Fourth Presbyterian Church: A Light in the City

April 3, 2022 | 10:00 a.m.

Sticky Sweetness

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Isaiah 43:16–21
John 12:1–8

Back in Texas, when I was still a rather new pastor, I decided this was the perfect text with which to experiment and give the congregation a more sensory experience of worship. I imagined the faint, sweet smell of perfume gently wafting throughout the sanctuary right around the time this passage was read. I wanted us all to encounter just a bit of the sweetness that Mary gave to Jesus on that night.

So I called up my friend the Catholic priest and asked if I might borrow some of his incense—both sticks and the container in which to burn them. He enthusiastically agreed and brought them over to the sanctuary on the Saturday before. After giving me what he had, he offered one last instruction before leaving: “You should probably test it today to figure out how much is needed for this space,” he said. After the door closed behind him, I gave that suggestion about 30 seconds of thought at most and decided I would be fine.

When I entered the sanctuary the next morning, I had everything already set. The incense sticks in their container were hidden behind the communion table. I had five of them ready to go. And while I had originally thought I would wait to light them until just before I read the scripture, I did not want to ruin the surprise. So I decided to go ahead and light all five before anyone even arrived. Well, let’s just say I should have followed the priest’s advice.

Before we even had the call to worship, the entire sanctuary was hazy with smoke and people were literally gagging from the strong smell. The choir members up in the loft revolted. Many of them outright left because their allergies were so bad. The ushers had to open all the doors to the outside, and we cranked on the air conditioning even though it was not hot. Suffice it to say, people were not pleased with me.

But they did at least laugh when I got to the line in the text that stated, “And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” They finally understood my botched experiment and decided to keep me around for a while longer. I have never used incense in a sanctuary again.

But I must admit this text always tempts me, for the lingering power of that sticky sweet smell and the way it infiltrated everything and everyone that Sunday in Texas has never left me. And it makes me wonder if it ever left Jesus and those who had gathered with him on that night. After all, it would have been a completely different smell than what they had just encountered a few days prior.

At that time, the stench of death would have almost overwhelmed Jesus and his friends. They had all gathered outside of the tomb, Lazarus’s tomb. Martha, Lazarus’s sister, had tried to warn Jesus ahead of time. When she heard him command the others to take away the stone, she had walked up beside him and quietly remarked, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead three days.” But Jesus did not let Martha’s warning stop him. He was not letting anything stop him.

Mind you, his disciples had also tried to stop him. They had tried to prevent him from going back to Bethany in the first place, even after they heard about Lazarus’s illness. They knew the religious leaders were circling, round and round, as they waited for Jesus to slip up and give them the evidence they needed to hand him over to the Roman authorities. The disciples did not want Jesus to walk into that trap, and they tried to warn him.

But even smelling the scent of betrayal and the faint aroma of his own impending death did not dissuade Jesus from returning to his friends. They were in need, in need of his healing presence. They were in need, in need of his power of life. His dear friends were in need, in need of the fragrance of his overwhelming love, for the strong stenches of death and ending were all they could smell that day.

“Take away the stone,” he bellowed. “Lazarus, come out!” And Jesus’ previously dead friend walked out of his tomb, his hands, his face, and his feet bound with strips of cloth. “Unbind him, set him free,” Jesus commanded. They did. And Lazarus was alive again. The whole thing was unbelievable, a miracle, right there in front of everyone.

And at that moment, the stench of Lazarus’s death faded a bit, briefly replaced by the sweet fragrance of life and reunion. All the bystanders who saw it and smelled it were amazed and believed. Well, almost all. Where some smelled the sweet fragrance of miracle, a few smelled the distinct odor of threat and rebellion. And those few went off to tell the religious leadership. And from that day on, John tells us, they planned to put Jesus to death.

Jesus must have smelled the change in the air again. He knew he was no longer safe. He needed to disappear for a bit, regroup, rest, and wait until it was time to make his final trip into Jerusalem for the Passover festival. So he and his disciples snuck back into Bethany and went to his friends’ home. It must have been a sight to see. They come in the door and there sits Lazarus, still a bit stunned, I am sure, over his recent past. It takes a while to shake death’s stench off your imagination.

Martha, though, welcomed Jesus and the others and decided it was high time to celebrate with a party. After all, her brother had been dead and was now alive again. He had been lost in the tomb and was now found. Of course, you have a party. Jesus told parables about that kind of thing all the time. She ran around the kitchen overseeing the smells of meat cooking, bread baking, and olive oil sizzling. It smelled like a feast. But I’ve wondered if Martha allowed herself any time to breathe in those smells of celebration, for she, like the others, knew that people were on the lookout for Jesus.

Mary must have also had the distinct sense something was different on that night. Granted—her recently dead brother was sitting in the next room. Resurrection always changes the dynamics. But it must have been more than just that. She, like Martha, like Jesus, must have smelled change in the air and knew something else was going on.

