Gracious and loving God, may only your Truth
be spoken and only your Truth be heard ☩ in the name of the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
I bet that right now, you can think of certain smells and immediately be transported somewhere else. More than any other sense, smell can take over our brain and conjure up memories and associations. Just a whiff of perfume or cologne can remind us of grandparents who died decades ago. For me, the smell of diesel fuel takes me to the Dominican Republic and certain foods are almost like a time machine that bring me to previous meals. I’m sure you all have some of those smell-based associations.
In
today’s text from Ephesians, the love of Jesus is described as a “fragrant
offering.” The love of Jesus is made most fully known to us on the Cross where
he gave himself up as a sacrifice as a fragrant offering. His Passion conjures
up God’s grace, mercy, and peace in our souls. The Cross has the sweet smell of
our salvation, and it reminds us that in Christ, all shall be well. Spend some
time this week close enough to Jesus so that you can smell him. Whether it’s in
front of an icon of Jesus, in the pages of Scripture, in the words of prayer,
or in silent meditation – get close to Jesus and smell that sweet aroma of God’s
grace.
Now,
when we find something that smells good, we like to use it. That makes sense.
Fresh flowers not only look beautiful, but they smell wonderful, and so we use
them to adorn our churches and homes, and when someone is ill or in grief, we
send them flowers – and that sweet smell reminds them that they are not alone,
that they are loved. We burn candles and use essential oils to perfume our
homes. When we burn incense, we surround ourselves with the smells of the
holiness of heaven. And when we find pleasant smells in nature, whether the
delicate smell of roses or the rugged odor of cedar, we use it to adorn
ourselves and make ourselves smell good. In that same way, the fragrant love of
Christ is to rub off on us.
We
heard, “Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children and live in love.” Be
imitators of God. Certainly, this is a tall task, yet it is ours in faith. And
this imitation is possible not because we are such great people who are full of
wisdom and discipline, but rather because of what we have read the past few
weeks in Ephesians. In Jesus, God has adopted us, making us a part of the one
Body of Christ, and bestowing upon us the inheritance of the Holy Spirit. The Holy
Spirit in us as the Body of Christ is what enables us to be imitators of God.
And
children really is the correct metaphor here. While sometimes parents do a lot
of unintentional damage by trying to live the glory days that they never had
vicariously through their children; parenting, at its best, is about teaching
our children to follow after us in the ways of God. We want our children to be
kind and generous people, and so we must be kind and generous. Studies have shown
us what we all intuitively know to be true – if you want your children to value
reading, the way to do that isn’t to buy them books or talking about the
importance of reading, it is to have your children see you actually reading.
And the same goes for prayer and service to others. Children will imitate what
they see, which is why the examples that we give our children, and not just the
children in our households, but all of the children in our society, are so
important.
That
we might have a clear example to follow, out of great mercy and love for us,
the Son of God took on human flesh and walked among us, showing us this way of
love, giving us an example to imitate. Hence, Ephesians encourages us to put
away falsehoods and speak the truth – well, Jesus tells us that he is the truth,
and so we imitate that truth. We are cautioned against dwelling in anger, an
example we see when Jesus, who, in the midst of excruciating crucifixion says, “Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
To
be very clear, Jesus Christ is not primarily our moral exemplar, he is
primarily the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Following Jesus is
not about seeing what we are supposed to do for God, rather it is about seeing
what God has done for us. And a part of what God has done for us is to open to
us his Resurrection life, forged with his very body and blood. Jesus has opened
to us the way of abundant life. So, when I say that Jesus gives us an example
to follow, it is not at all that we are earning our salvation or avoiding
punishment by following him. Instead, imitating Jesus is about walking with him
in the fullness of his Resurrection life.
The
problem comes when we decide to go our own way. “Be an Original” might be an
okay marketing slogan for Rowan County, but it’s terrible advice when it comes to
faith. Our culture fetishizes individualism and customization. Imitation is often
dismissed as being fake and inauthentic. The exception of course is when we
imitate influencers or celebrities, which really are not good examples to follow.
