THE AROMA OF CHRIST

Saturday, March 28, 2009

My post today is a communion meditation by Sherry Rankin--Highland Church of Christ, Abilene, Texas. It is longer than my usual post but I hope you read it all. Her thoughts are worth your time.

They tell us that the sense of smell is the sense most connected to memory, and I believe that. My grandmother has been gone for 25 years, but the smell of Ivory soap transports me back to her tiny, neat bathroom. Just a whiff, and I’m 7 years old again, taking a bath in the deep, porcelain tub, drying off with the towels that were stiff and scratchy from being dried on the line.

The smell of coffee and bacon instantly transports me onto the hide-a-bed in grandma’s living room. I can hear her bustling in the kitchen, making a breakfast for my grandfather before he would go to work, long before daylight, at the gas station down the road.

Many smells are associated for me with specific memories:

The chalky smell of rain after a long dry spell takes me back to the back porch of the house in Wyoming where we lived till I was eight years old.

The odor of Johnson’s baby shampoo, and I am rocking my daughter late at night, holding her head against my chin.

Pine trees, and it’s Christmas time. Wood smoke, and I’m camping. The smell of the ocean at night, or of sawdust in a workshop; freshly washed sheets; hay in a barn; my husband’s favorite cologne; someone smoking a rosewood pipe; laundry starch; lavender and rosewater; the lemon polish used on the dark wood of the church pews where my father preached. Even the distant odor of a skunk. All of these smells come packaged with a specific and wonderful memory.

But then there are the bad smells, and the bad memories.

The reek of mildew, and I’m back at work cleaning dormitory bathrooms in the July heat of Arkansas.

The smell of pimento cheese spread immediately reminds me of an unfortunate morning sickness incident over 20 years ago.

And the smell of a certain brand of disinfectant takes me back to the hospital room where my father died.

Smells are so powerful because they contain within them a story; a memory. A whole event, complete with the emotions, good or bad, that went with it.

So what does it mean for us to be “the aroma of Christ”? Who is smelling us, and what memories will that smell encompass? When someone remembers you, what will their association be? As we’ve all heard and known: Actions, like odors, speak louder than words. If we say one thing but do another, it is our actions, not our words, that will leave a stink in other people’s nostrils.

St. Francis of Assisi once said, “Preach the Gospel at all times; only if necessary use words.”

We preach without speaking. We leave an aroma everywhere we go. Let it be the aroma of Christ, poured out upon the feet of others to the eternal glory of God.