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I wonder if God has a favorite scented candle. Scripture is clear that God has a good nose, or at least that certain things are pleasing to God through God’s nose. Well, it doesn’t say it that way, but if an aroma is pleasing to God, then God must have a nose, right? We hear about God’s nostrils, which flare in anger, and God’s “slowness to anger” literally translates to “long of nose”. Apparently the longer your nose, the longer your fuse. But it never actually says God has a nose. And if not, that’s a shame.
Sometimes I have been teased because I regularly burn candles in my office. I like the scent, but I also like the presence of the flame. Lately I have been very grateful for scented candles at home. A rodent got into the air ducts under the Rectory and died. For the week it took to figure out what had died and where it was, we hand candles going almost constantly. This week the vents are all being professionally cleaned and sanitized. Those aromas from the candles were life savers, at least partially masking the stink of death.
The smell of burning flesh is probably God’s favorite candle scent. That’s the odor that we hear is pleasing to God (nose or no nose). Rotting flesh and burning flesh are very different. If a dead rat smelled like smoked brisket, I may never have worried about finding it. The aroma of burnt sacrifice is pleasing to God, though. Not just the odor, not just the rising smoke itself, but what it represents. God’s children who have made a sacrifice. The sacrifice is pleasing to God.
Jesus did away with burnt sacrifices, essentially becoming THE sacrifice of all time for all people. The Letter to the Ephesians says that Christ’s death was a fragrant offering. Paul tells the Corinthians that we are the “aroma of Christ” to God. Somehow there is a shift in the smell, the odor of sacrificial burning flesh before God’s altars to the aroma, not of death, but the death of death. The sacrifice of Christ released and continues to release the aroma of the truth of the faithfulness that leads from life to life. Quite the turnaround, too. So, what does that smell like? What does it mean for us to bear an aroma that God finds pleasing?
I’m not entirely sure we can describe it succinctly, but I think I know what it’s not. It won’t be the fragrances of our soaps, perfumes, colognes, or even the foods we cook. It is some sort of aroma that only God can “smell,” although I think we can “see” it in other ways. It is what wafts up from a life that is lived in the light of the resurrection. Maybe it’s like the smell we have when we come in from working in the cold; it’s not sweat, per se but it’s an odor that is unique to cold weather exertion. I think kingdom work must come with its own smell from God’s perspective.
The living sacrifice our eucharistic prayers speaks of is the life we live in recognition that we will never die. When we acknowledge that truth of the faith it opens us up to love with abandon. It inspires us to bring life to those who are experience some kind of death now; to help bring release to those imprisoned in different forms of hell now. It allows us to open our hands, our hearts, our minds, and our pockets to not only see those in need around us, but to serve them, sharing out of our abundance. And, as this whole season around our Annual Campaign has reminded us, a life of living sacrifice is a life of joy – the joy that only comes with knowing we are alive and will live forever because Jesus lives.
I don’t know if we can put all of that into a candle that would be meaningful if we saw it on the shelf at the store, but I don’t think we have to. We just live the life of sacrifice, knowing that whatever it smells like, it is pleasing to God.
