"Heaven Scent"

... what does God’s presence smell like to you?

John 12:1-8

April 6, 2025

Dr. Todd R. Wright

Last week we talked about the extravagant love of the father in the parable of the prodigal son and how that manifested itself in a welcome home party!

This week we are confronted with more extravagance, this time at a dinner party!

It happens at the home of Lazarus and Martha and Mary, in Bethany, a suburb of Jerusalem, just six days before Passover, the night before Jesus enters the Holy City to shouts of Hosanna!

John could have described the sounds of laughter and clinking plates; he could have focused on the bright colors of the flower centerpieces Martha set out in contrast to the normal drabness; he could have written about the taste of the olives, or the wine, or the roast lamb. He doesn’t. Instead, he remembers the smell and writes about it.

In fact, he could have told his gospel by the smells lodged in his memory:

Karoline Lewis has made a list – “the smell of good wine [at a wedding]; the smell of the hot sun on a well’s stone walls; [or] a man’s pallet on which he had to lie for 38 years; [or] bread [and fish served to thousands]; the smell of mud spread on the eyes of a man born blind; [or] a decomposing body [freed from four days in a tomb].”[ii]

---

So many smells! It begs the question, what does God’s presence smell like to you?

Beth Sanders has a few suggestions: honeysuckle on a warm day or a salty ocean breeze. I think of warm bread baked for communion or lifesavers candy shared during the sermon.

Sanders wonders if God’s love can smell like a person who hasn’t washed for days. Most wouldn’t call that a heavenly scent.

But for her it was. She spent years working with the homeless and that ministry was one where she regularly saw human brokenness and God’s grace!

In the same way, Lazarus’ smell wasn’t heavenly, but it was unavoidable. I’m sure he had bathed, but four days is a long time to be dead. You cannot wash that stench off easily.

And so that smell forced everyone to face the fact that this man, eating next to them, passing the bowl of dates and topping off their glasses as the host, had been raised from the dead by Jesus.

It was the smell of a miracle!

It was also a reminder that death was lurking in the shadows and scratching at the door.

John reports that there was a plot to kill Jesus cooked up by those who saw him as a threat – better for one man to die, they said, than for a whole nation to suffer Rome’s wrath!

---

What does death smell like?

Maybe, for you, it smells like the hospital or hospice room where your loved one died – all Lysol and linoleum, feces and fear.

Maybe it smells like the funeral home – the lingering scent of flower arrangements and a whiff of embalming fluid.

Or maybe it smells like the rot of the compost bin or that squirrel that died crossing the street.

For Harper Lee, writing in To Kill a Mockingbird, it is more complicated and ever-present:

Widower Atticus Finch raises his young son and daughter amid the racism and classism of Depression-era Alabama. Jem and Scout face the taunting of neighbors and school peers when Atticus agrees to defend a black man accused of raping a white woman. Mrs. Dubose, an elderly neighbor, sits on her front porch and torments the children with comments as they walk home from school. One day Jem takes his revenge by grabbing a baton and bashing all of Mrs. Dubose’s prized camellia bushes. Atticus punishes the children by having them go to her home and read aloud to her for two hours every afternoon for a month. Scout remembers the scent: “An oppressive odor met us when we crossed the threshold, an odor I had met many times in rain-rotted gray houses … It always made me afraid, expectant, and watchful.”

Each afternoon, they read while Mrs. Dubose sleeps and drools until an alarm clock rings, and then the children run outside to breathe fresh air. Finally, the month is up. Not long afterward, Mrs. Dubose dies. The children are surprised when Atticus tells them that she was addicted to morphine, and that their reading sessions helped her to wean herself so she could die in freedom. He says, “I wanted you to see what real courage is … It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”[iii]

---

That could have described the mood at the Lazarus house – maybe most of those with Jesus thought they were licked, but were determined to see it through to the end, no matter what.

Not Mary.

She had seen death up close; had shed all the tears she had to give; had washed the body and said her goodbyes. And then, to her amazement, she had seen Jesus call her brother back from the dead. You can’t experience all that and not cling to hope for the future. And you can’t hide your love!

So she walked into the room. “She comes from beyond the boundaries,” writes Jan Richardson. “As if she belongs. As if her whole life has been distilled into this one gesture that she offers: lifting, breaking, pouring. She comes with no words, yet with her entire being she proclaims a message both prophetic and priestly as she ministers to Jesus just days before his death.”[iv]

The smell of a pound of pure nard filled the room. It was excessive; lavish, generous!

Just as Jesus’ act of love raising her brother had been.

How else could she show her gratitude? How else could she make others understand? How else could she prepare them for what was to come?

When she wiped up the excess with her hair, it meant that she smelled like nard for days. Everywhere she went people were confronted with her extravagant act and the smell of death.

Of course they were talking about it anyway. About how she’d been wasteful. About how

she could have sold it and given the money for the poor – a whole year’s worth of wages that would have fed people. And how Jesus had commended her.

He said you’ll always have the poor to care for, alluding to Deuteronomy 15: “don’t be ‘tight-fisted,’ but rather ‘open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land’” at all times.

---

But it was what he said before that that really caught people’s attention: “She bought it so she might keep it for the day of my burial.” But she didn’t keep it. She didn’t wait!

As if he was confirming that he was going to die soon! As if he didn’t have much time. As if she was preparing his body in advance.

Why the rush? Why not wait until the worst happened? Why now, in front of these people?

Annie Dillard understands. She gives advice to writers, but it applies to all of us: “Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place … give it, give it all, give it now … Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.”[v]

Mary could not wait. Love cannot wait. Devotion cannot wait. There is a moment to show what you feel; to share what others need to know … and if you wait, the moment is lost.

That sounds strange to people like us – raised to do things decently and in order; to study and deliberate; to be good (by which we mean cautious and prudent) stewards.

But sometimes the situation demands being extravagant! Sometimes we need to follow in Mary’s footsteps and leave the whole room smelling … like devotion!

If we do, it will be a heavenly scent! We will be heaven sent. And God will be glorified! Amen

[i] “Anointing His Feet, #2” by Wayne Forte

[ii] From her reflection on the text, “Simultaneous Smells”, 3/6/16

[iii] Summary by Beth Sanders in “Heaven Scent” for the Christian Century, 3/6/07

[iv] From her reflection on the text, “Anointed”, 3/31/12

[v] From The Writing Life