Can a Smell Change Your Life? This One Can.

Hmmm…..Maybe I should change.   My wife has bought me some, after all.   She’d probably like it if I wore it more.    And beyond smelling nice, if you believe the advertisements, this stuff has serious power.

Some of the ads get so bold in asserting the power of their smells, they get a bit ridiculous, like this one.   Now, I have never used Axe Body Spray, but me thinks they exaggerate a bit.   But long before advertisers were making crazy claims for their scent’s power for men, they were doing the same thing for women.   The perfume ads for women get so over the top, I only found one that I could even show you in worship.   I guess they figured for this one they didn’t need a suggestive picture. The name alone made the point; Black Opium, a smell so powerful it’s addictive.

Now these claims seem not only ridiculous.  They may even seem offensive.  They carry messages about men and women that don’t paint either in a positive light.   But do they have a point?  Does smell have more power than you think?   After all, Americans alone spent well over 5 billion dollars on buying them last year.  If you add in the rest of the world, the number goes to almost 50 billion.

Those numbers don’t lie.   Smells have power.  They bring back powerful memories.  They stir powerful emotions.   But can a scent give you worth and value?  Will it bring you a fulfilled and abundant life?   In this passage, the Bible says yes.  Yes, it will.   So, what is this scent that brings this new life?   In these words, God shows you the way.   Let’s listen and hear what God has to say. 

Ephesians 5:1-5   

Smell has power.   Have you had a moment where a smell brought you back to a certain place or time?   Has a scent ever calmed you or on the other hand, revolted you?    Yet, as powerful as scents are, can they bring you a lasting peace?   Can they give you joy, meaning, fulfillment?  In these words, God tells you.   Yes, one scent can, a scent that only God can give.  

But before we can understand that, you may be thinking, what is all this talk about smells and scents anyway?   Are you saying that God smells, that God even prefers certain scents?  Yes, I am saying that.  Why?  It’s because the Bible tells you that again and again.  Twice a day in the temple, the Israelite priests burned incense up to God.   Today, lots of Christians continue the practice.  More than that, the Bible talks about how pleasing God found the aromas of this incense and of the sacrifices that the priests offered in the temple.    

Now, in all this talk of God smelling things, what is the Bible trying to tell you about God?  Well, think about how smell usually works. 

If you want to smell something, usually you need to get up close, right.  If I’ve put on some cologne, you’ll not be able to smell it far away.   If you do, it means, I really overdid it.   No, if you smell someone it usually means you’ve gotten close to them.  Smell means intimacy.   And in these images of God caught up in smells, that’s what the Bible is telling you.  God gets that intimately involved with you, that up close and personal. 

More than that, smells connect you emotionally in ways other senses don’t.  Look, I see a picture of Publix fried chicken, it doesn’t do anything for me.   But when I smell that chicken, sheesh, that scent brings joy to my heart.   

But forget the fried chicken, smell goes deeper than that.  It’s why a nurse created a special type of blanket for children going through separation anxiety.   She created it so that the children’s mothers could sleep with it, even wear it.  Then when the children get anxious, the blanket comforts them.  Why?  They smell their mothers on it.   But smell doesn’t just have power for children, it has power for their parents.   As a parent, I was stunned by how I enjoyed just smelling my son when I held him in my arms.  That scent carries an emotional power to this day that still moves me.   It’s why parents who have lost a child will often hold on to that child’s clothes just to catch their scent.      

And the Bible is telling you.  God is that intimately engaged with you.  Even the smell of you brings God joy.  But the story doesn’t stop there.   And that’s the problem.  Not everything that God smells, smells good.  Some of it smells really, really bad.

After all, your sense of smell doesn’t only bring you joy.  It alerts you to what is bad.  If something has gone bad in your refrigerator, how do you know?   You smell it.  And if it smells bad, you throw it away.  For the same reason, when you talk about something that’s not right in your life, you use similar imagery.   “That thing didn’t pass the smell test.”  Or “That situation really stinks.”    

In a famous passage from Isaiah 11, the prophet even describes the Messiah as using smell that way. 

