Isaiah 43:16-21 • Psalm 126 • Philippians 3:4b-14 • John 12:1-8
"Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. 3Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 5'Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?' 6(He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) 7Jesus said, 'Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.'”
For those who have been blessed with an opportunity to travel outside of the U.S., you may have had the same puzzled response I did to the lack of the use of one of the most basic hygiene products we use. I can still remember standing amongst a group of adult Europeans on a hot summer’s day as a teenager on my first trip abroad and wondering: does everyone over here smell this bad?
It is a curious cultural phenomenon about us Americans that unlike the majority of the rest of the 6+ billion people of the world, we feel compelled to cover up our body odor. In fact, deodorant companies like Old Spice, Secret, Brut and Degree do all they can to keep us using products that keep us from the shame of body odor.
We tend to look down on bad body smells, and avoid them at any cost. Our noses are well-trained to respond pleasurably to car air-fresheners doing all they can to prolong that “new car smell”, and to rely on aroma therapy candles to transport us to a better time and place than here. Our noses are trained to follow Chanel, Calvin Klein, and Beyonce ads that allure us to use perfumes that promise to attract the right guy or girl in our direction.
This avoidance and covering up of unpleasant smells and unfulfilled desires can leave us running away from the sniffing range of the poor person who may not have bathed for several days, or from visiting grandma or grandpa who live in one of those “old folks homes” that has that “nursing home smell.”
Smells can keep us apart from each other. And they can draw us together.
Lazarus knew a smell no one wanted to come close to. He’d been dead, locked away in a tomb for four days, with the smell of his decaying body filling up the space. When Jesus rolled the stone away, Lazarus’ smell pushed the crowd back, gasping for air. But not Jesus. The aroma of his dead friend drew him in all the more closely, so he could raise him to new life.
But coming in contact with that odor, and that deceased body, and performing miracles were not things the authorities in Jerusalem cared for. This wafting smell of an open tomb that drew Jesus close to tend to his friend agitated the principalities enough that they set the plot to kill Jesus in motion. This so-called “crime” of resurrection now made Jesus an outlaw.
There was also someone, though, who could not let go of her amazement at what Jesus had done. Someone who couldn’t let go of this love that gripped her—love for Jesus who came to bring her brother back from being lost and gone forever. Mary comes to Lazarus’ home for dinner, and even though he’s bathed, the scent of the tomb is still on him with myrrh and cloves still in his hair. But Mary knows that this new lease on life her brother had received smelled stronger and better than that. What Jesus did for him is so much more… She wonders to herself: “How can I show Jesus what he means to me?” So she comes to Jesus at the dinner table, and pours a perfume that costs a year’s wages onto his feet, and wipes them with her hair.
To give you a sense of the smell of what Mary used for perfume, I’d like to invite you to pass around this sample of perfumed oil.
As Mary washes Jesus’ feet with this, everyone is silent. The smell is overpowering—and wonderful—and it fills the whole room, and the whole home. Mary shows Jesus and everyone present—that this is what Jesus had done for her. The whole world is now full of a different fragrance because of what this anointed Messiah had done for her brother. Mary shows us what the aroma of God’s love smells like—all because Jesus did not avoid the power of a stench that had kept everyone else away.
Judas, one of the disciples at the meal, wants to know something: why couldn’t this costly perfume have been spent elsewhere, for more than just this one person? Like the poor? As much as Judas’ motives are self-serving, his question raises an important question for our choices about stewardship of using what we’ve been given: why can’t more of what we have be given to those in need? A very valid question! Jesus chooses, though, to redirect the question and turn our attention back to Mary, and to pay attention to her lavish, simple generosity, and loving discipleship. Judas’ question is important, but Jesus wants us to see Mary who is not calculated with her love—she’s utterly lost in her devotion to Jesus. Mary’s passion and reckless abandon for the aroma of Christ can serve as an extraordinary an image of lavish discipleship and stewardship for us all.
How priceless is it to get to smell the sweet aroma of God’s love called Christ? More than MasterCard could ever try to convince us! The apostle Paul in Philippians compares what life before Christ, before Jesus found him, to the smell of “rubbish” (3:8); it’s all nothing compared to what has now found him.
All the aromas we would rather not wish to smell, whether it’s the constant smell of alcohol on a partner’s breath; the stale, medicinal, sterile smell of a friend or relative’s hospital room; or chemical waste polluting our planet, these have all lost their stench and been made sweet by the aroma of Christ, because, as Paul says, “Christ Jesus has made us his own” (3:12). Christ has, with Lazarus, raised all Creation to new life. It is to these and any place where stench keeps tries to keep us away, that the presence Christ’s balm abounds, and this smell reminds us of who it is who brings healing, wholeness, restoration and reconciliation that does not lose its power in the midst of the foulest of foul offenses to our senses.
The scene of anointing at Bethany begins a drama that is about to unfold as Jesus will soon enter Jerusalem to be sent to the cross. In this drama we will recall the smell of Mary’s servant love, again at a footwashing—but this time it won’t happen with hair, but with a towel and basin. We will recall Lazarus’ tomb and Mary’s anointing of Jesus for burial when Joseph of Aramathea and Nicodemus embalm the dead body of Jesus; and we will once again see Mary, a bold woman, and a bold first witness to Jesus’ own resurrection. We will see Mary there, at the empty tomb, once again get lost in devotion and sharing with all that what Jesus had done for her brother that will have been done for the whole world.
In the days ahead, as Lent concludes this week, and as Holy Week begins next Sunday with Palm/Passion Sunday, we anticipate with Isaiah that with the sweet aroma of Christ all around us, “God is about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (43:19) As we ponder the meaning of these last Lenten days, what would such love for Jesus evoke in our lives, in our church and in our world? What foul stenches has Jesus subdued, or does Jesus desire to make powerless for us today? Where is Jesus sending us to bring the fragrant aroma of God’s love that like Mary’s perfume sticks on us as much as it sticks on Jesus, and goes with us wherever we go? Will people catch a wiff of God’s love from us?
As we anticipate and get lost in all the drama Jesus’ passion and his crossing over from death to new life, we await the fulfillment of Jesus to accomplish in us what he begins at Bethany. May we be open the new thing that the aroma of Christ is doing, and imagine a world where we do not walk away from scents that give us discomfort, for the sake of Jesus who comes to bring the power of his healing wholeness to all. May God bring to completion that for which we have been preparing as we began Lent with this prayer from the Ash Wednesday liturgy:
“Accomplish in us, O God, the work of your salvation;
that we may show forth your glory in the world.
By the cross and passion of your Son, our Savior,
bring us with all your saints to the joy of his resurrection.” Amen.
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