Humans have a thing about unpleasant smells – Americans probably more so than just about any other group on the planet.
We avoid them.
We avoid being them.
God, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have the same aversion. Maybe Adam and Eve stunk before the fall. Maybe they didn’t. (Maybe there was a deodorant tree across the way from the Tree of Life.)
Either way, God seems to understand, and work, even in stinky situations.
He raised a smelly Lazarus from the dead. He raised a probably smelly Christ from the dead. He was born near animals. He lived in a place that probably smelled of sweat and animal and human waste, and in houses that probably smelled like smoke and damp and too many people too close together after too long without washing.
Jesus the man probably STANK.
I was talking with a homeless man the other day (initiated by my amazing little sister), and he mentioned that he had been asked to leave a local church – MY local church – while sitting and waiting for a Sunday service, because the usher was afraid his smell would be distracting.
When did the followers of a stinky carpenter decide that it was unacceptable to smell?
(Unless, of course, you are on a youth group ministry trip, at which point everyone is expected to smell. It’s apparently okay to stink, so long as you stink “for Jesus.”)
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