A FRAGRANT OFFERING

                Mahatma Gandhi once said to a Christian missionary: “Let us think of the bulk of your people … Do they spread the perfume of their lives? That to me is the sole criterion. All I want them to do is live Christian lives, not to annotate them.”* When I read this I thought Gandhi may have been acquainted with Paul’s statement in 2 Cor 2:14, “But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession and through us spreads the fragrance from knowing him.”

                There is something very attractive about some aromas. I can remember when the Franz bread bakery was located about where Matt Knight arena is today. The delicious smell of freshly baked bread spreading throughout the University district attracted many students who would buy warm bread and take it back to their dorms for late night parties. Also, I remember reading about a church that wanted to have a special communion service. Early on a Sunday morning a few people came to the kitchen, which was located near the sanctuary, like ours is. They proceeded to bake bread and timed it so that the wonderful aroma of fresh bread permeated the sanctuary when church began.

                Gandhi spoke about the “perfume of Christian lives,” and Paul wrote about Christians spreading the “fragrance from knowing Christ.” It’s a beautiful metaphor of how evangelism can be done in a pleasing and attractive way. But what, exactly, is this “fragrance,” this “aroma” that Christians carry into the world? Can it be defined more precisely?

                Paul does this for us in his only other use of the metaphor. It is found in Ephesians 5:2 where he says, Live in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” The fragrance of a loving, self-giving, sacrificial offering made by Jesus Christ is our model.

                Its been said that Christians should live like Christ, look like Christ, love like Christ, and serve like Christ. All of that is true, and all of it can be summarized by simply saying, “Christians should smell like Christ.” Have we put on Christ so that we smell like him or do we spread a moldy, rotting, decidedly offensive aroma by our lives?

                Nothing attracts us to the table more than the smell of fresh baked warm bread, and nothing attracts others to Christ more than the aroma of a loving, sacrificial, Christ-like life. The Lord’s Supper, this communion, reminds us of his fragrant offering and invites us to drench our lives in the perfume of his life.

*M. J. Gandhi, The Message of Jesus Christ, ed. Anand T. Hingorani (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhaven, 1986), 44.