Holy signature fragrances

This week's verses are Exodus 30:22-38:

The Lord spoke to Moses, “Take choice spices: 12½ pounds of free-flowing myrrh, half that—about 6¼ pounds—of sweet-smelling cinnamon, 6¼ pounds of sweet-smelling cane, and 12½ pounds of cassia, all weighed according to the sanctuary shekel, and four quarts of olive oil. You are to make this into a sacred anointing oil, a perfumed compound, the work of a perfumer. It will be sacred anointing oil.

“With it you are to anoint the tent of meeting, the ark of the testimony, the table and all its utensils, the lampstand and its utensils, the altar of incense, the altar for the burnt offering and all its utensils, and the laver and its base. So you are to sanctify them, and they will be most holy; anything that touches them will be holy.

“You are to anoint Aaron and his sons and sanctify them so that they may minister as my priests. And you are to tell the Israelites: ‘This is to be my sacred anointing oil throughout your generations. It must not be applied to people’s bodies, and you must not make any like it with the same recipe. It is holy, and it must be holy to you. Whoever makes perfume like it and whoever puts any of it on someone not a priest will be cut off from his people.’”

The Lord said to Moses, “Take spices, gum resin, onycha, galbanum, and pure frankincense of equal amounts and make it into an incense, a perfume, the work of a perfumer. It is to be finely ground, and pure and sacred. You are to beat some of it very fine and put some of it before the ark of the testimony in the tent of meeting where I will meet with you; it is to be most holy to you. And the incense that you are to make, you must not make for yourselves using the same recipe; it is to be most holy to you, belonging to the Lord. Whoever makes anything like it, to use as perfume, will be cut off from his people.”

 At first glance, these verses seem like a very detailed perfume recipe. And they are, but they're also something more. They're a picture of how important holiness is to God. Not holiness in the sense of being all churchy and behaving yourself, but holiness in the sense of something which cannot be misappropriated into becoming something other than what it is meant to be.

The Bible is full of calls to holiness. God says not to use his name in vain. He says not to conduct business as usual on the Sabbath. He says not to worship anything but him. And here he says that his secret recipes for perfume and incense are not to be used for anything but religious service.

In that sense, holiness is something like our modern intellectual property laws. If you want to sell a cola, only Coca-cola can use the Coke logo. Anyone else who tries will be swarmed by lawyers. Or if you come up with a popular song, or make a good movie, only you can sell copies of it. But what would happen if anyone could call their drink Coke, or use the name of your band as their own and perform your songs?

It would confuse things, wouldn't it? If you went to the store to buy Coke, how would you know you were getting the right one? Or imagine you invented an engine that runs on air, and someone else copied your work and made millions from it and didn't give you a dime. As the creator, how could you get what was rightfully yours if there was no rule that said that your creation is your exclusive property?

Have you ever had a song you liked, and then someone used it in a commercial and it just ruined it for you? Every time you hear the song now, that product image shows up in your mind, uninvited, like the neighbor's smelly cat. Using the song for something else cheapened it, and your spirit could no longer connect to it like before.

Here, in these verses, God is crafting a sensual religious experience for his people. In his temple, there's art and music, and these fragrances. When people would show up, they would experience things they would not experience elsewhere. The unique scent of the oils and incense would signal to them that they were in a special place.

But what if anyone could make and use this perfume? Imagine your aunt Hilda, who always wears three times as much perfume as she needs, had this scented oil. And imagine the prostitutes in the local red light district started burning the incense to attract customers. Imagine taxi drivers had air fresheners with these fragrances. How special would the temple seem to your senses if you walked in there, and suddenly instead of just thinking of God, you were also thinking about hookers, taxi drivers, and your aunt Hilda at the same time? 

When God created the scented oil recipe, or the incense recipe, it wasn't just about things smelling nice. It was the creation of a specific signal, like a lighthouse for the nose, that would let people know they were in a special place and that the wearer had been cleared by him for service. It was his signature. Using the fragrance for its sensual experience without connecting it to its purpose would be an obscene act of forgery. 

So holiness is about a couple things here. It is about the sacred right of the creator to choose how his creation is used. And it is about not letting things get mixed up in your head to the point where you can't tell the sacred from the profane.

When we're asked to be holy, we can keep those principles in mind. Are we living the way that our creator wants us to live? Does it express his exclusive ownership of us? Or do other things hold competing claims? Do we worship him in a way that isn't polluted with other motives?

During this season of Lent, people have traditionally focused on holiness and rededicating themselves to God. So think about these questions and see if it helps to reestablish your focus.