Sermon preached by Emily Tanis-Likkel

Eagle Harbor Church, August 6, 2006

Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15 and John 6:24-35

My dreams often take place in my childhood home in Western Michigan.  It reminds me of the good memories that I have from that home, and sometimes I daydream that I am walking through the house, stopping in all the rooms and looking around – remembering. When I walk into the basement, it smells musty and damp.  I look around and see the pool and ping-pong tables and hear laughter.  I see my old yellow dollhouse and remember the imaginative stories that I created for hours upon hours. I walk up the stairs and get the spooky feeling I always had, even as a teen-ager, that made me want to hurry up and get to the top.  I open the door to the hall closet and grimace from the strong smell that rotten potatoes have given it and could never be erased.  My brother’s room smells like dirty laundry, my parent’s room like perfume, and my room I can’t quite tell – I guess I’m too close.  The kitchen smells like freshly brewed coffee, the back yard smells like trees and hot-tub chemicals, the family room smells like, well – it’s quite indescribable, it just smells like home. Diane Ackerman in A Natural History of the Senses tells us: "Smell is a mute sense, the one without words. Lacking a vocabulary, we are left tongue-tied, groping for words in a sea of inarticulate pleasures and exaltations."  If love had a scent, that is what my house smelled like. The overwhelming feeling of my imaginary walk-throughs is that the house was a place of welcome.  It was the hub of my social circle.  It was not the biggest or nicest house, but my parents were interested in my friends’ lives, so my house is where they wanted to be.

Touching, seeing, hearing, tasting – we have been exploring the senses in worship this summer.  Today as we reflect on the story of bread falling from the sky, we explore how the sense of smell is connected to our relationship with God.

What do you think that it smelled like when the Israelites were wandering hungry through the desert?  Perhaps the scent of soiled clothing, of people who needed to be bathed, and of sand.  What kind of smell filled the air when the quail flew overhead?  I don’t know if it would smell that great to us now, but it sure must have smelled wonderful to those hungry people.  After endless sandy desert, a flock of birds to eat.  How about when the manna fell from the sky?  Manna means literally, what is it?  It was a completely new kind of bread that they had never seen before – no parallels to it, they could only make attempts at describing it as a fine flaky substance.  That bread must have had a wonderful smell.  A bread that has no precedent.  I imagine it would be like the smell of breathing in the aroma from this communion table, but so much more.  When the people looked up, it was all they could see, God’s abundance.

Perhaps the Israelites should have been more attuned to their sense of smell, to help their memories.  God was frustrated with them, like so many times before, because of their lack of remembering.  With every crisis they forgot everything that God had provided in the past and complained.  They longed to be slaves again in Egypt because at least there they had regular meals.  They had forgotten how oppressed they had been and how ecstatic they had been to be delivered from bondage.  Walter Brueggeman says “What is striking in this assaulting contrast is how present anxiety distorts the memory of the recent past.”   But God heard their complaint and fed them.  In the wilderness, they were taught to depend on God’s provision.  When they had been in Egypt, they had to hoard their food and were anxious about when their next meal would be.  Now they were to eat without anxiety, depending on God completely.  With their meals falling from the sky, the wilderness was transformed from a desolate place to a display of God’s glory and grace.

God values scent.  God created it.  Our smelling capacities are quite amazing.  Helen Keller wrote about how odor seems to reside in the nose.   We can’t quite shake off a bad odor when we’d like, and we enjoy the lingering scent of sweet aromas.  We use smell to remember, to be warned of danger, to know when dinner is burning or cooked just right.  We smell to enjoy a glass of wine, we smell to take in the fresh outdoors.  Those of us who have or have had children in our lives have snuggled our faces in their hair and smelled them, loving them.  The Old Testament is full of references of God requesting that people burn sweet incense as an offering.  God no longer requires these kinds of offerings, but it tells me that God appreciates the sense of smell, and invites us to as well. 

