The Bungee Cord 5-12-25
Hello,
Do bees smell?
It is a beautiful time of the year in Western Pennsylvania, not just in what our eyes take in, but also in what our noses take in. Right next to my hot tub are four lilac bushes that I planted several years ago, and as they begin to blossom, they cast their lovely aroma upon my patio. If you have never smelled a lilac flower, you have missed one of nature’s gifts. It is a sweet, but not overwhelming, smell that when you breath it in you can feel your lungs filling with soft joy. And as the flowers overtake the bushes, I find myself just wanting to bury my face in the flowers and swim in their luxurious scent. The smell is captivating.
However, as I sit near my lilac bushes, I come to find out that I am not the only one drawn to them. Bees are too! My lilac bushes look like a Walmart store that just got a new shipment of toilet paper during the pandemic. The bushes are crawling with bees, all having come to load their “honey stomachs” with the delivery of nectar from the lilac blooms. I know that plants use vibrant colors to attract bee for the purpose of pollination, but as I sit in the cloud of their aroma, I wonder are bees, like me, also attracted by the smell? I know that bees can see. I wonder, can they smell?
So, I Googled it, and this is what I found: “Yes, bees have a very strong sense of smell. They use it to find food, communicate within their hive, and even detect threats. Their sense of smell is much more sensitive than humans, allowing them to detect odors at incredibly low concentrations.” Wow, I guess that they can smell….and smell well!
Also, when I Googled, “What sense creates the deepest memories for humans?”, this is what I found out: “The sense of smell (olfaction) is often cited as the one that creates the strongest and longest-lasting memories. This is due to its unique connection to the limbic system, the brain region responsible for emotions and memory storage. Specifically, the olfactory bulb, where smell information is processed, is directly connected to the hippocampus and amygdala. “
So, as I consider the power of smell to draw bees to a lilac bush, and to create memories that are timeless, I wonder if I have stumbled on to one of the reasons that so many people avoid going to church every week, or maybe completely avoid it. Might it be that when they open the doors of a church, it doesn’t smell very good, or maybe they don’t open them at all because of the rancid smell that they have encountered there? Do they smell, or remember the smell, of judgment, narrow mindedness, institutional control, money grabbing, lifelong grudges, silly rules, and the like.
The Bible tells us that on Easter Sunday morning, some women went with spices to Jesus’ tomb. Why? Because tombs stunk! After three days of death dining on a body, everyone knew that when you opened the tomb, the smell would be rancid. So, they brought spices to help make it smell better. I find it interesting that when you read the Biblical stories of Easter Sunday morning, there is no mention of the smell! When the women walked in and when Peter stepped in, we are not told that any of them reacted by covering their nose. It is true, of course, that it may have just been a detail that all of the Gospel writers overlooked, but as I read the accounts where conversations take place in the tomb, it seems that the rancid smell of death was not there to drive them out. The aroma was not of death, but of life, lilac-like.
The best that those women could have hoped for was to cover of the smell of death for a while, and even with their best efforts and spices, death’s smell would return. I believe the same is true for dealing with the aromas that turn people away from going to church, humans can only cover up the smell. But clearly God can do more. As God did in that Easter tomb, God can incinerate death’s smell in a fire of the Holy Spirit, a fire of life. And not only can God do it, God is doing it. Every Sunday God ignites a fire of the Holy Spirit inside the building where people have gathered in God’s name filling it with the aroma of life, eternal life. And God is determined to keep setting that fire until death’s smell is completely gone.
I invite you to “smell for yourself” God at work amongst those who bear God’s name, including the work that God is doing in your life, and although it may not smell like lilacs yet, I am sure that you will catch whiffs of what God’s love smells like, and you, like a bee, just might find yourself drawn to gather in your “honey stomach” from the shipment of grace that God has delivered there.
Have a great week.
God’s grace and peace, (ggap)
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger
