Follow the Scent!

When I was a boy, I went out summer evenings into the bottom ground of the Kaskaskia River hunting for raccoons with my dad and our next-door neighbor, Jim. Dad and Jim loved this sport and exercised their dogs in and out of season. The challenge for the dogs was to pick up and follow the coon scent all the way to the tree. Occasionally, and much to the displeasure of their owners, these highly trained canines would fall prey to other scents and be drawn away!

"I smell something!"

For years, I have known how hunting dogs have this heightened sense of smell, but I was surprised to recently learn that the African giant pouched rat also has the same ability! This species of large rodents is being used in some seventy-eight countries throughout the world where individuals have been victimized by landmines. Statistics show these dangerous unexploded ordnances kill or maim fifteen to twenty-thousand civilians each year!

Research engineers, who work to study and train these specialized rodents, report that it takes about a year of rewards-based exercises out in the field for a trained rat to learn how to “map out” and identify the distinctive scent of the explosive charge, trinitrotoluene (TNT), that is used in these dangerous weapons of war. As a result, countless lives are being saved because of the humble efforts of these highly intelligent rodents!

This is Holy Week in the Christian tradition. We are only days away from commemorating the death of Jesus Christ on the Cross and celebrating His resurrection on Easter Sunday morning. Two religious leaders and members of the Jewish Sanhedrin, who secretly followed Jesus, factor prominently into this story of sadness leading to glorious hope and victory.

The Scriptures say, “Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jews. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs.” (John 19:38-40, NIV).

Matt Rawle in his book, The Final Days, remarks about this great act of devotion by Joseph and Nicodemus, “The only reason you gift a body with one hundred pounds of perfume is if you think the body will be there for quite a long time.” (p.112). Rawle, with insight, regards their actions as “inversive and subversive!” It was subversive because these great men were “secret followers.” And it was inversive because Jesus’ resurrection three days later would forever turn the world upside down!

Imagine what it was like for Mary Magdalene to be the first to witness the resurrection of Christ. She approached the tomb carrying nothing, saw the stone rolled away, and was fearfully dismayed. As she approached the opening, she didn't smell death, but rather her olfactory system was filled with the scent of perfume that was wafting from an empty tomb! Next, Mary encountered the risen Christ and initially mistook Him for a gardener. She fell at His feet and Jesus sent her back to the disciples. This is how John recorded her mission with an economy of words, “Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: ‘I have seen the Lord!’” (John 20:18).

This is a season of boundless joy! We are following the scent of the Risen Christ who has turned the world upside down and brought hope to everyone who invites Him to be their personal Savior and Lord! Our mission is to spread the fragrance of the life-giving and transforming Christ among those we encounter! Praise the Lord! Christ is Risen! He has Risen indeed! 

Mike Keppler, retired pastor,
active churchman and
doting grandparent.
Contact: drmjkeppler@gmail.com
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