My Dad often talks about how when he thinks of his late Father, he smells coffee and cigarettes, which were his staples until he found out that smoking was bad for his health.  Ordinary smells take on new meaning when associated with a person.  The scent of a particular laundry soap can instantly bring someone to mind.  Different aromas connect us to different time periods and people in our lives.

If you grew up going to church, can you smell inside that building?  If your church used incense, it was certainly an intense smell.  Otherwise it was more non-descript, a smell culminating from food, people, building materials, maybe mold or mildew.  Maybe the smell is good or bad depending on whether church was a grace-filled experience for you or not.

When you have felt the most alive, the most connected to those around you, to yourself, to the Holy, what aroma surrounded you?  Maybe you smelled soil and earth, maybe it was around a meal.  Perhaps you were in a musty-smelling church or a loved one’s home that smelled of fresh-baked bread.

Keith Heidorn in his “Living Gently Quarterly,” writes:

As I walk along the forest trail, my foot stirs the fallen leaves, exposing some soil below, and the scent of damp earth and rotting leaves rises. Immediately my mind jumps back thirty years and half a continent away. I am walking through the local woods on Thanksgiving morning toward my home. When I reach the house, and open the door, my vision is momentarily taken from me as my glasses steam over as the humid kitchen air contacts the cold lenses. At the same time, my sense of smell is overwhelmed by a flood of aromas: a roasting turkey; cut garlic and onions, steaming cabbage; clove and pumpkin; sage and thyme. What better way to end an invigorating walk on a crisp, late-fall morning than be greeted by the promise of a day filled with family love and great food. The fragrances of the kitchen speak to me. And my heart soars!              

Smell is how we remember.  It helps us get in touch with our past and make connections to the present and future.  We can use our sense of smell to remember God’s provision for us.  Smelling the outdoors, we thank God for creation.  Thomas Moore says “A garden . . . asks us to open our senses wide, take in the green arc of a plant or the subtle sweet fragrance of an herb, and be unusually present to the physical world. . . A garden is a sensual ritual in which the spiritual life emerges directly out of the dirt and the green and brilliant colorings of nature.” Our sense of smell helps us to remember, and to thank God.  Smelling the meal cooking, we thank God for an income to buy food.  Catching the scent of family and friends, we thank God for the people in our lives.

Moore also says “The sense of smell not only conjures up memory, as is well known, a primary activity of the soul, but is intimately implicated in the spiritual life.  The Magi give the infant Jesus the gift of incense . . . and incense and perfumes have been used widely to accompany prayers . . .”   Some use a scented candle or incense for their personal meditation time.  Then whenever they catch a whiff of a scent that they’ve used with prayer, they are reminded of God’s presence.  Essential oils such as Frankincense, myrrh, and lavender can calm us and provide emotional healing.

Food writer MFK Fisher responds to critics who say that she writes of trivial things by saying that food is connected to love.  She writes, “When I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it . . . and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied . . . and it is all one . . .. there is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.”   So too with our sense of smell, we are doing more than just taking a read on a scent.  We are remembering, we are connecting, we are loving. 

In John’s Gospel this morning, the disciples wanted a sign from Jesus in order that they might believe in him.  They recalled how Moses fed the people with manna from the desert as a sign for God’s care for them.  Jesus answered them that it was not Moses who would feed them now, but that they would be fed by another kind of bread from heaven.  They must have been imagining quite a spectacular feast, saying, “Sir, give us this bread always.”  Jesus replied, “I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”  Jesus satisfies our hungers by giving us himself.  He offers relationship with us; he offers his grace and his peace.  In Jesus we have hope.  The way that he gave us to wrap our minds around this is the image of bread.  Sweet-smelling bread, wonderfully textured bread, ordinary but holy bread.

And so when we take communion today, I invite you to linger.  I encourage you to take a bunch of grapes and a hunk of bread, and then eat it where you want, while you stand or after you sit down.  Take your time with it, listen to the music, touch your food, look at it, smell it, and taste it.  If you want to come back for more, you are welcome.  There is plenty for all.

The New Interpreter’s Bible, 812.

The World I Live in, 49.

www.islandnet.com

The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life, 99.

The Gastronomical Me, IX.