Fragrance of Faith
April 6, 2025
“Taste is 95 percent smell. What happens when you get a cold? Can’t taste anything? In talking with others about their smells, what I have discovered is that there are regional differences to our favorite smells that often depend either on our food habits or on our outdoor customs. East Coast people prefer floral scents and Northerners the smell of the seasons. Southerners seem to prefer hearty snorts of pine. Midwesterners like the whiff of hay and farm animals. Westerners like the aroma of barbecuing meat.
Whatever our (choice) smell, huge histories of time are re-lived within the microseconds of a sniff. Nothing can bring back a time, a place, or an emotion better than an aroma” (Sermons.com, Leonard Sweet). In our gospel lesson, fragrance is a focus. In the previous story, Lazarus is dead, and they are worried about the awful stench. This story is infused with the aroma of perfume, as a precursor to Jesus’ death. Read John 12:1-8
Think back to when you were a child. “Think of the very best times that you shared with your family, and I am sure that the dining-room table will come to mind. Remember the smell of the kitchen. Close your eyes and smell those aromas, those memories. The brain remembers odors and smells and scents better than just about anything else.” (Sermons.com, Jeff Smith). Smells and aromas; breaking bread and sharing a meal, these are woven together today as we ponder God’s word and commune at Christ’s table.
I trust that you have noticed the aroma of baking bread permeating the sanctuary. Roasting grain makes our mouths water, harkens back to home cooked meals made with love and seems to elicit comfort. Leavened flour and water nurture our senses so much better than spraying the room with perfume. Yet both are powerful scents.
Donna Karan, fashion and fragrance designer wrote, “Smell is the primordial sense, more powerful, more primitive, more intimately tied to our memories and emotions than any other. A scent can trigger spiritual, emotional or physical peace and stimulate healing and wellness.”
Healing and wellness had just transpired when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Healing and wellness happened when the sisters’ grief was allayed. This reversal of death led many people to follow and flock to Jesus and convinced the Pharisees to kill him. Jesus was a wanted man, so rather than go to Jerusalem, he journeyed to Bethany to be with Lazarus and his sisters. (There is scholarship that Mary and Martha are actually one woman- for more on this see my Lenten sermon series March 2024), Jesus knew his hour was coming, so who better to be with than those who have just experienced death and resurrection. In Lazarus’ home Mary anoints Jesus with expensive perfume. “The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume” (3). “Isn’t it amazing that John could remember this fragrance so many years after Christ’s ascension? That, when his mind drifted back to that last week of Christ’s life, it was the fragrance of Mary’s offering that framed his memory. Still today, two thousand years later, Mary’s gift brings fragrance to our lives and while Mary was condemned by the apostle’s that day for her extravagance, she provided a gift that has been remembered for thousands of years. Her fragrance still fills our lives with the presence of Christ” (Sermons.com, Jerry Goebel, The House Was Filled with the Fragrance of the Perfume).
Often sermons on this passage focus on the cost of the perfume and “always having the poor with you.” But I see Mary lifted as the model disciple, in contrast to Judas’ theft and betrayal. “Mary is the image of faith just as Judas is the image of unfaithful deceit” (Working Preacher, Brian Peterson). Her perfume draws us into the encounter, fills our lungs with beauty and love and foreshadows the coming of our precious Lord’s death. Jesus defends Mary’s gift of perfume, because its purpose is beyond an anointing. She is not just anointing his feet as a gift of love; she is preparing his body for his imminent death.
Anointing is done when anointing a king on the head with oil. But Mary anoints Jesus’s feet. “Even though Mary’s action here is not described as “washing” Jesus’ feet, we should see her as an image of the discipleship and the love that Jesus will model and command for his followers as he washes their feet (the night before he dies). The verb for “wiping” the feet is used in John to describe only these two scenes (12:3; 13:5). (Mary wiping his feet with her hair, and Jesus wiping their feet with a towel). Mary engages in this kind of service even before the command is given. (You recall after the foot washing Jesus gave the new commandment to love one another, Jn 13:34-35). The power of the witness of Mary’s discipleship is that she knows how to respond to Jesus without being told. She fulfills Jesus’ love commandment before he even teaches it” (Working Preacher, Brian Peterson). Remember Mary on Maundy Thursday when we wash each other’s hands, sharing God’s love and our devotion to Christ.
Helen Keller wrote, “Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.” Mary’s anointing Jesus with fragrant perfume foreshadows the garden of Gethsemane, leads to the garden where our sins are forgiven, and we are saved. This is the delight of our salvation. This is the fragrance of faith. Christ dying on the cross to save us from our sins. You see God’s love is like a beautiful flower that exudes a rich fragrance, yet it comes with a cost. As Isaac Hayes once said, “If you enjoy the fragrance of a rose, you must accept the thorns which it bears.” Christ not only wore a crown of thorns, he accepted the thorns of our sins so that we might know God’s love.
This is the fragrance of faith. The grace we have received from our risen Lord which permeates our lives much like a fragrant perfume. We cannot see perfume, only smell it. We cannot see grace only feel it. I wonder, does grace have a scent? I’m not sure, but “Fragrances fill the senses with the mysterious” (Diana Vreeland). “Tertullian, one of the theologians of the early church, explained the Trinity in a metaphor. God the Father he described as ‘a deep root, the Son as the shoot that breaks forth into the world, and the Spirit as that which spreads beauty and fragrance’” (Sermons.com, Brett Blair). Maybe grace does have an aroma.
“For all of creation bears God’s fingerprints and teaches us about Him. Fragrance is but one of the many ways God provided as a means of interacting with us! God has a great sense of smell and nothing smells so sweet to (God) as our gratitude. God loves the aroma of thanksgiving” (serenityinsuffering.com/experiencing-the-divine-fragrance-of-god/). So with joyful and thankful hears let us prepare to come into God’s presence, open our hearts to commune with our Creator, and inhale the fragrance of divine love.
I love that a scent can make memories come alive! I love that Mary had the courage to anoint Jesus’ feet with fragrant perfume. Remember “she knows the brutality of death, but she also knows that the grave cannot hold Jesus” (Working Preacher, Brian Peterson). I love that Christ is the host at our table, inviting us to share in the aromatic bread which is his body, and taste the wine which is his blood. Allow the aroma of bread to fill your soul, the taste of the bread to dance on your tongue. As you inhale the scent of warm baked bread, may you feel Jesus embrace you, warts and all, sins and all. Just as Mary’s gift emits an aroma that saturates the house and the hearts of everyone in it, may the fragrance of faith, the aroma of grace fill your senses as Christ welcomes you to this sacred table. Amen.
