Every Nook and Cranny
April 3, 2022 + Fifth Sunday in Lent + John 12:1-8 + Pr. Michelle Sevig
Maybe you are like me and you can’t help yourself when you walk by a bakery, take a deep breath and soak in the scent of fresh baked bread. I love it! Even better if that bread is baking at home in your own kitchen, right?
Or what about Thanksgiving when the combined smells of turkey, stuffing and apple pie are wafting throughout the house, and you just sniff and sniff like a puppy dog because the smells are so scrumptious.
And one of my favorite smells, the grill firing up on those first days of spring, when the whole neighborhood is swelling with eagerness for the taste of summer.
But great smells are not just associated with foods though, are they? They are also strongly associated with memories. Smell is the sense most linked to memory.
Whenever I smell Old Spice or pipe tobacco, I remember my dad who wore the cheap cologne and smoked w pipe sitting in his wheelchair with his feet up on the desk where his Ham Radio kept him connected to the world long before the internet existed.
My friend Heidi had a scent too. Those who knew who best would often say, “It smells like Heidi!” when we would walk into her home or receive a package from her. She chose her scent, Claire Burke Original, long ago and it permeated every nook and cranny of her house. Even after she died, we could still feel her presence through her scent that lingers on her clothes and belongings.
The gospel reading today from John, tells us that the oil Mary used to anoint Jesus filled the house with the fragrance of perfume. The gospel writer John pays attention to details like smells. One theologian says,
“The gospel of John is arguably the squishiest, muddiest, stinkiest gospel of all. The writer, who begins by preaching that the word became flesh, uses all kinds of fleshy, smelly, bodily, worldly images to demonstrate the true radical nature of Jesus’ identity as God’s incarnation. In John, the scents of sweet wine, fresh bread, wet mud, rooms made stale by sickness work their way into every nook and cranny of the gospel.”
And the family in today’s gospel–Martha, Mary, and Lazarus? They have some pretty smelly stories! Just prior to this anointing story is the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Lazarus had been dead for 4 days. Martha warns Jesus, there is already a stench; it stinks! Smellier than a teenage baseball player’s cleats after a double header.
Smell matters in this story–because highlighting it shows the reader that Lazarus is really dead, so when Jesus raises him from the dead, he is doing a divine act, not just waking him from a nap. The smell, the stench, the stink signifies this event is radical. Radical enough to anger the authorities and get him killed.
And that is what brings us to the second smelly story involving this family Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, but this one has a much more pleasant smell. The house was filled with the fragrance of perfume. Every nook and cranny of that home was filled with the fresh scent of nard. Not an essential oil we are familiar with these days, but at the time it was an expensive oil only available from far away India. Mary took a whole pound of this expensive oil typically used for burial, and poured it on Jesus’ feet–lavishly, foolishly, recklessly, lovingly. And with tenderness and intimacy reserved only for those in family relationships, she let down her hair and wiped Jesus’ feet with her flowing locks-the fresh scent locked into her own hair, skin and clothes for days to come; probably into the Passover week, lingering still in the days of the death and resurrection of her Lord. Imagine that scent-memory lingering with her and the others as they face all that is to come in this Passover week as Jesus prepares to die and rise again.
Like the story before this one, smell matters. We need the smell of great love to remind us of God’s great love for us. Mary’s act has to be absurd, lavish and abundant because she understands Christ’s concern for her, for all of humanity to be absurd, lavish and abundant. Her demonstration of love is a grand expression of faith, so much so that the smell filled every corner of the house. Everyone present would have walked out of that house smelling like the grace that she just shared with Jesus.
Judas, the one who would betray Jesus in the coming week, the one who was already betraying his friends by stealing from the money they shared in common, tried to make a scene and shut her down, saying “You should not have been so wasteful Mary! That expensive nard could have been sold and the money given to the poor.” But Jesus defended Mary’s actions of reckless, foolish, and lavish love, saying “The poor will always be with you, but you will not always have me.”
Some have read this as a way to exclude seeking justice for the poor. (“Sermon for March 13, 2016: What is the True Cost? John 12:1-8”) ‘Well, you cannot really do anything to solve poverty anyway…Jesus said so. Why try?” But instead, biblical scholars who read ancient Greek, much better than I do, tell us to read it in this way,
“If you follow me, you will always be where the poor are.”
Meaning we will be serving and advocating together because the poor are among us. The poor are us. It’s not a we vs. them dichotomy. Since we will always be equipped by God to do right by people in need, there is no need to be so stingy with what we have that we cannot do kind things for one another. We too can lavishly, foolishly recklessly and lovingly pour out grace into the world, so it permeates every nook and cranny.
Mary’s lavishness is a pivot point in the gospel of John and points us toward the passion of Jesus’ death and resurrection. In these coming days–Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday–we will turn toward the paschal celebration, the pattern of descent and lifting up, the imprint of our lives where we are bathed in baptismal waters and smeared with sweet smelling oily perfume. We become stinky with the cross of Christ on our foreheads. We pattern our lives and our deaths after the anointed one who was anointed. We bend our lives toward redemption, to announce release from burden and brokenness, and affirm what the prophet Isaiah proclaims, that “God is about to do a new thing!”
God’s newness lingers and stinks up a room. May our faith, like Mary’s be filled with abundance, not scarcity. May our acts of service be worth the cost. Because it is our calling to live an abundant faith like Mary’s, lavishly loving God, and neighbor, filling up every nook and cranny, making sure everyone walks away smelling of God’s grace. Do not be afraid like Judas. There is enough love to go around.
