The Scent of Abundance

A sermon on John 12:1-8

[for an audio recording of this sermon, click here. Photo by elliott on Unsplash.]

Sometimes, at the dinner table, my family will pose “would you rather questions,” to spark conversation.

We are four very different people, so often our answers are quite different as well, and our discussions of reasoning can be both illuminating and hysterical.

But there was one such hypothetical on which we were surprisingly united, especially given that it offered 5 different options: the question was if you had to give up one of them, which of the five senses would you rather lose?

There was a little discussion, but pretty quickly we came to agreement.

Sight and hearing were both off the table right away… although society has come a long way in providing accommodations for people with perceptual disabilities, having lived all of our lives so far with these senses none of us would want to give them up.

For touch we also quickly agreed. No one else in the family is quite as huggy as me, but they all like my back rubs, not to mention that not being able to feel pain is actually super dangerous because you can wound yourself and not know.

Losing the sense of taste has positives and negatives… it might be easier to eat an ideally balanced diet for optimal nutrition if it was just a matter of counting macros… but… chocolate! (or insert your own favorite flavor).

So that leaves the sense of smell…

Sure, there are many scents that any of us might miss if they were suddenly gone from our lives: fresh-baked bread, orange blossoms, the woods after it rains, the smell of a baby’s head when it nestles under your chin…

But there are also plenty of vile smells that it would also be really nice to avoid for the rest of time.

Around the Rice dinner table, there was really no decision required. We would all give up the sense of smell in the hypothetical.

Before this week, I never imagined that this would be a conversation that would be relevant to scriptural interpretation, but today’s gospel has me rethinking that assumption.

Because this story is steeped in scents and scent memories.

Of course, our attention is first drawn to the scent of the perfume that Mary heedlessly spills onto Jesus’s feet in her act of devotion.

But then Jesus’s exonerating words about preparation for his burial draw our attention forward to the spices that will be brought to his tomb on Easter morning.

And that tomb calls us back to the last time we saw Lazarus, when Martha warned against opening his tomb over fear of the smell four days after his death.

And none of those scents feel negligible… none feel like an inconsequential detail that could be taken out of the story without impacting its meaning.

These scents draw us into the physicality, and even more into the humanity of these moments.

They remind us that Jesus is not just a subject for theological sermonizing. He lived a life as real and as palpable as the heavy scent of perfume in a room.

And that reminder pushes back against the reductive, essentialist approach to meaning-making that actually underlies Judas’ critique in this very story.

Judas’s argument seeks to narrow attention down to what he thinks is the “significant” thing: the monetary value of the perfume that could be put to better use.

The argument is a smokescreen, of course, because Judas wants access to the money for his own ends, but that should not distract us from the fallacy of the argument itself: the assumption that the only value anyone should care about is the monetary one.

Now, expressed that directly we might notice the problematic framing – of course there are other kinds of value beyond what something costs…

But an economic “bottom line” is the silent assumption that sits in the background of much of our culture.

It is in the subtext of political platforms, and medical decisions, infrastructure plans, and – I would venture to guess – the conversations of a significant numbers of church council meetings when their congregations are making ministry choices.  

It’s the place our instincts drive us whenever we are worried about scarcity.

And in a scarcity context, we don’t think we have any resources to waste on extras… like opulent scents that will hang heavy in the air and remind us of our humanity.

I think that is what is so offensive to Judas about Mary’s extravagance – the suggestion that the money is NOT the relevant issue.

And if we’re honest… it would probably be offensive to us as well if we found ourselves around that table.

In the pastor group that I meet with each week to discuss the lectionary passages, one of my colleagues named the uncomfortable truth that if someone were to suggest using $18,000[1] worth of perfume as an expression of devotion to God in one of his congregation’s worship services, he would be pretty quick to redirect that suggestion.

I would too! I might be too polite to actually call the suggestion “wasteful” but… I can think of a whole lot of ministry priorities that I would rank ahead of dousing our sanctuary in overwhelming scent.

Because I live in this culture where money is always in the background, and I cannot help operating from a mindset where everything is a trade-off: where spending in one place means skimping in another, because the economic reality IS scarcity… especially these days.

But the economic reality is not the only reality… and it is certainly not the only reality in which we should be asking questions about value… about what matters.

And when we are making those assessments of value, I think we would be well guided by Mary’s rejection of the fear-based, calculating, mindset of scarcity.

Mary offers a fragrant, extravagant example for us of the freeing, joyful expectation of abundance.

Her focus is not on the cost of the perfume but on the value of the opportunity before her: an opportunity to demonstrate her love for Jesus.

She knows that his value is limitless.

It invites an un-boundaried expression of love.

Even, or perhaps especially, because his time with her is so short.

I have always assumed that Jesus’s words about Mary keeping the perfume for the day of his burial was about what Jesus knew, not what Mary anticipated.

But what if she DID understand what was coming?

Jesus had certainly predicted his coming death to his followers.

Just because the twelve disciples did not accept his words does not mean that Mary was willfully ignorant.

What if she broke out the pound of perfume because she knew this might be her last chance to express all that words could not communicate about how much she loved him… about how much he mattered?

It’s a possibility that shines a spotlight on the difference between a scarcity mindset and an abundance mindset.

If Mary were acting out of the fear of scarcity, her awareness that Jesus was moving toward his execution would have prompted her to retract.

After all, what is the point of “wasting” resources on teacher who is not long for this world?

And if Jesus was going to be killed, her family was likely to be targeted next. After all, in John’s account it was Jesus’ resurrection of Lazarus that first inspired the religious leaders to plot Jesus’ arrest and killing. They would want to erase any lingering evidence of Jesus’ power.

So, the prudent thing, the self-protective action for Mary to take would be to sell the perfume not for the poor but for her own safety.

But Mary is not operating from a perspective of scarcity.

She knows Jesus is going to be killed… she knows that what is coming is going to be devastating and frightening… and she leans in.

She does not let the fear taint her love or her faith in the worth of this time with Jesus.

She doesn’t worry about saving up whatever she has in case she needs it down the line.

She decides that if this is going to be the last meal she shares with Jesus she is going to drench this memory in the scent of precious perfume; she is going to affirm the deep value of this moment and soak a sensory memory into her hair so that it will linger and carry her through everything that is yet to come.

And I would be willing to bet that it did.

I imagine her standing with the other women at the foot of the cross, the only disciples who stayed with Jesus to the end, and I imagine a hint of that perfume still clinging to her hair… stirred by a breeze to wrap her in the memory of a moment when she had been able to offer Jesus the care she wished she could offer in his final moments.

And I imagine that memory giving her the strength she needed to stay, weeping, but strong, in the face of death.

It is a powerful image for anyone facing their own moment of decision about how to respond to anticipated suffering.

The wisdom of the world teaches us to assume scarcity… to hoard whatever resources we have against the possibility of need, and to withdraw from any investment in “values” that do not protect the bottom line.

But the Spirit of abundance teaches us not to undervalue reminders of our humanity… it calls us to invest in our strength by leaning into what we know really matters most… because that is what will carry us through the hard times.

And, I think, in the end, our “would you rather” choice is between withdrawing behind the walls of self-protection, or leaning into joy, and love, and hope with the God who was not afraid of death because he knows the secret of resurrection.

Thanks be to God.

[1]  One denarii was the daily wage of a laborer, so the value named in the passage roughly equates to full-time minimum wage work for 300 days.