Reflections on Incense

Blindfold me. Drive a few hundred miles.

Stop your car one block from MacCorkle Avenue, in front of a little house on the banks of the Kanawha River, lead me into the house.

Ask me where I am. I’ll know.

The scent of cedar and apples, mixed with the slightest hint of mothballs will reveal your secret more effectively than sight.

I’m at Grandma’s house.

The fragrance of home will give you away.

A fragrance lingers in that old place that announces the presence of the woman who inhabited it. Gone now for twenty-five years, she still inhabits the house through her fragrance.

And you know just what I’m talking about.

There’s just something about scent that grips a person.

The magi’s second gift, the carol insists, “owns a deity nigh.” It speaks of “prayer and praising all men raising,” and calls us to “worship him God most high.”

Their third gift is a “a bitter perfume that breathes of life of gathering gloom.”

Together, the two scents create a unique fragrance to fill the house of God. The historical churches have burned this unique combination to call the worshipper to prayer.

The holy scent fills the pages of the Bible too.   

All along their earthly journey, God’s people offer incense. According to the Bible’s final book, we will offer it still after we reach eternity. Heaven is evidently filled with holy smoke; its scent penetrates the souls of pilgrims as they travel toward the holy city.

The scent is also present in more mundane facets of the believer’s life.

In the Song of Solomon for example, the lover offers scented oils for lovemaking. She sings about the fragrant smoke that rises above the place of her lover’s dwelling. She longs to anoint her beloved’s body with those oils and enjoy with him the fragrance she has prepared. After their night of love, the smell becomes his mark of identification. She breathes in the fragrance to become entranced with his presence, especially when he is absent.

Later in the Bible, a sinner woman approaches Christ and pours upon his feet the fragrant oils she has been saving her entire life.

For what purpose, you ask?

Well, such oils were used for two things:  for one’s honeymoon and to honor one’s loved one who has died. This woman pours her scented oil on Jesus, her chosen bridegroom.  

She will never experience a physical union with him but a bond stronger than death attaches her soul to his. But she also pours the fragrance on his body because he is about to die.

Both purposes are fulfilled in this act of devotion: scented oil for love and scented oil for death.

As the scent fills the house, the Pharisees recoil from the intimacy the fragrance creates.

And they still do.

Despite the continual mention of incense in both the Old and New Testaments, many Protestant Christians find incense frightening and, some even find it diabolical.

They associate it with pagan rituals and Eastern mysticism.

Not me.

To me, it smells like home.

In John Travolta’s silly movie, Michael, the archangel comes to earth. He travels with a group of less-than-holy friends. As God’s great angelic warrior walks among human beings, a strange phenomenon follows him. Women swoon, overcome by a fragrance they say is something like fresh baked bread. But it is much more than that, they claim. The scent takes their breath away. As they swoon, the track plays “It Feels Like Home to Me.”

The mighty archangel carries a scent of human’s forgotten home. The fallen human people interpret their response in an erotic way but their longing is something far beyond mere eroticism.  It is an intimacy that erotic love cannot reach. But that is the only intimacy they know and it seems so inappropriate to attach to God.

That’s precisely how Pharisees respond to Mary Magdalene’s scented praise: too much, too intimate, too ‘out there’.

Pentecostals and Charismatics correctly employ the idea of incense as metaphor: fervent worship is that “sweet smelling savor” the Lord most seeks for us, they claim.

Well, yes.

But if a metaphor is spiritually accurate, why would we reject the material offering upon which the metaphor is based? The Magi did not offer the baby a metaphor; they offered a material substance that smelled good.

So, no, we don’t need incense for worship. Nor do we need music, or nice buildings. We don’t NEED art, or anything else material. But honestly, coming as I do from a Pentecostal background, it is difficult to think what worship really means without referring to music. In fact, to most Charismatics and Pentecostals, worship has come to mean mostly music. When we say, “I loved the worship in that church,“ we certainly don’t mean the testimonies. That isn’t worship. We don’t mean the sermons; that isn’t worship. The offering is not worship.  So what is left?

Music.

In other words, sound can be worship, but not scent.

Should we even talk about taste? Can taste ever be worship?

When the Lord says, “taste and see that the Lord is good,” is he using JUST a metaphor?

I mean, think about it. Human beings in love don’t just meditate and talk about love. They touch, taste, and smell one another.  Every lover knows the scent of his or her beloved. 

Why? Because human beings want to experience love with skin on it.

Like human love, Christian spirituality is not abstract. It is material. Our body, and not just our mind, participates in experiencing God. We don’t just talk and ponder about God. We touch, taste, see and feel God.

And, perhaps, smell Him.

The frankincense and myrrh, the sweet and the bitter, the life and the death, the love and the loss mingle and create holy smoke. It fills the house. It shakes the soul. It’s unsettling. 

It’s irresistible. It’s unforgettable.

I have long ago given up trying to convince people of the worshipful nature of incense. I let it go. Except in my heart.

But when I step on the other side, the first thing I’ll notice may well be the fragrance.

“Frankincense and myrrh,” I’ll think.

Then, perhaps I’ll notice something else. Maybe, just for me. God will mix in a bit of cedar, some apples and the slightest hint of mothballs.

And I’ll sigh and say, “ahhh, that smells just like home to me.” 

What About Our Class Struggle?

     A few centuries ago, the English aristocracy were trembling at the news they were hearing from France. Dukes had been decapitated.  The wealthy had been despoiled of their goods. The poor were rioting in the streets. France was wallowing in anarchy. 

What would keep the same things from occurring in England, where conditions were not much different?  In England the poor shivered in the cold while ladies danced at balls in castles and bishops discussed philosophy at Oxford. In England, as in France, the class divide had become unsustainable. The wealthy didn’t have enough money to hire enough soldiers or build high enough walls to keep out people who were hungry. Catastrophe was coming their way. The aristocrats knew this; they just didn’t know when.

Then, something unexpected happened.

An Oxford doctor of theology went to a prayer meeting. He experienced the power of the Holy Spirit and felt called to preach the gospel to England’s poor. Soon, coal miners and farmers, street vendors and orphans began crowding to the meetings to listen to John Wesley preach and to learn Charles Wesley’s songs.

In a few years, twenty percent of England’s population became Methodists. They experienced the power of God, the social lift that often comes with the gospel, and the intellectually transforming energy that comes from wrestling with Holy Scripture.

We need something like that now.Our class divide is also becoming dangerous.

            

I know that I shouldn’t even discuss this but I am a pastor. So, I must.

           I am responsible to tell you that Karl Marx was not the first to address the consequences of dividing human beings into socio- economic classes.

What are we to say about the constitution of a proposed kingdom that begins with the words, “blessed are the poor; for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven?”  Or to the Christ’s claim that he had fulfilled the prophecy that the messiah would “preach the good news to the poor?”

How are we to respond to the apostle James, who clearly prohibits any sort of economic stratification within the church, particularly as an evangelistic strategy?

And, to mention just one more out of many New Testament passages, how do we respond to the assertion of the Apostle Paul in Galatians that he had been obedient to the request of the leaders in Jerusalem to “remember the poor?”

Such passages have become uncomfortable to many American Christians. In today’s supercharged political climate, they seem to smack of some sort of ancient socialism; a kind of embarrassing proto-Marxist rhetoric that we must quickly explain away.

They will not go away, however, unless conservatives do to the Bible with these passages what liberals have done with the passages about the virgin birth and the Lord’s physical resurrection from the dead. We could learn from the liberals how to claim that these passages were for another time and situation; that the poor back then were not like today’s poor; that the kingdom of God has been advanced by using an evangelistic strategy that deliberately markets to the upwardly mobile; and so forth. 

What we have been doing is not right. It is a betrayal of the gospel.

It is also having bad results.

George Barna recently noted that the poor are the most un-churched group of American society, and that this is particularly true of English-speaking Whites. His research shows that White poor people in our country are actually falling away from the church in great numbers, and that in the younger generations, the statistics become even more alarming.

A recent edition of Time magazine focused on the accelerating pace at which American culture is shrinking its middle class. There are many factors to blame, not the least of which is a native working force that is now largely uneducated and unskilled compared to that of other industrial nations. In other words, too large a proportion of our middle class young adults don’t know the basics of Western Civilization. They can’t read at adequate levels, don’t know geography, can’t speak a language other than their own, have inadequate math skills, and are not aware of the basic scientific discoveries of the last many decades.

For all these reasons, American workers are having an increasingly difficult time competing with their Polish, English, Spanish, Russian, Indian, Korean, and Brazilian counterparts in a globalized economy. Corporations can often get more for their money elsewhere.

But why is that?

For one thing, other countries have been pouring huge amounts of their national attention and treasury into education for several decades.  Also, our country had no real competitors for much of the twentieth century. The other great powers destroyed had much of their infrastructure through their insane wars.  However, in the last fifty years, those same powers have been rebuilding and modernizing their infrastructure. What’s more, many of these nations have also continued to value the intellectual structures of civilization, and to insist that diplomas ought to be rewarded to people who have taken the time to learn what it means to be civilized.

We have been watching television and playing video games, while ignoring boring subjects like literature and math. It worked too. We could still find a good paying job even if we didn’t know how to think critically.

Well, its over.

Now, if a worker doesn’t have an education, and sometimes even if he does, he will have to get in line behind the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Germans, Canadians, Swiss, Swedes, and all the others who have been studying for years in schools that their countries funded.

Furthermore, our situation is not going to turn around; at least for some time. In fact our situation will never turn around unless we stop ignoring vast portions of our population. If our poor people keep going to bad schools and our teachers never make enough money to feed themselves, our cycles of poverty will keep turning. As a result, our workforce will not be able to compete at global standards.

America will not be successful just because.

A recent edition of Time Magazine focused on the economic dangers ahead of our country, which unfortunately we seem willing to ignore. For this reason, our future does not appear to be bright at the moment.

So, what will happens to our poor? And, if you consider yourself to be middle class at the moment, I may be speaking about you.  Your own family may be slowly descending into poverty in years ahead unless you are preparing your children to do otherwise.

I know, blogs are supposed to be short.

So, I will now confess that I do not have an economic solution for our country since I am neither Marxist nor Libertarian, I also don’t have a revolutionary solution – armed or political.

What I offer is a spiritual solution.

Our churches are not offering this type of solution. They are too busy fighting to stay on the right side of things, as secular society defines it. 

It’s not the first time Christianity has done this. We have often come precariously close to offering Christianity without a Christ.

Oh, we adore the Christ we sing and theologize about. We have proven ourselves perfectly capable of worshiping Jesus without listening to a thing he said.  Pictures of Jesus, statues of Jesus and songs about Jesus move us to tears; it’s the Sermon on the Mount that we find impractical.

            That was true in his day too. Jesus didn’t die because he refused to honor Caesar, Herod and the High Priest but because he didn’t honor them any more than he honored anyone else.

            It was true in Wesley’s day as well. The Church of England was about doing well rather than about becoming good. The rabble was staying away from church because there was nothing there for them.

            The English church had become a means of maintaining the culture’s status quo.

            The only alternative the English church leaders saw was a French-style revolution that they prepared to fight to the death. 

            Since all of that, we have been wrestling with Marx.

            Like the French revolutionaries, Marx hated the upper classes. His followers were willing to kill people in order to bring about a classless society.  

Jesus didn’t hate anyone.  He did not want his followers to do that either. However, He did refuse to acknowledge class. He loved the rich young ruler. He received with respect a member of the Jewish Supreme Court. On the other hand, he ate with a tax collector.  He allowed a sinner woman to wash his feet in public. He didn’t hate the rich and powerful. He had come to save them too! He just didn’t prefer them or esteem them more than he did others,

            The Jesus way of attacking class structure is simply to stop empowering it.

A Christian loves a man or woman because he or she is made in the image and likeness of God. Titles, rank, money and societal importance are noted as one notes the color of a person’s hair or the shape of his nose. It is there. It is part of that person’s identity.  But all of that is like the value of foreign money; it’s not accepted as legal tender in our realm.

          

          This is a form of class struggle, I suppose. At least many would view it that way. Nonetheless, I disagree with the assertion of liberation theologians that Christianity must necessarily prefer the poor. No, it shouldn’t. On the other hand, it should not prefer the wealthy or the talented or the powerful. Or the Tories or Whigs.

            Christianity is good news to the poor because for the first time in their lives they have no hurtle to jump. They can get into our club simply because they breathe air. They do not have to sit in coach class. They don’t have to eat inferior food. They are not passed over when the church decides to promote people to positions of influence. They are in.

End of story.This kingdom is theirs.

Jesus made that decision.

By the way, the French revolution never came to England.

Jesus got there first.

Oh, the aristocracy sneered at the Methodists. They kept enjoying their port and cigars, as their humble neighbors became citizens of another world.

But their poor neighbors no longer cared.

They had forgotten how to view themselves as poor.

They also did not view their neighbors as rich. They saw them as lost. They no longer hated their wealthy neighbors. They had pity for them.

They no longer cared because they had won the class war.

Christian Prostitution

I learned about Christian prostitution in Spain.

Bernice and Annabel told me about it.

They lead one of the seven rescue homes in the province of Cantabria sponsored by the ministry of Nueva Vida.

Bernice is a Mexican pastor’s daughter and seminary graduate.

Annabel is a missionary, first sent by her home church in Malaga to do missionary work in Morocco. She holds a graduate degree in Spanish language acquisition.

