The Bungee Cord. 2-26-24

Hello,

What does the church smell like?

When I was in college I , mevery once in a while, went and visited a dairy farmer friend of mine. Although they were always friendly visits, when I was there, I always helped out (I think that is what you would call my efforts) with the chores. Milking, feeding, bailing, and the like. On one of my visits, I went to church with my friend, and when I walked in into church, I was immediately hit with a distinct odor….the odor of the barn. You see, almost all of the parishioners were dairy farmers who had come to church after their morning chores. I, who had slept in for the morning milking, did not go into the barn before church, but it was clear to me that almost everyone else had. Something I learned that weekend, when you spend time in the barn, hanging around the cows, you smell like the barn.

What does the church smell like? I know that I have been in churches that smell musty and stale. Immediately when you walk into them you get hit with the smell of airs. The musty smell of folks looking down their nose at you for your station in life, your soiled past, your record of failures, your lack of teeth, and your faulty social skills. And when you’ve walked in a couple of steps, you catch a strong whiff of stale air; air that has been hemmed in by walls of rules and expectations. Rules telling you how much you need to give to the church. Expectations of how much time you will give to the church. Rules telling you who you can have as friends, and expectations on with whom your friendships can grow. Such churches seem to carry the same smell as the smell that Jesus encountered in the synagogues of his day, rules that disallowed him to heal on the Sabbath, talk and eat with unrepentant sinners, embrace a leper, help out a Roman enemy. Rules that trod over vulnerable people for the sake of the institution. There are churches that I have walked into that smell musty and stale, and I have seen the people walk out of such churches carrying that smell into the world.

There are other churches, however, that smell quite differently. They have the smell of hope, of mercy, of empathy, of forgiveness….well, of Jesus. They smell like Jesus who walked into the lives of people who were captured with mental illness, the Gerasene demoniac. They smell like Jesus who dined with outcasts, Zacchaeus. They smell like Jesus who took children into his lap and loved them. They smell like Jesus who welcomed a woman with a checkered past, the woman who wiped his feet with her hair. They smell like Jesus who didn’t even pick up a stone to throw at a woman caught in adultery. They smell like Jesus who loved Peter even after he had denied him three times. They smell like Jesus who wept over Jerusalem’s wandering, and then walked right into that town with God’s relentless love. They smell like Jesus who on the cross opened the kingdom of heaven for a murderer. They smell like Jesus who walked out of the hole that people had put him into and left anything that might make a claim on anyone dead and in that hole. There are some churches that smell of freshness and life, the smell that you get when you walk along a stream in a pine forest, and I have seen people walking out of such churches carrying that smell into the world.

What does the church smell like? Not all churches smell the same, and you’ll know the minute that you walk into one what that church smells like. And when you walk into one that smells like Jesus, none perfectly because every church is comprised not of angels but sinners in need of forgiveness, you’ll know it. And I invite you to go there and hang out regularly, like a farmer doing chores, so that you will carry its smell into a world that very often doesn’t smell very good at all.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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