The Smell of Death

 

Odours have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions, or will. The persuasive power of an odour cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally.  There is no remedy for it.  – This was written by the German author Patrick Suskind.

 

The text from the Gospel of John transports us to the realm of smell.

 

One summer, when I was Programme staff at Lutheran Camp Edgewood, I was responsible for teaching campers about nature.  As part of my tool kit, I had items found on the grounds by campers: shed snake skins, a dead cicada bug, fungus, peculiar rocks, and a sizable snapping turtle shell. Campers enjoyed touching the items and hearing stories about them, where they were found, and learning about the habitats and lives of the creatures.

It was the snapping turtle shell that always affected me – it was a fantastic specimen! yet, every time I picked it up- I would smell death. Even though the shell had been cleaned and sun-bleached and the shell no longer smelled. It had an air of death. The summer before I found the dead turtle, on its back, dead, cooking in the sun, rotting, …  and the smell…  there is no remedy for it.

 

This text from the Gospel of John transports us to the realm of smell, particularly drawing our attention to the smell of death.

 

In the first verse Jesus goes to the house of Lazarus and the text reminds us that Lazarus had been raised from the dead.  Remember in that story, as told in the chapter before what we read this morning, Jesus arrived 4 days after the death. Martha tried to dissuade Jesus from opening Lazarus’ tomb – Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.

Despite the warning, the tomb is opened. Peugh!

The writers of the Gospels help readers and hearers by placing the point of the story in the first line; everything following goes back to the highlighted point. Here the point is a serious conversation about death. Jesus is engaging the disciples and followers in a conversation about his upcoming death.

 

The passage has lots of side conversations that can be distracting. Judas poses an ethical question regarding the poor and how one spends their resources in relation to what one gives to the poor. The question itself is one that is a valid and an important dilemma to contemplate. … but maybe not right now.  It’s as if the question is thrown into the story because Judas (and future readers and hearers) are unprepared or unwilling to reflect on the main theme, death; and for Judas’ specifically Jesus’ death.

 

Have you tried to speak to others at church, to friends, loved ones, your children about death? Your own death: what you are afraid of, what you are looking forward to, what you believe, what you want done, how you would like to spend your last days, your medical wishes if you are unable to make them yourself?  So often we avoid theses conversations to move onto something else, saving them for later, a perfect time that will materialize in the future.  We are often like Judas, asking interesting and important, yet distracting questions, to avoid this difficult topic of conversation. There is not a perfect time; death is always in the air.  

 

Death is always in the air -- For you, what is the smell of death?

 

Once again, we are confronted with a Gospel that upends human notions and understanding. We begin in the smell of death and the grave and are overwhelmed with the fragrance of ointment.  Judas tries to change the subject – away from the dead man in the room, who is now alive- but Jesus draws the conversation back to death, Mary bought the ointment so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. The fragrance was said to have filled the whole room, overpowering and saturating all previous smells. Think about moments you have walked through a perfume section of a department store, or been in a place burning incense, the smell lingers in your clothes, in your hair, on your skin, for hours.

 

The thought of the smell of death reminds me of a funeral in my last parish.  The visitation was held at the church on a Saturday afternoon and evening.  The casket was left in the church building for the funeral on Sunday afternoon.  The casket was squeezed into a small sitting room during Sunday service, along with all the floral arrangements.  There was no room for anything else in the room.  During church an older member started to feel light-headed, so went to the little room squeezing in around the casket and flowers, he lay down on the cool leather bench-seat in the room. After church he and I had a conversation about his experience. He said that he was not one bit scared or squeamish laying down beside the casket; that is where he would be any time now. He was happy he had fallen asleep with the perfume of angels and woken to the same glorious smell. Although he did admit that it would have been more than okay to not have woken up on this side of the sod. The fragrance had overwhelmed him and he slept and woke in peace.

 

Ointment - the catalyst to change the perception of death from foul and retched- to being overwhelmed by the presence of God, inundated by promise, hope, and copious grace; so whelmed that you can not rid yourself of it.

 

At the beginning of Lent in 1630, John Donne (dean of St. Paul’s cathedral, London) preached a sermon in Whitehall, with his majesty the King present.  The sermon was titled, Death’s Duel, and was preached just a few days before his own death.  The sermon continually returned to Psalm 68:20:  Our God is a God of salvation and unto God the Lord belong issues of death.

 

The sermon is much longer than modern ears or rear-ends will tolerate, but it is worth a read if you are so inclined. Or perhaps turn to Donne’s poem, Death Be Not Proud. In both, Donne flips the concept of death, from deadly and fearful to live-giving.

 

Donne talks about human existence on earth as a pilgrimage of death; our whole life is a pilgrimage of death. He writes, Birth dies in infancy, and our infancy dies in youth, and youth and the rest die in age, and age dies and determines all. He encourages listeners to reflect that all of life is

From death, in death, by death. Consider that any personal improvement, learning, moving forward; all change requires death; the death of whatever you were the moment before this present moment. In this way death is a gift, a constant companion that allows us to move on, have hope, seek promise, embrace the next moment. God doesn’t deliver us from dying, deliverance comes by death; for Death thinks that in dying one is finished, only to find that in the next breath death has delivered a being to eternity, free from the body, released to life.

 

Donne also encouraged reflection on the thought to look at death as:

Not when or if I die, but when the course of nature is accomplished upon me.  To consider death as an accomplishment of the course of nature is to embrace death as WHOLENESS.

 

Donne reminds listeners that in the last hours of pilgrimage Jesus -God- (the Lord that was God – could die, would die, must die) was about sacramental practices: washing feet and eating together; mixed with a night of prayer, preaching, and reciting psalms.

And is this not the ointment – the smell of death – in the house of Lazarus and Mary?

Sacramental practices: washing feet and eating together; talking seriously with each other on topics that really matter, and later as night drew nigh, praying and reciting psalms.

 

As we approach Holy Week, let us not neglect this opportunity to transform notions of death, to have conversations about death – the rotten smell (the things we are afraid to bring up) and to be overwhelmed by the smell of ointment -God’s presence and grace.

 

May this be so for all of us. Amen.