Do You Smell Something?
12/11/22
Do you smell something? We ask that when an odor pleasant or not strikes our nose. The churches in North Zulch and Louisiana are smaller buildings. After Communion was celebrated. the scent of sweet wine hung in the air testifying that the Blood of Christ had been here. Christmas definitely has it’s own odors. I think pine boughs. I definitely smell something on this the Third Sunday of Advent.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, says Juliet to Romeo in defense of the fact that even if Romeo is from her family’s rival house he is still sweet to her. Do you smell a rose today? The historical name of this Sunday is Gaudete from the first Word of the Latin Introit: “Rejoice in the Lord…” The 8th century Collect reflects the theme of the day: “Lighten the darkness of our hearts by Thy gracious visitation.” Do you smell joy today or something else?
Do you smell that? I think the pink candle we lit today has a different fragrance then the 3 purple ones. It’s the smell of joy. Today the purple of penitence is lightened to rose colored. This has historically also been known as Rose Sunday. In Bible class I recently ranted on the modern church switching from the purple of penitence to the blue of hope in Advent. I remarked that maybe the ecclesiastical arts people were behind it to sell more paraments. I wouldn’t want to switch to blue paraments, but I could get rose colored ones. They’re used here and the 4th Sunday of Lent, Laetare. Which is ‘rejoice” from a Hebrew psalm. The difference in these words makes me think they should be switched with each other: “Gaudete means expressed or exuberant joy. Laetare means internal joy, a joy of anticipation felt…” (Noonan, The Church Visible, 209). The bulletin art today accurately pictures the mood of John the Baptist. No expressed joy there, but there could be anticipatory joy.
But why on this Sunday’s respite from penitence with the call to rejoice do we have this text where Big Bad John doesn’t look very big or very bad. Unlike Jimmy Dean’s John he is not rescuing miners from a would be grave. He’s scrambling for safety. His doubts are on par with Peter’s denial; Paul’s persecution; Judas’ betrayal. No matter what you call it giving up on Jesus smells the same. And I smell fear here, don’t you? There’s a definite difference in the smell of sweat produced by exercise or heat and that produced by fear. The latter stinks. So again I ask: why this text about fear and denial on a Sunday called Rejoice where we’re called to put off the purple of penitence for the rose of joy?
I’ll tell you why because of the stench of the Devil. Luther said that you could always tell when the Devil was prowling about because the odor of guilt was present. Surely doubting God and His promises has some relationship to guilt. Shakespeare said, “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win” (“Measure for Measure”, I, IV). That’s heavy but no more heavy than Jesus makes John’s doubting: He sends John’s disciple’s back to Him with the warning: “Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of Me." Literally, that is “who doesn’t find Me a death trap.” The 16th century Council of Trent said "'a believer's assurance of pardon of his sins is a vain and ungodly confidence.'" The 17th century Cardinal Bellarmine calls being sure of your salvation "'a prime error of heretics'" (6000 Illust., 33). That’s the Monster of Uncertainty Luther warned about in the Catholic system of penance where your forgiveness is tied to doing penance rightly. Luther also pondered, “’What is more like losing salvation or damnation, than uncertainty’” (in Walther, True Visible Church, 118)?
Look how the stink of guilt wafts up whenever doubts are exposed. Peter doubts Jesus knows where the fish are and can give him a catch in Luke 5. When it happens Peter falls at Jesus’ knees begging the Lord to depart form him because he’s a sinner. Jesus’ persistent asking if Peter loves him, after his wholesale denial on Maundy Thursday, makes Peter confess the Lord is the only one that really knows. Thomas stood firm against the testimony of 10 apostles refusing to believe Jesus had risen. Now doubt forever stains him, taints him, dirties him. We can’t hardly say the name Thomas without putting “doubting” before it. Doubt is so connected to guilt it’s either guilt’s daughter or sister.
Do you smell that? I smell a wet, dank, decaying odor from the prison where John is. The text emphasizes that John is in chains. The word for prison is a Greek word that rather than the one emphasizing guards or watching, this one emphasizes the chains (Vine, 488). The Greek translates this way, “When John heard while in chains what Christ was doing” (Dana-Mantey, 105). John preached that judgment was very near. The ax lay (present tense) at the root of the trees. The chaff was near to being burned. But Jesus came and no judgment fell. Not only that, read Luke 4. Jesus says there that He has come to fulfill the messianic prophesy He had just read to His hometown synagogue. The last line of that prophesy Jesus read is “To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” The very next line in Isaiah 61:2 is, “and the day of vengeance of our God.” But Jesus doesn’t read that part; John certainly preached it. Jesus Himself contrasted His eating and drinking to John not doing so. We know that John is in chains for calling King Herod’s marriage adultery. And not before John is chained, not while he’s chained, not after he’s beheaded do we read of Jesus preaching against Herod’s adultery.
