowers both were frequent responses. Is that true for you?--does love smell like flowers or things baking for you? As I get to thinking about why those are such high ranking scents, I wondered if maybe it was because those are smells that are so often backed by people who love us and have worked hard for us. The smell of bread baking in the oven is not just that. It’s a setting aside of time, it’s a consideration for our well being far in advance, then it’s an outpouring and mixing of ingredients, it’s timing and warming and rising, until at last that wonderful smell reaches our noses. (I got BLC a bread maker for this very reason. It just made sense, the Bethlehem the HoB, had a bread maker…)
A similar thing can be said of a garden that is carefully tended. A process, a quiet time, maybe even a period of question and doubt—“Will they grow? Will they bloom this year?”—but then at last, the wonderful smells of springtime blossoms fill the air. And we know that there is love and that we are loved. It’s no wonder fresh bread and fresh flowers are often smelled in the days surrounding the death of a loved one — so that we might know, despite all the tragedy, that still there is love and that we are loved.
And so in our Gospel text this morning, we have again this meeting of death and the overwhelming fragrance of grace and love. This scene today, we have to understand, follows right after the miraculous raising of Lazarus from the dead. Can you imagine sitting at a table with someone who was literally dead just days before? And now there you are having this celebration? I imagine that there was still a “stench of dead” lingering from Lazarus…but he was on the mend, filling his body with good food and his soul with good company. Can you imagine what the mood around the table must have been? Maybe quiet and awestruck, like when you’ve just swerved out of the way of something awful on the road—heart pounding, frantically reflective, thinking, “That could have been really bad.” The air was probably both electric and shell-shocked with that kind of energy.
Enter Mary. Who crosses the room, kneels down in front of Jesus, and dumps so much expensive perfumed oil on his feet that the value equated a year’s worth of wages. Let’s just say the equivalent to $40,000 today. $40,000 worth of perfume dumped out on Jesus’ feet! Was Judas so out of line? [burning money] That’s money she’s wasting!
This text drags us into the challenging territory of worship vs. social action (what’s more important?), praise of God vs. service to world, the vertical vs. the horizontal.
And we all have our tendencies. For many years, believe it or not, I couldn’t stand the idea of weekly worship…and that being the defining point of the Christian life. In seminary we were taught that worship is the heart of the Christian life…and I just thought, NO. That can’t be, that can’t be the center. Worship? What, a bunch of prayers and some rituals and songs? Really? That’s the center of the Christian life? What about how we treat one another for the other 6 days of the week? What about how we care for the earth that God so loved? Worship usually drove me crazy. People in seminary would spend so much time planning and worrying about how they would say or read something. Practice and practice. (Then I went to a church where worship, in my judgement, was done “sloppy” — so casually and shallow, it was closer to a rock concert and a social mixer — in my judgement, and it started help me rethink things...that’s another story...)
For those of you who don’t share my struggle — who have always gotten the importance of doing worship really well — there are plenty of other Gospel texts and stories in the Bible where you/we get to be challenged—stories about how we treat one another for the other 6 days of the week, how we care for the world that God so loved.
But today, Mary has something to teach us about worship, as we draw even closer to the highest and holiest days of our church calendar—the looming Passion, death and resurrection of Christ—today we are dragged into the territory of worship. That is, of kneeling at Jesus’ feet and pouring out that which is so precious—ourselves, our time, our money and possessions.
Everyone has something significant to offer, and we are called , friends in Christ, to follow Mary to the feet of the One who offers himself first for us. How might you pour yourself out for Christ these days...and in so doing let the fragrance of love fill the room, that is, this world?
You see, that’s the thing that I never really got about doing worship well: when we pour ourselves out in worship, like Mary, all the others benefit too. It wasn’t Jesus who needed that fragrance, but in pouring expensive scents all over his feet, the smell that filled the air, consumed the smell of death, the stench of despair! (Remember, Lazarus still stunk!? But not anymore.)
As we pour ourselves out in faithful worship to the One who first loved us, who first poured himself out for us, who first loved this world with a divine love that we can’t even fully describe, a love that we can most of the time only smell…as we pour ourselves out in faithful worship to that One, like Mary, all the others (in the room) benefit. The “house” is filled with the fragrance. Did you know the word “ecology” comes from the Greek words “oikos” and “logos”? The “house,” the world is filled with the fragrance of our faithfulness. And ultimately with the fragrance of God’s love.
Friends in Christ, we’re invited again to be faithful these late Lenten days, to pour ourselves, our time and our possessions out. But only as a response to the One whose love wafts and hovers and covers this whole world (despite all its tragedy), the One whose love fills you and me as we worship and give thanks in this place. That love, that divine forgiveness and grace, that fragrance lingers, abides with you now and into eternity. AMEN.
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