But we’ve convinced ourselves that we can figure out how to do religion on our
own. We are a part of a 3,000 year old faith tradition, and yet so many Christians
have deluded themselves into thinking that they can just figure this out on
their own. Instead of imitating faith, they’re making it up. And this is why
Christianity in our society has become such a dirty word, as what is imitated
is not God, but rather our power-hungry, greed, narcissistic, and individualistic
society. Gandhi is reported to have said, “I like your Christ, but I do not
like your Christians; your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
Think
of playing a game – how about baseball? Imagine teaching a child to play
baseball and after the initial lesson, they decide that they much prefer the
game if they don’t have to hit the ball with the bat, but rather just throw the
ball wherever they wish they could hit it. And then what if they decided that instead
of throwing the ball to the base to get a runner out that they’d rather just
throw the ball at the runner. Well, that’s dodgeball, not baseball. But the best
baseball players are those who are students of the game, who have studied the greats
and imitate them. The same is true in faith – this is why we lift up certain
people as saints, as they show us what it looks like to be imitators of Jesus
in the world. This is why it is imperative that we spend time with Jesus. It’s awfully
hard to imitate someone that you barely know.
And when we fall
short in imitating Christ, we need a community of faith to call us back to him.
I recently heard someone say that they know several people who have changed
churches because of their political views, but they can’t think of a single
person who has changed their political position because of their faith. It begs
the question of who and what we are imitating.
The
primary way that Ephesians gives us to imitate Christ is in love, citing Jesus’
sacrifice for us. Writing centuries ago, St. Jerome said, “Who is it that truly
walks in love? The one who, for the salvation of others, contends against sin
to the point of shedding blood, so as even to give up his soul for them. That
is the one who walks in love, imitating Christ.” In other words, imitating
Christ costs us something. If you’ve been told that following Jesus is about being
a better version of you or having a better life, I’m sorry to tell you that you’ve
been misled. Love costs us something, just as the love of Jesus cost him
something. Most of us will not be called to martyrdom, but we are asked to give
10% of our income to the church and charity, we are expected to turn the other
cheek when someone slaps us, we are told to forgive our enemies, we are to do
things that make us uncomfortable for the good of others, we are to seek the
truth: come whence it may, cost what it will, lead where it might.
Now,
I’m not so delusional as to think that imitating Jesus is easy. I’m
incentivized with fancy vestments and good paychecks, and it’s still a
challenge for me to take up the cross and follow Christ. But you all aren’t
paid to be here, and so hats off to you – that’s more than I can say for myself.
I can tell you though that imitating Jesus is a lot easier if you have the
right tools. And the best one that I can offer you is regular participation in the
Holy Eucharist. In John, we heard Jesus say, “I am the bread of life. Whoever
comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be
thirsty.”
The
Holy Eucharist has been called the “source and summit of our faith.” Our faith
is summed up in the Eucharist and our faith finds its fulfillment in the
Eucharist. One spiritual writer has said, “the frequent receiving of the
Eucharist is the most effective way of growing in grace.” Or, in the language
of Ephesians – the Eucharist is how we best learn to imitate Christ. It is
where we are made present to his Death and Resurrection, it is where we offer
our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving in response to his own, it is where we
come together across differences: conservative and liberal, young and old, black
and white, male and female, even the living to the dead. The Eucharist is where
we come and see the fragrant offering of God’s love for us and receive his body
into our very own.
Now,
I mean this as no disrespect to other denominations that do things differently
than we do. I recall having a Sunday off and going to a different church for
Sunday worship and at the end of the service, one of the servers took the candle
lighting taper, lit it from one of the lit candles upfront, extinguished all of
the candles, and then walked down the center aisle with the lit taper. This
happened to be a congregation in the tradition that my wife grew up in, so I
asked her what that was all about. She said, “It’s a symbol for the light of
Christ going out in the world.” “Oh,” I said, rather underwhelmed. It’s not
that I don’t appreciate that image – it’s just rather weak, as the people have
no role in that. Plus, as soon as the taper gets to the front door, it gets
blown out – not the best symbolism there.
But
Jesus has given us something grander to imitate – he’s given us the Eucharist.
We don’t need to walk a candle down the center aisle to symbolize the light of
Christ going out into the world because you are going out into the world. We
come to the altar, stretching out our needy hands, and are given the Body of
Christ which we then consume and carry with us out into the world. In a very
real sense, we become a tabernacle, a holy vessel that carries Christ’s body
and blood out in the world. The Eucharist helps us to be imitators of God, not
only because it sets forth before us the story of our faith, but because it
puts that story into our very bodies.
The Eucharist is the prescription that we need. We are hungry for love, for forgiveness, for meaning, for peace and this is what God graciously gives us in this sacred meal. We are dying of thirst in a culture that drains us. Jesus tells us that in him, we will never be hungry and we shall never thirst. In being nourished by God in the Eucharist, we come and see the fragrant offering of Jesus’ love. May that sweet smell of salvation fill our senses and go with us into the world as imitators of Christ.
