Spreading Fragrances in the Dean Dome

For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ. (Paul's Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 2, verses 15-17)

Tickets to my first Carolina basketball game dropped out of the sky tonight. Delightful. It was a competitive game to see, as the Heels wiped the floor with NC Central 89-42. Bojangles apparently gives out two biscuits for a buck when the Heels strike 100. What about pounding our opponent into submission and winning by 47? No? Oh well.

One of my co-staff with InterVarsity at UNC called right around dinnertime to say she had come across four free tickets and was looking for people to go with her. So my wife and I grabbed our Carolina T-shirts out of the dirty clothes. Can't imagine how awful the 10-foot radius around us must have smelt...probably something akin to what Paul described as "fragrance from death to death."

Since majoring in Greek in college, this passage in Paul's writing has always made my mind leap to ancient Greek religious practice. It's almost certainly why he used such an image, the Corinthians were smack in the middle of Greece. Animal sacrifice in pagan religion was meant to appease the gods. The basic principle was that the pleasant scent of the burning would put the often temperamental gods in a better mood, and perhaps stave off whatever plague or ill-fortune they were planning against you. In a way, it was like ancient Hebrew sacrifices. But in a way, it was not. The Greek gods were selfish, pompous, fickle, and overall, kind of annoying. You had to do things a certain way to keep them on your side. The structure of whole sacrificing system for the Greek gods instilled this conditional, I-scratch-your-back-you-scratch-mine between the gods and the people. Sacrifices to YHWH, God of the Hebrews was intended not to instill some sort of conditional view of God, but rather to teach the people about the gravity of sin. Literally, "the wages of sin is death." Christ was the ultimate sacrifice, while the lambs, goats, rams, bulls, etc. were all models of Christ to come.

So literally here, we are the aroma of the sacrificed Messiah. And the aroma is for God, but in the sight of others, both believers and non-believers. My conviction as I engaged with this passage, particularly as a campus minister working with students to define what it means to be missional on the college campus, is that we draw a very clear line between Community and Evangelism in what we do. According to Paul here, that line is absolutely non-existent. We who are Christians shall be an aroma of Jesus Christ for the smelling of God our Father in the sight of our friends who follow Jesus and in the sight of our friends who don't. This obviously doesn't mean flaunting spirituality or religiosity. Jesus taught people not to pray in public to build one's reputation, and Paul warns against being like those who peddle God's word. (Did they have televangelists back then?) The alternative is to be men and women of sincerity. A noble thought. It is nothing more or less than sincerity to share Christ. And assumedly, it is nothing more or less than insincerity not to.