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One of my earliest memories is from when I was likely about four years old. We had gone to New Orleans to see Dad’s older sister and her family who lived there. One morning while we were there, as my cousins headed out to catch the bus for school, I remember standing in the doorway watching them go as the fresh scent of fog and mist hung in the morning air. Now every time I step outside into a foggy/misty morning,I am trans-ported back 40+ years, standing in that same doorway in New Orleans, watching my cousins get on that bus.

Smell is a powerful trigger for our memories. According to the Scientific American, it is due to fact that it “has a direct, privileged pathway to the brain's emotional and memory centers.” Think about that for a moment: a lingering scent can transport us back to in time to specific moments in our life.

If you have ever cooked bacon, sat around a campfire, been in a smokey bar, passed a dead skunk, or even walked past Bath and Body Works, you know that those scents linger for a while. They don’t just dissipate, but instead they get into your clothes, your skin, your hair.

In all four of the Gospels we find the story of the woman (maybe Mary the sister of Lazarus, maybe anotherwoman, it just depends on which Gospel you’re reading) who came and anointed Jesus with costly perfume. And she didn’t use just a few dabs to anoint him either. No, no, no. She emptied an entire jar of the stuff on to him (in one account it is his feet that are anointed, in another it is poured over his head). By doing this she filled the entire house with the smell of this perfume. Apparently, this act was also the final straw for Judas and soon after he started looking for a way to betray Jesus.

A couple of days later, Jesus celebrated the Passover with his disciples, and afterward he was betrayed by Judas, arrested, tried, tortured, and crucified.

But I wonder: did the scent of that perfume still linger on his skin? in his hair? Did the disciple whom Jesus loved smell it as he leaned against him during the meal? Could they smell it as he knelt to wash their feet?

Was it there - wafting along on the breeze - as Jesus prayed in the garden? Did Judas catch a whiff of it as he betrayed him with a kiss, causing his anger to flash hot once again? Did the soldiers who beat and taunted and tortured him catch the scent as they practiced their cruelty? Did Pilate smell it as he questioned Jesus and sentenced him to death? 

And did Jesus himself catch a whiff as he hung on the cross, and did it comfort him, remind him of his friends, and strengthen him to finish what he had started? Did it still linger, mixed with the smell of blood and sweat, as Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea took his body from the cross and placed it in the tomb? Did Jesus’s friends remember Him not only when they broke the bread and drank the wine, but every time they smelled that perfume?

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 2:15-16 that:

Our lives are a Christ-like fragrance rising up to God. But this fragrance is perceived differently by those who are being saved and by those who are perishing. To those who are perishing, we are a dreadful smell of death and doom. But to those who are being saved, we are a life-giving perfume.

May the scent of Christ living in and working through us linger for others even after we have left them.

Grace & Peace y’all.

Pastor Blake