Day 36 - Anointing the World

Reading:John 12:1-11

We continue to meditate this week on aspects of our discipleship in relationship to the environment, and we find ourselves in the Gospel of John, peering into the story of Mary anointing Jesus’ feet with perfume.

Scientists say that the sense tied most closely to the human memory is our sense of smell. Have you ever gone through the day and caught a whiff of a smell – good or foul – that instantaneously takes you back to a moment from your childhood? This happens often to me with smells like evergreen, ripe raspberries, manure…, and musty churches.

Our feelings about and reactions to the world around us are often shaped by the smell that hits our nostrils.

People trying to sell homes are told to bake bread and roast fresh coffee before show houses. We cower and cover our noses when going through areas with sulphur and paint fumes.

And in the story for today, we find the sweet, pungent scent of perfume filling the whole house where Jesus is. Picture peoples’ attention piquing, as their noses catch the scent of anointing, and the memory of that smell is emblazoned in their minds. It is the smell of sacrifice, and it is sweet, but also strong and very costly.

What other scents come to your mind when you meditate on sacrifice? Perhaps, the insidious scent that wafts from paper mills, which most of us just catch a whiff of, as we drive by, but which others must live with every day in their jobs and homes so that we can be unthinking in our daily use of reams of paper.

Perhaps, the sewage smell of polluted water, which means people must sacrifice a safe space to swim and bathe, and animals must lose their homes and sustenance.

Perhaps, in a positive light, sacrifice smells like a backyard compost heap, that may not look beautiful but provides an alternative for dumping countless pounds of waste into landfills.

Perhaps, it smells like the clean, sweet air the results when fewer fossil fuel emissions are pumped into the atmosphere, even if that means fewer people can drive cars or run 24-hour air-con.

Perhaps, sacrifice smells like perfume from the flowers that grow from the fertilizer from the compost pile, perfume that anoints a broken world.

As you prepare for the healing and anointing service tonight, think about how God might be enabling you to share your anointing with the environment around you.

How might your faith be a blessing to the air we all breathe?

Putting Faith into Action:

Write down three specific sacrifices that you will make to ensure that the air we all breathe is clean and life-giving. Then, follow through on them, even if it is costly.

Go for a walk in nature, simply breathing deeply in and out. Do the same in the middle of the city, breathing deeply in and out. Pray through these breaths, asking God how Christ might desire you to share His anointing with the world.