Aroma Therapy

It seems that our most used sense is sight. We often forget how powerful our senses of hearing and smell are. The sense of smell is so powerful that some people now practice aroma therapy. Almost every home I enter has scented candles scattered about practically every room. Smell is important and we will come back to that.

I have been thinking about this since participating in a conversation about how rarely we Christians share our faith and talk to others about Jesus. We had gathered around some delicious pizza and the conversation soon turned to sharing our faith experiences. Everyone at the table was passionate about Jesus and all also admitted to rarely talking about Jesus to non-believers. That didn’t make any sense. Jesus is important to all of us, all of us have had life-changing experiences with Christ, and yet, we rarely mention him. One person pulled out that often used quote wrongly attributed to St. Francis Assisi, “Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.” I call this the “Great Evangelism Cop-out” quote. We love to believe that people will just look at our amazing lives, connect the dots to Jesus, and become Christians. What a crock.

At our church we are suffering through a sermon series on Practical Atheists. The church members are suffering through hearing it and I am suffering through delivering it. It is not what I would call a fun sermon series. For people who like sermons of sunshine and lollypops and balloons every Sunday, this series is painful. The question is asked – “Are we who we say we are?” Do we carry the name Christian but, when it comes down to living life; to making the daily decisions on how we treat others, how we parent, how we spend our money, the jokes we tell, the cars we buy, how we educate our children, why we go (or don’t go) to church, we live as if there were no God. We are, when it comes to the practicalities of life, atheists. The sermon series is going over like a lead balloon. Two more weeks of this and we will be able to hold church in the coat closet. Jesus said, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” I wonder if he meant it would make us free from attending church worship services?

Anyway, when it comes to sharing the great good news that God is real, Jesus is alive and God loves us and forgives us, we act as if we haven’t a clue. It is just something we don’t do. Instead, we hope people will just see what a difference Jesus makes in our lives and develop a desire to be like us – to have what we have. It is a great theory. Unfortunately, for that approach to work, knowing Jesus must impact our lives and change us. Instead, we want just enough God to save us but not to change us. In Revelation 3, Jesus wrote to the church at Laodicea and said, “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” (Revelation 3:15-16) This little piece of scripture takes on even great meaning and has more impact when you know that the Greek word translated “spit” can also be translated spew or vomit. I don’t know about you, but I just never want to hear Jesus say, “You make me want to throw up.” Lukewarm is not good.

I had always wondered why Jesus said he would rather we be hot or cold – anything but lukewarm. Lukewarm seemed better than cold to me. Then I realized that being lukewarm meant we were no different than the people who make no claim to know God. People without a relationship with God would look at those of us who claimed to know God and think, “Why would I want to be a Christian? He is a Christian and it is making no difference in his life. He is as unhappy as I am, struggles with the same issues I struggle with and chases after the same stuff I want. The only difference I can see is that he gets up early Sunday morning, gets dressed up and goes to church to listen to a boring talk, give them some money and hang out with some boring people. Instead, I can sleep in, have a nice, hot cup of coffee, read the Sunday paper and go out to brunch with my cool friends. Gee, what a choice. I think I won’t be a Christian.” No wonder we nauseate Jesus. We are not only failing to set him free to impact and change our lives, we are standing in the way of others knowing and experiencing God. It’s a double whammy.

In our conversation someone mentioned that in a sermon recently I said that we should be so filled with the Spirit of the Living God that as we move through life we should just stink of Jesus. That, as we interact with people, they should be able to smell the love and mercy and healing of Jesus all over us. He said, “Instead of smelling of Jesus, I am afraid we just smell. Sometimes I feel like a faith fart and I am not attracting anyone to Jesus.” The conversation left me thinking about what kind of a smell I am giving off. Is my life “Jesus” aroma therapy attracting people to Jesus or am I just a lukewarm Christian stinking the place up?

Perhaps we need to give each other a sniff check every once in a while.

Copyright © 2013, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved