The Aroma of Christ (Holy Week)
Reading: Mark 14.1 - 15.47; Is 50; Phil 2You can now get sniffer dogs for dry rot! Dogs have remarkably sensitive noses and can be trained in so many different and useful ways. For many animals, the sense of smell is vital. Over the course of evolution, as humans we have modified its importance. But it is still a crucial sense. I can still ‘remember’ the smell of my mother (and how do you do that?) I know what most of my friends smell like.
Of course it can be deceptive. Jacob deceived his father Isaac by wearing Esau’s clothes:
Gen 27.27 So he came near and kissed him; and he smelled the smell of his garments, and blessed him, and said, "Ah, the smell of my son is like the smell of a field that the LORD has blessed.”
For many of us, smell is a part of the worship life of the church. When we come to Prayers on Monday morning, the church is still full of the rich, heavy smell of incense: the smell of God. The people of Israel were given instructions on how to make incense and also forbidden from making it to use at home (Ex 30.34-38). It was to be a fragrance that was uniquely associated with the people of God at worship:
“The LORD said to Moses: Take sweet spices, stacte, and onycha, and galbanum, sweet spices with pure frankincense (an equal part of each), and make an incense blended as by the perfumer, seasoned with salt, pure and holy; and you shall beat some of it into powder, and put part of it before the covenant in the tent of meeting where I shall meet with you; it shall be for you most holy. When you make incense according to this composition, you shall not make it for yourselves; it shall be regarded by you as holy to the LORD. Whoever makes any like it to use as perfume shall be cut off from the people.”The passion narratives which we read this week are full of the smell of God made Man: the divine smells of ‘the Anointed One’; the salvific smells of the bitter herbs, the wine and the bread of the Last Supper, the Passover; the Garden where now, full circle, Adam’s sin was coming to fruition in the second Adam as he sweats beads of blood in his anguish; the myrrh & vinegar of the cross; the human smells of sweat and blood, of torches and fear, of mobs and bloodlust, of urine and all the vileness of ritual torture and execution.
Mark positions the story of the expensive ointment at the beginning of his passion narrative - the variations found in the other Gospels reflect either that there were other women who made similar anointings (Mary Magdalene didn’t come into the picture till a 4th century tradition), or that the Gospel writers were quite imaginative in their interpretations of the one event.
In Mark this story is used as a summary of the Gospel which is why it will be universally recounted. As Jesus foretold, the Woman is remembered by millions of Christians around the world whenever the Gospel is read; as she has been remembered today.
The anointing is a prophetic action which prepares the body of Jesus for burial - there can be no anointing after death (Mark 16.1) - although the women try - for God will have raised him.
It is above all, a ’beautiful thing’ (14.6) which demonstrates love lavished on the Beloved, to borrow language from the Song of Songs which is also heavy with this passionate and erotic language of fragrance.
In this 1st century context, the woman has gate-crashed a men-only party and the barely suppressed eroticism of the act of anointing makes the onlookers feel uncomfortable. They want to be critical of the woman and of Christ. You can see why the early church, aware of the sensuality of this gesture, were predisposed to attribute it to Mary Magdalene - a woman with a past.
Of course there were cultural precedents for what the woman did. Rather like those scented freshen-up cloths you get given on aeroplanes, it was customary for wealthy hosts to pour sweet oil on the hair of guests. But not this amount nor of this quality (a year’s wages).
When I was at Lancing College in the 1970s, as I showed people round the magnificent Chapel, still then being built - and still being built today after 130 years - many would admire it but tell me it was a terrible waste of money; money that could go to the starving. But the Judaeo-Christian tradition has always shunned that either/or mentality, for it has recognised the deeper truth.
Being extravagant in what we spend on God, if it springs from love and deep devotion, will make us generous to the poor and needy. In contrast, those who are niggardly in their worship of God, bound by laws and a spirit of legalism, are usually ungenerous in their judgements and stingy with their possessions.
Mark, who was obviously in a Johannine rather than a synoptic mood when he wrote this, is anxious to bring out the cultural and mystical symbolism of the event, which is perhaps why he places it here at the beginning of the passion.
He and his readers are well aware that kings are anointed. Jesus the King rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday (Mk 11); he will be crucified as ‘King of the Jews’ (15.26) and challenged by the high priest - “are you the Messiah?” - the Anointed One. (14.61)
Now at this time it was not the custom to wash your hair daily – or, for that matter, very often at all. So the fragrance of this almost outrageous anointing must have been heavy upon our Lord throughout the coming days of trial and death.
The disciples lying in the upper room at the Last Supper would have smelled it; the soldiers and the high priests would have smelled it; Pilate would have noticed it.
The anointed king of glory was moving towards the offering up of himself - a fragrant sacrifice to the Lord.
Jesus had set his face like a flint (Is.50.7) to follow through his path of suffering, so that he might be ‘highly exalted’ (Phil 2.9) and bring us with him to glory.
We who live on the other side of the cross and the empty tomb can see how, in the words of Morna Hooker, “this woman’s action epitomizes Jesus’ death and resurrection, proclaims his status as king, and challenges others to share her devotion to him.”
Let this woman be an encouragement to us to be unembarrassed in our devotion to Christ, knowing that through our actions of love, we can point others to his saving work and joyful service.
Perhaps Paul had this incident in mind when he wrote:
“But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?” (2 Corinthians 2.14-16)
