Sweet Smell
John 12:1-8

March 28, 2004

It does matter with whom you eat around the table. Jesus could eat with anyone and according to his detractors perhaps had too good a time while he was at it. I don’t buy the strained attempts of some conservative Christians who want to pretend that Jesus didn’t drink wine on these occasions. Frankly, they are scandalized by Jesus’ behaviour that they think undermines their program of alcoholic temperance. So they change Jesus and his drinking habits.

It doesn’t work. Back in Bethany, sitting around the table with some of the most familiar personalities in the Gospel, Jesus must have been as comfortable and at home as he could be given the conflict all around him. The wine just had to flow.

Martha was back at her hospitality, bustling about serving and feeding everyone. She was the deacon, a servant, even a slave to the rabbi and the community. Lazarus, her resurrected brother, is described as sitting around the table, dressed in his new clothes. He never says anything, but then all he would have to do is smile.

Most of the disciples must have been there as well, so conditions must have been crowded with elbows in everyone’s way. The buzz had to be deafening and the neighbours must have been complaining.

Mary was just sitting there again, do nothing but listening - and eating and drinking. As was the case in Luke’s famous meal in which Martha complained about doing all the work, Mary was fully engaged in all that Jesus was doing and saying.

Something was missing, and probably she had thought about this for a long time. She went off into her room and brought back a package of fine expensive perfumes and oils made of pure nard. Typically, these oils were used to anoint the bodies of the dead to mask the inevitable putrefaction after burial. She took them out and anointed Jesus’ feet and wiped them with her long hair. The sweet smell filled the whole house.

All four Gospels report this event, but only John stops to mention that the smell filled the whole house. He could still smell it decades later, just like you remember the particular smells of your grandmother’s house or those remarkable odors emanating out of the home of an unusual acquaintance.

Two smells still waft in my memory: the first is literary, and the second autobiographical. In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, the odd couple Ishmael and the Polynesian harpoonist Queequeg are wandering the New Bedford, Massachusetts, dock district in the middle of winter, bone chilling cold wrapped inside the wet salty ocean air. They come along a tavern and wander in for refuge from the elements. The place is warm and crowded with body heat and a good fire, but they are overwhelmed by the smell of clam chowder, New England-style of course. The chowder warms and fills them and I cannot read that passage without smelling and lusting for that chowder. Therefore, for self-protection I don’t read it that much.

On summer nights with the side window open to let in a little movement of air, I could smell paradise. At the corner of our street was Bay Island Seafood, one of the best places in the city to get good Maryland steamed crabs, heavily spiced. The fragrance had to hop over a two story building in between us and Bay Island, but smell is stronger than concrete. Rarely did we ever buy some; eating crabs on tables laid out with newspapers was a ritual meant for bigger occasions than a late night snack, a bit of a sacrament. Instead of incense used in some Catholic, Anglican and Orthodox liturgies we had McCormick’s spices to make us believe we were sitting in heaven.

Mary’s actions actually make a little more sense than the other Gospel accounts, in which an anonymous woman pops in from the street to anoint Jesus. She knew him, had listened to him without end, and understood where he was going. She is usually portrayed as just sitting, never lifting a hand to help with the physical chores, but now she takes on the role of the priest in order to anoint Jesus in preparation for his burial. Jesus had been talking about it a lot, yet few ever seemed to want to get the point. Mary had been the ideal of the priest or minister: one who does nothing useful, except to listen intently for the movement of the soul.

The whole house was filled with the sweet smell, but was it a smell of death? Or was its sweetness, now on the eve of the Palm Sunday march into Jerusalem, a fragrance of life, a scent of salvation, a whiff of resurrection from death?

John does nothing anonymously. Before we can reflect further on the meaning of these fragrances, Judas Iscariot interrupts angrily. All the Gospels record the anger of the disciples at this extravagant waste, this flagrant lack of responsibility for social justice, but Judas Iscariot is revealed for who is, the betrayer, the embezzler and thief. That sweet smell of perfume was money that could be in his pocket. Nevertheless, Judas raises the perennial question of the church, “This perfume could have been sold for 300 denarii (a year’s salary!) and given to the poor.”

And Jesus’ response is one that strikes you right between the eyes and knocks you back. “Leave her alone....You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” Jesus is an anti-social-actionist, a person who does not believe poverty can ever be eliminated and so must be tolerated, maybe ignored when possible. This has to be a dangerous statement for the social Gospel of our churches. We should impeach Jesus.

Just at the point, whether first century or twenty-first century, when you are convinced you know what Jesus is supposed to think in order to meet your agenda, Jesus changes the rules. He doesn’t really change the rules; he challenges the rules we have set up for him. Mary had a lazy habit of listening, not working. She was intent on being in the charismatic presence of Jesus. It wouldn’t last that long, for he would eventually move on to the next town. He was so all-consuming, nothing, nothing else mattered for the moment. Was she able to think the thought, that God was in Jesus, and she was in God’s presence for those infinitesimal hours around her table?

The poor we do have with us still because we are the sinners. Poverty remains due to our inhuman humanity, and since a lot more of us are less perfect than we think, we are not able to eradicate poverty in a flash. As much good as those with strong social consciences and energies are at eliminating the causes of poverty and hunger in this world, Jesus is right until we realize poverty is at heart a spiritual problem -- not the problem of the poor -- our problem. Being too busy saving the world and eradicating poverty is no excuse when the human presence of the Ground of Being sits down at your table and offers a word. Unless you can listen to the still small voice resurrecting your spirit and understanding, you’ll never get the point.

God doesn’t have a season; we do. Lent can be accused of being vague up to now, but not from now on. Next week begins the palmed march into Jerusalem, the Temple scene, the last supper, the agony of prayer in Gethsemane, the arrest, trial, scourging and crucifixion. But it doesn’t end until everything begins again a mere two weeks from today. We can’t take thinking about this the entire year, so we reserve a few days to stand in the presence one more time. Maybe we can remember the sweet smell a little longer.

I beg a detail: when Mary wiped the strong sweet perfume on Jesus’ feet with her hair, how long did she walk around with everybody smelling that she was coming? Look, even Queen Elizabeth I only took a bath once a month whether she needed it or not. Ritual cleansing was only for the hands and face, not for the hair. The smell of death, or the fragrance of life, which did she give to those who smelled her?

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan