Dust and perfume

Smelling like a king | Jonathan Gainey

When I lived in Jacksonville, Florida and first came to The Salvation Army back in 1998, I can remember how the homeless were very distinct from those who were poor but lived in a home. It wasn’t just their buggies that they collected stuff in and pushed all over town. It wasn’t just their unkempt hair, and dirty beards.

The thing that made the biggest impression on me about homeless people wasn’t what I could see or touch, but what I smelled. Homeless people have a very unique smell. It is a strangely sweet, putrid odor that is hard to explain.

We all recognize the aromas of different people in our lives. Anytime I smell sawdust, I immediately think of my grandfather. And there are certain colognes and perfumes that remind me of my mother and father.

When I was leaving for Germany, after only one year of marriage, I took along a shirt that my wife had worn the night before I left and the smell of her lingered on the shirt for months. Every night I would sleep with that shirt, holding it close to my face on the pillow to think about the woman of my life and imagine her being close when I closed my eyes.

In Luke 10:38-42 we read a story of two ladies who hosted Jesus in their home.

Yose ben Yoezer, a Jewish sage who was born two hundred years before Jesus, said, “Let your home be a meeting-house for the sages, and cover yourself with the dust of their feet, and drink in their words thirstily.” By allowing one’s home to be a classroom for scholars, the community made it possible for these teachers of God’s word to share their wisdom with all of Israel. Mary and Martha obeyed this injunction by offering their hospitality and home to Jesus the Jewish sage and Messiah. (Bivin, 12-13).

We are also given another important historical clue when the text says that Mary was sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening to his teaching. She was “covering herself with the dust of her rabbi.”

The “dust of the rabbi” was a reference to walking so closely behind a rabbi that, as he walked, the dust from his sandals would get on his followers’ clothes. This was a way of saying, “Stay so close to your teacher that you don’t miss a thing!”

Mary was at the best place in the meeting-house; she was at the feet of the rabbi. She was covering herself in the dust of Jesus and drinking in his teaching. Martha, on the other hand, was so busy preparing that she was missing out on the best seat in the house.

“‘Martha, Martha,’ the Lord answered, ‘you are worried and upset about many things, but only one things is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.’”

There are clues in the holy text that tell us that Mary knew that Jesus was much more than a Rabbi.

In chapter 12 of John’s gospel the scriptures record an incident when Jesus had an entire bottle of anointing perfume poured over him, and the text says, “The house was filled with the fragrance…”

In the 26th chapter of Matthew Jesus explains that Mary is preparing him for burial. And there is something more to this act of devotion from Mary. This act of anointing Jesus with an expensive perfume may show that Mary believed Jesus was the Messiah.

In Hebrew, the word for Messiah is Mashiach. Mashiach means “the Anointed One” or “the Christ” in Greek. Messiah or Anointed One comes from the ceremony that is done to someone who is set apart and chosen by God, such as a king or a priest. Rather than being crowned, Hebrew kings were anointed with expensive perfumes and spices, and so were sacred objects that were used in the temple (Spangler and Tverberg, 16).

The aroma that followed the object or the person, who had been anointed, served as an invisible crown. Anything and anyone that had this fragrance upon it or him was recognized as belonging to God and having a special task.

In the ancient Middle East, kings were not only recognized by their robes and jewelry, but they also carried with them an “aroma of royalty.” This was important during royal processions when the crowds needed to be aware that the king was about to walk by (Spangler and Tverberg, 17).

There is an example of just such a procession when Solomon was anointed as the new king of Israel.

“So Zadok the pries…went down and put Solomon on King David’s mule and escorted him to Gihon. Zadok the priest took the horn of oil from the sacred tent and anointed Solomon. Then they sounded the trumpet and all the people shouted, ‘Long live King Solomon!’ And all the people went up after him, playing flutes and rejoicing greatly, so that the ground shook with the sound. (1 Kings 1:38-40)

Right after Mary anointed Jesus, he rode through Jerusalem on, what we call, “the triumphal entry.” And as this rabbi, covered in a royal aroma passed through Jerusalem, the people shouted, “Hosannah! Blessed is the king of Israel.”

For most of Jesus’ last three years, his travels often gave him the look of a dusty, sweaty transient. But regardless of how he looked, Jesus spent his last week smelling like a king (Spangler and Tverberg, 18).

Writer: Capt. Jonathan Gainey was born in Jacksonville, FL in June, 1969. He has been married to Staci, the daughter of retired Salvation Army officers, for twenty years and they have four children ages 18, 16, 12, and 4. Jonathan was commissioned as an officer in June of 2002, and is currently serving in his third appointment in New Bern, NC, USA. He is working on a Masters of Divinity from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and is the creator and manager of the Flocks Diner website, where his passion for learning and teaching is expressed and shared through writing and a weekly podcast.

1 Comment to Dust and perfume

1. I must have cut this article short when I sent it. Here is the resources that I used.

   Works Cited:

   Ann Spangler and Lois Tverberg, Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009).

   David Bivin, New Light on the Difficult Words of Jesus (Holland, MI: En-Gedi Resource Center, Inc., 2005).
Johnny Gainey on June 20th, 2009

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