What does Advent smell like?

   What does Advent smell like?

Not Advent as we have come to know it, as a commercially-intensive period leading up to the gift giving of Christmas, as the weeks in which we rush to get our Christmas decorations up that we might be in the holiday mood. So not the smell of evergreen bough and peppermint candy canes, not the spritz of genuine imitation aerosol pine scent for the artificial Christmas tree.

What does Advent – the season of waiting and hoping for the promised return of Jesus, the season that is like the deep dark blue of the sky just before the first rays of sunrise wake the rooster to announce to watchers the dawning of a new day – what does Advent smell like?

What does a promise smell like, what does hope smell like for you? Can you think of a time when there was a scent, a smell, a hint of something on the air that spoke to you of promise and hope?

            Maybe it was the early spring smell of a well-broken in leather baseball glove, a mitt rubbed to a soft suppleness through generous applications of Neats Foot Oil and a winter’s worth of being shaped around a Spaulding baseball by tight rubber bands. A scent that held the promise of  afternoons on the baseball diamond under a clear blue sky, punctuated by the ping of bat on ball, shouts of “dig it out!”, the anticipation of the next at-bat, the joy of hearing that first umpire’s cry of “Play ball!”

            Maybe it was that wondrous mixture of smells springing forth from your school bag on your arrival at the first day of school – the woody scent of meticulously sharpened #2 lead pencils, the deeper aroma of the pink rubber erasers, the tang of the vinyl three-ring binders. All holding out the promise of a new year and a new start, a clean slate, a chance to make new friends, to learn to love a new teacher, to discover things about the world you never imagined.

            Maybe the smell of promise and of hope was what greeted you on your return from college for winter vacation, the whiff you got of those Toll House cookies baked in anticipation of your arrival, or the pies baking in readiness for the evening’s celebratory meal.

Or maybe it was that Elysian fragrance that seemed to rise from dashboard and seat cushion as you found yourself behind the wheel of a new car, a scent that we all recognize by its scientific name, “New Car Smell.” A fragrance redolent with the promise of adventures on the open highway, of escape, of freedom.

            When I was a child my families summered in Ocean City, New Jersey, some 90 miles from our home outside Philadelphia. One glorious and much celebrated day, with school out for summer and the car packed to the gills, we would head out of the stifling heat and humidity of early June in Pennsylvania; back in those days before air-conditioning sanitized the passing scents, we drove through the noxious fumes of the gas refineries that lined the approaches to New Jersey, then down the long highways through the evergreen scent of the Jersey Pine Barrens, until, there it was: that heady salt marsh fragrance emanating from up ahead, followed soon by the salty tang of the bay as we approached the causeway to our summer home. As I drew in those seaside fragrances through flared nostrils there came, unbidden and yet not unexpected, the hope of a summer filled with body-surfing and laying in the hot sand, of sailing and bike riding throughout the town, of reconnecting with old friends, of meeting (this was later, but no less important for all that) new girls.

            Or maybe Advent smells for you like generic disinfectant, that ammonia-based pungent odor common to school stairwells and newly-swabbed church basement meeting rooms, like the one a man I know once frequented. Hope and promise smelled like that for him, a smell far different from that of smoke and gin and stale beer; Advent is ammonia transformed to perfume, a delicious scent that reminds him of the night he turned a corner, admitted he was an alcoholic, and began a rise to new life.

            What does Advent smell like? For John the Baptist, advent, the coming of the one for whom he prepared the way, smells like fire. He intends to scare us: repent, turn your life around, get a new attitude, get right with God; if you do not bear good fruit, you will be like a tree that is cut down and thrown into the fire; you will be the chaff, the stalks of the wheat, which will burn in an unquenchable fire. John’s hope is in the coming judgment, when our acceptance by God will be based not on our heredity, not on belonging to historic Israel, but on our response to God’s call for a decision, and on the fruits which grow out of that decision. John’s hope is in the fire that purifies.

            John, of course, got it partly right. In his sudden, abrupt appearance in Matthew’s gospel, in his call for a decisive decision on the part of the people, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near”, John embodies the message that God is near, and that God’s ways with the world are often abrupt, unforeseen, unexpected.

            And yet the psalmist and Isaiah turned out to have better senses of smells than did the Baptist. What does Advent smell like? In Psalm 72, the Messiah is “like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth.” The One who comes to save and redeem and, yes, to judge, smells like a summer rain on a newly shorn lawn. Can you recall the heady fragrance of that rain, the delicate greening scent that the moisture brings forth from the thirsting tips of blades eagerly drinking the restorative waters, the ozone-rich air that smells of the earth when she was young and new? The Messiah, the one who comes to judge, is one who heals and feeds and uplifts our spirits.

            What does Advent smell like? For Isaiah, Advent and the promise and hope smell like a new-born babe. You know the scent, the one that rises from the scalp of an infant and speaks to you of how good and wondrous life is, of untold possibilities and potentials to be discovered and unleashed, of how much there is to be thankful for. This is not the smell of fire, from which we rightly run; the smell of a newborn awakens us to just the opposite reaction, it attracts us, it draws us in, it makes us want to hug and embrace and bury our nose in the new one’s hair. The Messiah, the one who comes to judge, is one we cannot help but run to and tenderly embrace.

            What does promise smell like, for you?

What does hope smell like, for you?

What does Advent smell like? Remember that smell, search for it -- and follow your nose. You just might wind up in a manger, or at the foot of a cross, or at the door to an empty tomb.