A Fragrant Offering and Sacrifice to God - January 4
Today’s Readings: AM Psalm 85, 87; PM Psalm 136; Joshua 3:14—4:7; Eph. 5:1-20; John 9:1-12,35-38
Today’s Reflection
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. –Ephesians 5: 1-2
In each service of Holy Eucharist, we have a transitional time after the Liturgy of the Word as we move into the Liturgy of the Table. We exchange the Peace of Christ with one another and then we take a moment to share words of welcome and announcements about happenings in the life of our church. At the end of this interlude, the Celebrant signals the beginning of the next part of the service, the Liturgy of the Table, by saying what is called an Offertory Sentence. The Book of Common Prayer gives us several options, but I always say this one: “Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
Now the Prayer Book uses a slightly different version of this sentence, leaving out the word “fragrant.” But I always reinsert “fragrant” as this stays truer to the Scripture, as this Offertory Sentence is a direct quote from Ephesians 5, verse 2. Why is it important to keep the “fragrant” in the line “a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God?” For one, keeping “fragrant” in the sentence reminds us of the embodied nature of Christ’s sacrifice. Jesus lived a human life, a life fully enfleshed as a person who experienced the world through all the senses: sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. Oftentimes, because much of what we know of Jesus comes through Holy Scripture, we think of the words we have heard that Jesus said or the words that others said about him or in response to him—or words that we sing or hear others sing about him. We also think of Jesus as artists have portrayed him through the years, how they have imaginatively depicted his image in paintings and stained glass and sculptures that we can see with our eyes.
But what of the other senses? Here’s where scent and the fragrant offering and sacrifice may more fully develop our understanding of and experience of Jesus. For one, think about the fact that the God who created the Universe lived and died as one of us—with all the bodily fragrances all the rest of us experience and create. As a baby, I imagine that Jesus emitted the sweet baby scent that we all love to experience when we nuzzle a small baby close to us—but also all the icky scents we take in when caring for babies whose bodies are getting used to processing milk and food for the first time. Or as a grown man, walking along hot, dusty roads in the ancient Middle East, I imagine that Jesus’ scent was as pungent and sweaty at times as anyone else’s! We may also think of the scents of the end of his life as his body hung on the cross, and as it was carried to the tomb. The women came to the tomb with strong scented spices to prepare his body for burial—only to find it missing.
Walking in our shoes by living a fully human life put Jesus in touch with a life with all the sights, sounds, tastes, feelings, and scents of humanity—both by experiencing other people through his senses as well as allowing others to experience him through theirs. While Paul may have had in mind the fragrances of Temple sacrifice as he used this phrase in his letter to the Ephesians, the life of Jesus points us to him being “a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” in these other senses of the word, too.
The other thing to notice is the difference between the translation used in the BCP’s version of the offertory sentence “walk in love” versus what we read today in Ephesians 5, “live in love.” Our Paul’s Letters Bible study group has had multiple discussions of what it means to “walk in love” or “live in love.” Walking is perhaps a more evocative image—we can picture how a person might walk in a certain way, where a person might walk, who they would walk with, etc. And we can picture all the stories from Scripture of Jesus walking along the way, walking from one town to the next, walking with his friends, walking on water, walking surrounded by the throngs of people, walking toward Jerusalem. Walk in love is a more vivid turn of phrase but live in love is more spacious language—live in love encompasses all the activities we engage in, as we lean into the lives and calls God has given to each one of us.
So go, walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God!
Becky+
Questions for Self-Reflection
What scents do you most associate with God or being with God’s people? What scents seem heavenly to you? Incense or candles in a church? Freshly baked cookies or warm cinnamon buns? Magnolia blossoms or honeysuckle vines? The scent of meat being smoked at your favorite barbecue joint? A salty sea breeze?
Daily Challenge
The Old Testament Scriptures include much discussion of the details of Temple sacrifice, including that part of the reason sacrifices were made was to send up a “pleasing aroma” that God would enjoy. Learn more about “fragrant offerings and sacrifices” in the context of ancient Israel in this brief article by a professor of religion at Emory University.