They invited Trish and me to their home after church, at the normal Spanish time for dinner, 10:00 PM.

As we drove to their house, Bernice told us about their work in Morocco and what had led her and Annabel to relocate to the city of Santander.

Prostitution.

I am somewhat aware of sex trafficking through Free for Life, a ministry based in our church. Colette Bercu and her husband Dan lead that ministry and have done an incredible amount of work in a short amount of time. They have passionately worked to educate me about the scope and power of the global sex trade. 

But even Colette never told me about Christian prostitutes.

In Santander, most Christian prostitutes are Nigerians. They are teenagers or young adults who have been transported from their native country. They are taught to work the streets and parks of Santander in ways that will not invite police interference. As they work, they often listen to Christian praise music on iPods. Before and after work, they may attend church, where they worship fervently. One prostitute actually leads her small church in worship before heading out for her late night employment: prostitution in the city park. 

Here’s the deal: these women have a loaded gun to their heads. The sex trade operators know their families.  They will kill the parents and siblings of those who quit the trade. If a prostitute doesn’t show up for a couple of days to work, she gets a call from a family member at home, asking if everything is OK. That means that someone in their village has informed mom and dad that she is not working and may need a call to see if she is sick or something. This reminds the sex worker of the dire circumstances that threaten her family if she decides to bolt.

These women, many who are poorly educated and without significant, safe connections in the country where they work, decide that although what they are doing is difficult it is not as wicked as exposing their families to death. Besides, some make enough money to help feed families at home.

So the prostitute walks the parks, advertising her trade through her clothing and mannerisms, that she is available. As she walks, she listens and sings to herself:

“Lord, I lift your name on high;

Lord I love to sing your praises.”

Now that think about it, I had heard about Christian prostitutes, from Susan Ruden, author of Paul Among the People. 

Ruden is one of the world’s greatest experts on the classical world and its literature. She had read Paul’s writings late and reluctantly, after extensive work in classical Latin and Greek literature. What she found was explosive, for her personally and for her career.

St. Paul, you see, is the bad boy of academia, even in religious studies.

However, as she read him, Ruden decided that modern scholars had terribly misjudged and maligned this man, whom she claims invented the Western world as we know it today.

As she describes the horror of the late Roman Empire for the bottom two thirds of its inhabitants, she graphically describes the perpetual erotic atmosphere of the Greco-Roman cities. Few people, she claims, male or female, escaped being raped before reaching adulthood. The slaves especially were used and passed around to friends and were often physically disfigured by sexual abuse.

Women who claimed to have escaped this abuse were from a higher class, which made it possible for her father and husband to afford a bodyguard to accompany her wherever she went. It was obvious who these women were because they walked through the streets wearing beautiful veils.

The apostle Paul insisted that all women wear these veils when gathering for worship. Susan Ruden claims that Paul did not do this in order to put women down but rather to provide an atmosphere of equality for the lower classes. In the church, none would be able to distinguish between those who were privileged and pure and those who were not.

They all would lift holy hands in prayer and worship, their past and present struggle hidden under a symbol of purity.

Ruden says that the slave women, who were many, and in the Roman Empire often educated and cultured, would leave church and participate in all sorts of sexual situations. They had no choice; their owners could kill them without any interference by Roman authorities.

There was one place where they could go to escape, for a while at least, from the plight into which society had placed them and in which it maintained them: the church.

A woman who later would be removing her clothing and doing whatever powerful people demanded her to do, took a beautiful piece of lace and covered her head. She then walked into the house of God and lifted her voice in prayer and song, adding her redeemed voice to those of her brothers and sisters in Christ.

Somewhere today, a young woman from Laos, Nigeria or Nicaragua is preparing to go to work. Later she will do nasty stuff. For now, she slips on her headset and joins her spiritual family in worship. She realizes that her brothers and sister in Christ would not understand what she is doing, but she sighs and quietly sings along:

 You came from heaven to earth, to show the way

From the earth to the cross, my debt to pay

From the cross to the grave, from the grave to the sky

Lord I lift your name on high.


Perhaps today this young woman will meet someone like Colette, Bernice or Annabel. Perhaps she will learn to trust them when they tell her that they have safe contacts who can help keep her family safe if she wants out.

In the meantime, why doesn’t she join them for dinner later, after work?

The table will be ready and, if she wants, she can play video games or just tell jokes.  And, if she likes, perhaps they can have some friends over to sing and play some music.

‘Sure,” she’ll say. “Cool.”

These angels will give the young woman a bottle of cold water and their card with contact information.

Then she will put on her headset and tune one world out as she tunes another world in.

And does what she must do.