The Aroma of the Incarnation

I read or heard somewhere recently (don't remember where) that our sense of smell is the most nostalgic of all our senses. A smell has the special quality of taking us back in time. Smelling is also very subjective. Maybe I'm strange, but sometimes smells can be ambiguous. For instance, onions smell delicious to me when they are sautéed. But arm pits also smell like onions after sautéing from a long day's work. So...I don't know what to do with that.
But smelling is subjective for me in another way. I spend a lot of time with people from the street. Sometimes I get a whiff of someone pungent and I have to take a step back. That happened recently, and a weird thought came to mind--could I ever think of someone's funk as an actual aroma that attracts me to them in a spirit of love, rather than a stench that pushes me away? I'll admit: there are lots of times after being among people that I come home and immediately hit the shower because I don't want that smell lingering around me. And I wonder how someone like Mother Teresa could dedicate her life to such "smelly" environments? She must have developed a palette for the smells of those she touched. She must have smelled it differently than others.

So this week at church we talked about being incarnational. And if you spend time among the fringes, you will assuredly be mindful of the odors that accompany people--alcohol, smoke, marijuana, urine, body odor, sweat, bad breath, feces, vomit, mildew, etc. These odors tell a person's story--fringe stories about how they started to smell that way. However, those odors are typically quite offensive to "normal," civilized people. And how we smell others can tell just as much a story about ourselves and our attitudes, than why those people actually smell. If that makes sense?

Lupton's New Chair

Bob Lupton, founder and president of Focused Community Strategies (FCS), shares a very convicting story about this in his book Theirs is the Kingdom. It's about an elderly woman from his church named Mrs. Smith who is overweight, has tobacco stains on her lips, and has literally lost control of her bowels. She had often told him that nothing would delight her more than to come over and have Sunday dinner with his family. He loves her dearly, but he admits that it would be really tough to have her over, especially since she might make a bee-line for his new corduroy recliner. He says,

"...There is a conflict. It has to do with the values that [my wife] and I learned from childhood. We believe that good stewardship means taking care of our belongings, treating them with respect, and getting long service from them. Our boys know that they are not to track in mud on the carpet or sit on the furniture with dirty clothes. To invite Mrs. Smith into our home means we will have filth and stench soil our couch. There will be stubborn offensive odors in our living room."

He did eventually invite her over, and sure enough, she made straight for the recliner. In fact, she started coming over for weekly Bible study and even claimed the recliner has "her chair." And sure enough, he says the couch was never the same.

Jesus once said..."It is much easier for a camel to pass through an eye of a needle, than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God." Have you ever thought of your cleanliness as a form of wealth that you withhold from the smelly and dirty? And have you ever thought that it would keep you from truly experiencing the Kingdom in its entirety? Elsewhere Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven." (Italics added) Those two sayings are about attitudes.

Does our attitude stink?

How we handle the smell of being incarnational depends on our attitude. Do we smell stench or aroma? Think about it. If our attitude stinks, then we will view the odors of the incarnation as a stench--and we will be pushed away ("be apart"). If we have an incarnational attitude, then we will view it as an aroma--and we will be attracted to the marginalized ("be among").

Philippians 2:1-11 tells us how Jesus handled it, and how we should handle it. The key line from verses 5-6 sums it up: "Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing..." (vv.5,6). The rest is the Gospel.

Sometimes, though, in our "American Christianity" (as Lupton calls it) we get it backwards. We grasp the privilege of Christ instead of the attitude of Christ, and we are glad that we don't stink and that we steward our wealth responsibly.

Actually...we do stink

But it helps to remember that the incarnation was for us. To our dismay Isaiah reminds us: "We are all infected and impure with sin. When we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags" (Isaiah 64:6a NLT).

So our attitude quickly gets a reality check one we take a whiff of ourselves and remember that we're all sinners, and that internally (where it really matters) we actually "stank."

The Incarnational Spin-Cycle

But thankfully, in Christ's death and resurrection, our filthy rags become clean once they are washed in the blood (laundry soap) of Jesus.

But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task? (2 Cor. 15:14-16 NIV)

In Christ, we become an aroma of life to those who are far from God. But it is only when we embrace incarnational living that the fringes also take on the aroma of Christ, because according to Matthew 25:31-40 Christ is actually present there. It comes full circle. And what may be pungent to us at first, is actually the sweet smell of salvation at work, like the fragrance of a cologne or perfume beckoning our embrace. So their odor should nostalgically remind us of Christ's love demonstrated for us, and it should attract us ever closer to them in that same love. Because the Gospel of Christ can't be done at a distance, but close enough that we would lean in even closer to breathe in their fragrance. Breathe it in deeply...and remember. And love.

The Kingdom of God is like...

This past Sunday at church we talked about being organic. It is easy to think about church organically, especially because of all the times that Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is like..." and then used some kind of farming or other nature metaphor. So we believe that Jesus could easily just have said that the Kingdom of God is like a starfish.


Really, it's not original. It's a reference to the book The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations (Brafman and Beckstrom). Funny thing is, it's not even a "church" book. But some perceptive Christian out there once baptized this book, and now just about anyone who leads organic type churches knows about the starfish thing. So that's textbook organic church education that we had no choice but to cover eventually. But there's no shame with that...it's become one of the best recent metaphors for church, and it wasn't even created for the church.

In the beginning of the book, the authors describe the characteristics of the starfish, especially in comparison to the spider.

With a spider, what you see is pretty much what you get. A body's a body, a head's a head, and a leg's a leg. [And if you chop off the spider's head, it dies.] But starfish are very different. The starfish doesn't have a head. Its central body isn't even in charge. In fact, the major organs are replicated throughout each and every arm. If you cut the starfish in half, you'll be in for a surprise: the animal won't die, and pretty soon you'll have two starfish to deal with.


Starfish have an incredible quality to them: If you cut an arm off, most of these animals grow a new arm. And with some varieties, such as the Linckia, ...the animal can replicate itself from just a single piece of an arm. You can cut the Linckia into a bunch of pieces, and each one will regenerate into a whole new starfish. They can achieve this magical regeneration because in reality, a starfish is a neural network. Get this: for the starfish to move, one of the arms must convince the other arms that it's a a good idea to do so. The arm starts moving, and then--in a process that no one fully understands--the other arms cooperate as well. The brain doesn't "yea" or "nay" the decision. In truth, there isn't even a brain to declare "yeah" or "nay." The starfish doesn't have a brain. There is no central command. Biologists are still scratching their heads over how this creature operates...(p.35)

So I think 1 Corinthians 3:1-23 is all about viewing church like a starfish instead of a spider.

In this passage, Paul addresses a church in Corinth who struggled with many of the same basic dysfunctions that any church faces: gossip, division, favoritism, pride, disorderly worship, etc. This passage in particular is all about divisions over authority, church structure, and leadership recognition--Who's in charge? Who's doing church right? Who should they follow? They were essentially putting certain leaders on pedestals and centralizing the intelligence of the gospel in each of their preferred all-stars. In other words, they were making church into a spider where each leader figure was a "head" of the church.

We can't fault the Corinthians...we do the same thing. How often do we rely heavily on head pastors for spiritual growth, make distinctions between the clergy and laity, reserve "church" to the weekly Sunday gathering at the church building, or depend on lots of money to do ministry? Every church does that! And it's almost feels natural for us to do that.

But it's not natural to the way Paul planted churches. And so it "naturally" causes problems. Among many other things, it creates division within the community of Christ, puts lots of pressure on mere humans, and paralyzes the legitimate spiritual gifts and contributions of everyday church members. So this was not cool for Paul, because it would prevent the churches from growing and spreading.

Because think of what happens when the pastor moves on or (heaven forbid) gets caught up in a scandal, or when there are popularity contests in ministry, or when a recession hits and the money runs out. Then what? Churches have a hard time bouncing back when the "head" gets chopped off because that was their central command.

So we talked about how Paul is making at least three main points to the church:

1. There is no hierarchy (3:5-7)

He answers his own question, "Who is Paul? Who is Apollos? We're just servants!" There are no all-stars; no one is any better than anyone else, especially the apostles. There is no "head" except Christ! So everyone in the church must contribute something, while God does the real magic. It doesn't mean that there is no structure or leadership...it's just that it's not that hierachal kind that we want to make it out to be.

2. The purpose, not a person or place, is the center (3:8-9)

That purpose is the Gospel of Christ, which is like the DNA of the church, the central intelligence. So again, it's God's gameplan, and everyone should be on board with that, not just some dude's own gameplan here or there.

3. YOU have it in you (3:16-17)

Probably the most important point. Paul asks the Corinthians, almost impatiently, "Don't you know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?" Duh! This line is fascinating, especially if you understand the temple and it's place in the story of Israel. The Israelites were always trying to make spiders out of starfish--centralizing God. They whined about not having a king, although God warned against it...but he still gave them one. If you read through 1 and 2 Kings, you see exactly how that turned out. And they also thought they couldn't live without a temple for God, even though God said that he can take care of himself. But he still gave them one.

