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A message from Pastor Marty

Fragrance

By Pastor Peter Marty

Our fridge at the Marty house “went south” this weekend. It didn’t vacation anywhere special; it just quit working. The repairman has us down for Wednesday. In the meantime, we are expanding our sense of smell in some critical ways, periodically checking which items have overstayed their welcome and which are permitted an extended grace period.

As you know, milk is one of the first things to go. Even if your “smeller” doesn’t work like you wish it would, sour milk will awaken your repulsion genes like few other odors. It will send you stumbling for the front screen door. Or bad chicken. Locking someone in a cell with 10-day-old unrefrigerated chicken might qualify as a new form of torture — borderline inhumane. Green grapes do pretty well in a large fancy box with a broken compressor; last Friday’s bean casserole does not.

What an awesome little organ our nose is. We probably don’t give it the respect it deserves. There is not a laboratory in the world that functions with the same precision and beauty as our little olfactory epithelium. Tiny receptors high in the nasal cavity perform instantaneous lab work on molecules that come floating by. We put our nostrils to work by sniffing in and forcing those molecules to get trapped in the sticky moisture of our nasal lining. In some immeasurably small amount of time, our brain informs us that those molecules come from freshly mown grass, a band-aid, a magic marker, garlic, ground coffee, just-cleaned laundry, or rotten chicken.

It’s pretty neat what our sense of smell can do once it’s activated. Just in case you cared to know, I have been activating more nasal receptors in recent days than I ever knew I had. And, it hasn’t been through sniffing Pinot Grigio.

All of this heightened nasal activity has me ready to propose an idea for consideration. Could it be that we have given too much attention in the Christian life to hearing? I know that much of the Bible is devoted to hearing. One could argue that hearing is the primary sensation for living in a relationship with God. But the apostle Paul questions what life would be like if our body were merely a mechanism for hearing and we had no sense of smell (1 Corinthians 12:17). God derides idols for lacking all capacity to smell (Deuteronomy 4:28). And, in one of the greatest gifts ever given, Mary uncorks some fragrant perfume and pours it on the feet of Jesus at one end of a dinner table, while stinky Lazarus, still unbathed from the grave, sits at the other (John 12:3).

It could be that developing a sense of smell in the Christian life is what spirituality is all about. The technical term we typically use for finding our way is discernment. But maybe what we are really talking about when we’re busy discerning matters is a well-cultivated sense of smell. No matter how much someone you know is able to pull up fancy religious words that may include frequent use of the name “Jesus,” you can smell whether it is speech and meaning that are really coming from the heart.

Lazarus smelled nasty after four days in the tomb. But spiritual pride stinks too. Christian arrogance stinks. Stuffy church behaviors stink. Cultivating a good sense of smell, and remembering that “we are the aroma of Christ,” is basic to ending our judgmental instincts. I cannot figure out how it is that we should ever be entitled to say that some people are welcome as they are in Christ’s church, while others must demonstrate special repentance that meets our approval. We may cover such screening behaviors with billowy language of grace, so as not to sound too judgmental. But that perfuming of an odor smells suspiciously like the lemon-scented Lysol we will be spraying in our refrigerator come tomorrow, when even the grapes will have called it quits.

Pastor Peter Marty,

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