Put yourself in John’s chains. Matthew 14:3 says, “Herod had arrested John and bound him and put him in prison because of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife.” From bread and water and the stench of prison, you read of Jesus eating and drinking, healing, and going to weddings. Don’t you smell doubt, despair, guilt? But there’s something else in the air to0. Do you smell that? It’s a rose. Jesus takes the disciples who came to him bearing the doubts of John and rubs their faces in the Rose of Sharon.
Here we come to a historic thing, that generations of Lutherans have been taught over centuries, but modern scholarship seeks to correct. They would open the room. Get some fresh air in here. Dissipate the odor of the Rose of Sharon. Historically Song of Solomon 2:1 has been translated: “I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.” Notice the definite article with both rose and lily. Now some translations and most notes have “more likely crocus, daffodil, lotus”(EHV). Another source says, “most likely tulip” (ISBE, II, 323). We’re going from a smell we all know to one few do. True, translations of popular hymns have always varied referring this rose to Christ, to Mary, or even the Church (Mitchell, 666). But the latest LCMS commentator on this passage says, “Longstanding among Lutherans” is that Solomon is speaking of Christ as the Rose of Sharon (Ibid., 690).
From the smell of doubt wafting up from the moldering prison, Jesus redirects the Messengers of Doubt about Him being the Coming One, AKA, the Messiah, to Himself. Jesus does what the prophesied Messiah was predicted to do. "Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.” Hear that last one? That right there should smell of the evergreen of Christmas and the lily of Easter. It’s literally, “the poor are evangelized” or “have the good news declared to them.” This should blow your mind: this is the only time Matthew’s Gospel uses the word euangeliz?. Coming at the end means the healings and the raising of the dead are about the Gospel too. The Gospel is the Good News that Christ the Messiah won our victory by being born under the Law to keep it place of us sinners who can only break it, and that rather than us go to crucifixion, death, hell, rather than us know a lifetime of suffering to pay for our sins, and still go eternally to hell, Jesus the Messiah went in our place. Hear that sizzle? Smell that smoke? That’s hell’s fires being doused in Jesus’ name for you.
Tell me, you can smell that? In the days of mimeographing, if you wanted to emphasize something you had to use more ink. Mimeograph ink has a odor: distinct, pungent, sweet. Well on the word “ME” in Jesus’ final words to John’s messenger’s of doubt, you should be able to smell the ink real strong. See how dark colored it is compared to the rest of the text. “Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of ME." Jesus declares the person blest who doesn’t fall way, doesn’t get trapped “in ME”. What does that mean? It means this: Because Jesus doesn’t heal on demand, don’t miss the fact that He has saved you for life everlasting. Because He doesn’t deliver you speedily from every painful, stinking situation you find yourself in, don’t forget to stop and smell the Rose that sends away from you your sins as far as east is from west. Because He doesn’t give us all the love, understanding, friendship, we want, don’t miss the fact that He gave up His Body and shed His Blood on a cross so He could body and blood you not only to Himself but to all the company of heaven.
Here is a sermon by a Lutheran pastor in 1906 when pastors still preached on the Song of Solomon. I checked 8 different pericope systems used by Lutherans over the last 500 years. None of them had an appointed reading from the Song of Solomon. So when you hear this you should smell a breath of fresh air: “’Here is the remedy for the guilt of your soul. Here is the cosmetic which drives away the odor of sin. When your hands are soiled with the juice of the jimson [stinkweed] they give a repulsive odor, but wash them in rosewater and their savor become sweet….[Sinners] are repulsive unto the God of holiness. But sprinkled with the perfume of the sacrifice made on Calvary they become a sweet savor….He that made this sacrifice says, ‘I am the rose of Sharon’…Let your soul delight itself with the fragrance of this Rose of Sharon, and this Rose will impart its savor unto you and will make you lovely unto God and the angels’” (Ibid., 692).
Phantosmia is the condition of smelling something no one else can. That’s us: We exhale sin, death, and devil, and inhale the fragrance of forgiveness, life, and salvation emitted from the crushed, that is crucified, Rose of Sharon. Amen
Rev. Paul R. Harris
Trinity Lutheran Church, Austin, Texas
Third Sunday in Advent (20221211); Matthew 11:2-11