Nevertheless, the purpose of the temple was to have a centralized presence of God where Israel could worship. It was supposed to be the center of their lives. And if you read 1 Kings 8, you'd see how beautiful the temple was; everything was made of gold! Unfortunately, it didn't last forever, because when Israel continually turned from God, they consequently were oppressed by other nations. And the temple was eventually destroyed.

So Paul makes this very interesting point...YOU have the "temple" inside of you. The very presence of God, what it means to be church, the gold...all of that--the center of everything. Each person in the church is as important or "central" as the next. So there were no all stars or professionals. This ministry thing wasn't like rocket science or the Olympics or anything. Paul basically said, "Look man, all we're doing is planting seeds and watering them!" How easy is that!? And since the regular Joes and Janes of the church have the temple in them, how much more central are they in doing those simple tasks in which God is ultimately responsible for making things grow?

And those three points make a world of difference when taken seriously. You see, because Paul and the apostles planted these ideas into their minds is exactly why the gospel spread so fast and that the entire Roman Empire (the biggest spider of all) crumbled under Christianity within a couple of centuries. It was like a simple virus that anyone could pass on. And it's no wonder that when the Romans tried to stop the Christians by persecuting them and killing its leaders, that the church just continued to spread. "We don't die," they said. "WE MULTIPLY!" There was no "human" head to cut off, because the intelligence was spread throughout the whole body of Christ. The Head (Christ) was in each person!

So the main argument for us was that it is harder (but not impossible) for people to come to know Christ, especially fringy people, and for the church to grow when it becomes centralized like a spider, even though we are pulled so strongly toward that.

But Michael Frost asks a great question, "What would church be like if you no longer had a building, could no longer meet on Sundays, had no head pastor, and had no money?" What if it all got cut off? Then what?

What would happen would depend largely on how we view ourselves...as a spider, or as a starfish?

A Year of Swimming in the Ocean

Just over a year ago, my wife and I were in southern Florida for a family wedding. It was in November, and we are from Chicago, so it was definitely a welcomed trip, weather-wise. It was also a pivotal time for me, because it was around that time that our group was positioning itself to launch the B Church. During that trip, I sensed God explain something very important to me about how I should live and how we should do this B Church thing.

Of course, we wanted to stay as close as possible to the beach, so our hotel was right along the beach front. It was very beautiful and the weather was great. And all the other people there, like us, flocked to this area to escape our much colder settings. Now my wife likes to tan, and she wanted to go down to the pool to "lay out." But I, being blessed with default tan, don't have much need for "laying out", nor do I care for it. So I just brought a book and sat next to her under one of the umbrellas at the pool.

After reading for a bit, I suddenly became unusually agitated by the fact that we (along with a whole lot of other people) were laying around the pool of the hotel while there was the actual BEACH right below us. I got really bothered by that, and I wasn't sure why. So I left the pool and began walking along the beach shore.

The weather wasn't too hot, maybe low 70's, and the water felt cold, so at first I didn't really feel like jumping in to swim. But as I was walking I began to pray a little and then I felt this great impulse, almost like a voice, urging me to jump in. So I did. Then I began praying more intensely, and something dawned on me as I let the waves crash on me--there is a vast difference between the pool and the ocean. The ocean is the real thing and is alive. The pool is man made and artificial. And we can either live and do church like a pool, or we can do it like the ocean.

But many of us have been accustomed to experiencing church the same way pools are set up - they're safe and neat, you can't run, there are scheduled hours of use, and they are perfectly chlorinated and maintained by staff. In pools, the atmosphere and the rules are imposed by the people who create and sustain them. The ocean on the other hand is immense and deep, it maintains itself, and it sets its own rules and makes its own boundaries, it has beautiful sunsets, and natural life to it; it's strong and obviously dangerous, but it's real. In the ocean, the atmosphere and the rules can only be imposed by the person who creates and sustains it...God.


And such a metaphor really excites me because the story of the Bible is an ocean story...not a pool story. So I have determined, to the best of my ability, to live an ocean life instead of a pool life. And to lead this B Church as an ocean church, not a pool church.


And this reminds me of the famed quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupery:


"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea."


I fear, though, that the Church in general has exchanged the crossings of the Red Sea, the walkings on water, and the shipwrecks on Malta for a neatly chlorinated box of water. Has it lost its sense of adventure and how God's kingdom really moves?


Nobody waits up all night to watch the sunset over the diving board. People do not risk their lives to attempt to swim from one side of the pool to the other. Explorers aren't diving into the 8 foot deep end to find new creatures. No kids are waiting at the edge with surf boards once the fat guy cannon-balls into the water.


And neither is our church an inflatable lounger floating in the middle of a resort pool. It is a charter boat 15 miles off shore with a bunch of fishermen on it.