Message: Sights, Sounds, and Scents of Faithfulness
We experience the world in so many ways with our senses and stories. The many varied abilities and different experiences of the world through senses mean there are numerous ways of approaching the bible readings today. The ancient prophet Jeremiah and the gospel of John give glimpses into life’s experiences from different people and places. Exile of the people and seated a Jesus’s feet before his death. Hungering, yearning and longing, feasting, and extravagant giving find their place in God seeking for us to know in the depths of our being and daily living God’s love.
Can you imagine the well watered garden?
Can you hear the joyful music?
Can you feel the rhythms of the tambourines and drums?
Can you smell to freshness of the bounty?
Can you feel the smooth path underfoot?
Can you taste the feast?
Can you smell the costly perfume?
Can you hear the grumbling mumbling voices in the background?
Take a moment and imagine the sensations and also feelings of the experience of the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus in Bethany. I know we often read into the stories our experiences of 21st century Scottish life and our homes (that vary a bit), so imagining a 1st century Middle Eastern family home is not the most straight forward challenge. No central heating, no cleaning chemicals or room freshener machines puffing out scents. Animals were probably within the home complex, food storage did not include a refrigerator or freezer. There would have been a fire for cooking and heat. No indoor plumbing, yet. No fancy paintings or pictures on the wall and probably no carpets in every room, which were most likely just a few. No car out front or glass windows. No radio or television and definitely no mobile phones or wifi. Most of the things we have in our homes these days did not exist 2000 years ago, yet there were people and there was to be a feast together with friends. The welcome is warm and inviting, the conversation flows, laughter rises, stories are shared, gratitude is expressed, and then…
Mary enters, the same Mary that sat as a disciple at Jesus’s feet learning, carrying expensive perfume, costly and extravagant. A hush falls amid the friends as she kneels at Jesus’s feet again and anointed his feet, wiping away the excessive amount of the perfume with her hair. Then the grumblings from Judas about why the waste and how the funds could have been used otherwise. And then Jesus speaks, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’
The home filled with the heady perfume and smell of people gathered for a feast. The home filled with contention, emotion and memories. Lazarus had died and was raised. This family knew Jesus, followed Jesus and also seemingly were coming to know a bit of what the future might hold for Jesus’s earthly life. The home was filled with chatter and also at times silent wonderings. I would have loved to hear a bit more about what happened that night and the conversations that ensued. What did Martha say to Mary? What did Lazarus say to Judas? What did Mary do next? Sadly, my questions hang in the air as did the scent of the perfume and they linger a long time too.
“There was a Jewish teaching in Jesus’ day said, ‘Just as the fragrance of a good perfume spreads from the bedroom to the dining room, so does a good name spread from one end of the world to another.’ Perhaps one meaning of this story is that the good news of the gospel will eventually spread to the whole world. What is the good news? At this point it’s not entirely clear; Jesus gives a hint: ‘you do not always have me’.“ (from Roots for Churches)
While we experience our daily lives with all our senses available to us, we often do not remember all the details and carry with us everything we have seen, sensed or even thought. However, our senses can take us back to a moment with a song, a sight and often times especially a smell. A perfume that reminds us of a loved one or a particular event. A song that takes us back in our memories to a special time we heard it. Seeing a photograph that causes memories to flood back.
In the weeks, months and years after Jesus’s death and resurrection, the lingering scent of that perfume would have reminded those gathered of the extravagant gift Mary gave to anoint Jesus’s feet before he died and of the events that then occurred in the week after that.
We can only imagine the experience of the disciples and Jesus’s friends and we are grateful for the gospel accounts that speak to us of those days thousands of years removed and yet still speaking of the sacrifice and the love shown to the whole world in Jesus’s life, death and resurrection. The world still has suffering and want, people hunger for bread and for justice and the church still struggles with how we utilities the resources available to share the good news with others.
This week, I have visited two primary schools in the area and spoken about Easter in the church, which is not the easiest aspect of being a minister. The bible’s accounts of Jesus’s death and resurrection are not a nice children’s bedtime story. They are for adults. I know children’s bibles seek to share the Good News in ways children can grasp and understand within their understanding of the world they know. Adapting the teaching to the audience’s developmental ability to grasp the meaning is a way of sharing learning with others. You would not teach a nursery child the same way as a PhD student. Understanding God’s Good News for the world also means understanding how each of us approaches the words used and are impacted by what it means. What I enjoy greatly about speaking with children at schools is their questions and curiosity. They are learning now to discern information rather than just receive it, which is a vital skill in a world of fake news and misinformation readily available 24/7.
We do not have to crack open a bottle of perfume worth a year’s wages to show our devotion. We do not need to have unquestioning certainty that we know what is best all of the time. Yet, Jesus reminds us through his life among his friends and followers to be alert and aware to where God is inviting us to experience God’s saving love in action, to sense it with all we have and to share it with others. We are invited to take time, share together, meet our neighbours where they are and be an embodiment of God’s love in the feasting, talking, learning and growing together.
May the perfume Mary anointed Jesus with allow the scent of love and sacrifice share with you the Good News for the whole world so we too can share God’s saving love with others, especially those who have not yet heard of Jesus in their lives or know God’s love in action. Let our lives in faithfulness be a light to the world pointing toward the Good News of Jesus, who came that we might know life in all its fullness and grow together in God’s ways.