A spirit of the Lord shall alight upon him (the Messiah); a spirit of wisdom and understanding, a spirit of counsel and valor, a spirit of knowledge and awe of the Lord; and by his smelling in awe of the Lord, and not by what his eyes see, will he judge, and not by his ears will he decide.   

Now most translators don’t give you that literal a translation, they pretty it up for you.  Most even think that the sentence is a mistake. But that is literally what the prophet says.   By his smelling in awe of the Lord, and not by what his eyes see, will he judge, and not by his ears will he decide. 

And the more I think about that way of judging, the more it makes sense.   When I first walked into the nursing home where my mom is, do you know the first thing that I did?  I took a big whiff.  In 25 years of ministry, I have learned what a bad nursing home smells like.  It smells like human waste.  And over the years, I have caught that scent a lot.   But not until I visited my mom in that home, did it hit me, why I found the smell so offensive.   That smell meant a lot of folks were sitting in their own waste.  People so neglected them that they regularly suffered that indignity.   And that smell meant that more indignities lay beyond that.  It meant that people at their most vulnerable were in that place being neglected, disregarded, even abused.

And that smell God finds even more offensive than me.  That’s what offends God; to see human beings treated that carelessly, that cruelly.    It’s why tomorrow night, 1500 will be gathering in St. David’s Church in Davie to stand up for just such vulnerable people in our church's work with Bold Justice, standing up for those 12 elders who suffered and died right down the street at Hollywood Hills, for hundreds right now in our county trapped in nursing homes that literally stink.   I hope to God you’ll be joining us there.  God needs you there to call our leaders to do the right thing, to help keep those seniors safe.  God is calling you there to protect our kids; our kids, who now fear dying in their school.  And tomorrow night, by God’s grace, our public leaders will answer that call.  

But what offends God, goes beyond that.  It’s goes to what Paul points to here.  When people use human beings as objects to secure their own sexual pleasure, that offends God.   When people place profits over people, that offends God.  When people use words carelessly and cruelly, that offends God.   

And if you’re honest, that means you stink more then you might feel comfortable admitting.   Have you never looked at another human being, and not had some not so lofty thoughts move through your head?   Have you always spent your money on the stuff truly mattered to God or have you spent it to indulge yourself, your appetites, your wants?   And who hasn’t uttered words that we wished that we could take back, words that wounded and hurt? 

Now you can tell yourself.  It’s not so bad.  But is that the truth?   Have you ever done the smell check on yourself and realized that you’ve gotten a little stinky.   But if you don’t deal with that right away, you know what happens?  You get used to it.  It doesn’t smell that bad to you anymore.  But trust me, when others get a whiff, they notice.  And if you’re honest, you notice too.   Maybe that’s why we spend all that money on scents and perfume.  It’s a way to cover up a stench that you and I sense at our very core.         

But when God came in Jesus, something extraordinary happened.   God went right into our stench.  And God in Jesus, took it all on himself.   When Jesus offered up everything on that cross, Paul tells you.   The aroma of a sweet fragrance went up to God.   What does that tell you?      Yes, things exist in your life that stink.  But God says, when I gave up my life for you on that cross, the sweet fragrance of that sacrifice, of that love given for you, it has taken that stench away.    And the more you realize my love, live in that love, the more the fragrance of that love comes to live in you, the more it fills you with beauty and contentment and joy.   And not only do you smell that aroma, more and more so does the world.

In a story, the writer Lauren Winner quotes in her book, Wearing God, she tells of a man who was going home from church one night.   As he sat there on the train, earbuds in his ears, a woman sat next to him.   And after a few moments, she tapped him on the shoulder.   And she said, “You smell like church.  Yes, you smell like church.”   And then as she breathed in the aroma, tears came to her eyes.   She said, “Thank you.  Thank you.   It’s been a long time since I’ve been to church.” 

When the fragrance of Jesus’ love fills you, that’s what it does.  It not only covers what stinks in you.  It starts clearing it away.  It begins filling you with the aroma of Christ, with his love, his grace, his beauty until you become everything that God created you to be, that you yearn to be, until that scent fills every pore.  So, wake up and smell the love, the love given for you, the love that transforms you, the love that transforms this world.