So while Martha was making sure everything was being served just right, Mary walked to the back of the house. She decided it was time. It was time to take a risk and do what she felt called to do. So she did. And the next thing Martha smelled was the smell of strong, sweet perfume as the fragrance filled the house, overwhelming any of the smells of food. Martha rushed in to find her sister at Jesus’ feet, holding an open bottle of expensive nard. Everyone was silent, staring at Mary.

Time slowed down as Martha watched her sister. First, Mary let down her hair. Martha became nervous because respectable women don’t do that. Then, Mary poured the balm on her rabbi’s feet. Martha flashed back to doing the same on her brother’s body—but he was dead when they anointed him. Jesus was alive. What was Mary thinking?!

Next, Mary began to caress Jesus’ feet and wiped them off with the strands of her long hair. By that point, all Martha could think about was how she was going to get Mary out of this mess. Mary’s behavior was not even appropriate amongst friends (Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Prophet Mary,” Bread of Angels, p. 59).

Even though she was surrounded by the overwhelming smell of sweetness, Martha could only smell her own fear. Mary had really done it this time. She was out of bounds with her behavior and certainly out of bounds with her extravagance.

Mary had used an entire bottle of perfume equal to a whole year’s worth of wages. It was like buying a birthday gift with your annual food budget. Out-of-control extravagance. And like the incense in the sanctuary that day, the strong smell of the perfume in the room almost took their breath away. It infiltrated everything and everyone with its sticky fragrance.

Judas acted shocked by Mary’s bizarre act “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” Judas was certain Jesus would agree with him. Jesus was all about helping the poor. Justice was his middle name. Their outreach budget could have increased tenfold, or at least Judas’s own account would have increased.

But Jesus sat silently. He took a deep breath and filled his nostrils with the sweet scent of the perfume. He looked into Mary’s eyes and read her heart. “Leave her alone. She is anointing me for my burial. You will always be able to care for the poor. I am running out of time.” Jesus stared at her. He knew why she had done it, taken that risk, probably better than Mary understood it herself.

Jesus knew that she had withheld nothing out of her gratitude for him. By walking into that room, she had stepped out of her place. By using the entire bottle, she had given up her resources. By letting down her hair, she had risked humiliation and degradation. By touching his feet, she had thrown away any honor. And by wiping them with her hair, she had made herself completely vulnerable to attack.

Jesus looked at Mary, smelled the sweet fragrance in the air, and saw that she was embodying what he had been trying to teach every single day of his ministry. Mary knew that to be a disciple meant she had to take risks and hold nothing back, even when she smelled fear and death in the air. Just as Jesus had shown everyone his power of new life by raising Lazarus from the dead, Mary showed everyone her faithful discipleship by her wildly extravagant act of anointing.

But Mary had also revealed something else at that dinner party—something she did not even know fully. Mary had prophesized Jesus’ death. Good Friday was right around the corner. And like Mary’s act, Jesus’ death would also be bizarre and imprudent. All he had to do to avoid it was to recant his statements about being God’s Son. All he had to do to avoid it was to stop eating with those labeled sinners, stop proclaiming justice, and stop rocking the religious and political boat. If he would just stop being who he was called to be, then his life could be spared, bottled up, and saved.

But, like the bottle of perfume, his precious life was also not meant to be saved. It was going to be opened, offered, and used, at great price (Barbara Brown Taylor, Bread of Angels). It was also going to be raised up and poured out for all humankind, emptied to the last drop until the day comes when the fragrance of his sacrifice takes the world’s breath away. For there is nothing practical or frugal about God’s extravagant love for humankind.

God had decided it was time to act and to bring us back. God had decided to take a risk, to become vulnerable in power in order to be strong in love. And when you let it, the fragrance of that Love can hit you in the face and almost suck all the oxygen out of the air, infiltrating everything and everyone around.

For at that strange dinner party that night, and later on the rough wooden cross, we see that our God is a God who does not know how to love frugally but who only knows how to love extravagantly. We smell that our God is a God who will always replace the stench of death with the sweet fragrance of new life. And we realize that our God is a God who does not and will never hold back a single drop of God’s very self from us or the world.

My friend Jenny McDevitt, Pastor of Shandon Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina, has wondered if it were possible that the sticky smell of the perfume lingered with Jesus after that night. Was it still exuding from his pores a few days later when he carried out his own kind of dinner party with the disciples as he fed them and washed their feet? And even later, as he carried his cross and the dust clung to his feet and the sweat and blood mingled with it all is it possible that he could still smell that perfume, just a little, even if it was only in his imagination?

For that lingering smell could have reminded him, perhaps at the exact moment when he needed some reminding, that the fragrance of God’s extravagant love would always end up overwhelming any smell of death, a strongly scented testimony that death would never get the final word. Rather, as he inhaled that memory, he knew that he would. Amen.