A sermon preached by the Dean of Melbourne, the Very Revd Dr Andreas Loewe,
for the Fifth Sunday in Lent 2025:
Throughout this Lenten season, we have been exploring what I have called ‘heart work’—the inward transformation that God seeks to bring about in each of us. From contrasting heart work with hard work on Ash Wednesday, to exploring how Christ makes God’s word directly accessible to our hearts, to considering the courage to ask in prayer, to witnessing the transformation of individuals when we trust in God’s good purposes for us—our journey has led us deeper into how God changes us from within.
This Sunday, we find ourselves a week out from Holy Week, and our readings invite us to consider yet another dimension of heart work: how the inward transformation God works in us is shown forth in our lives. How God’s transforming work can radiate outwards to others. And our readings give us a powerful metaphor for this outward movement—that of a beautiful scent or fragrance—that emanates. An aroma that fills not just our own lives but the spaces and relationships around us. Genuine heart work produces an aroma—the very aroma of Christ—that cannot be contained.
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In our gospel reading we are taken close to Jerusalem, to Bethany, and to a dinner party given in Jesus’ honour. Just six days before the Passover—less than a week before his crucifixion, Martha serves the meal, Lazarus her brother (whom Jesus had raised from the dead only days earlier) reclines at the table, alive and well. Their sister Mary enters the room, and she carries with her ‘a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard’ (John 12.3).
What follows is one of the most extravagant acts of devotion recorded in the gospels. Mary takes this perfume—made from resinous trees in the foothills of the Himalayas imported across the spice route to Jerusalem—and anoints Jesus’ feet. Not only does she pour precious perfume worth a year’s wages over Jesus’ feet. She then proceeds to wipe his feet with her hair. As she pours out her devotion at Jesus’ feet, we read that ‘the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume’ (12.3).
John’s description of the scene really seek to engage all our senses: as we hear the story, we are not only meant to picture the scene but to smell it. Mary’s fragrance isn’t contained; it spreads throughout the house. Everyone who is there experiences it. The aroma of Mary’s devotion is not something that’s just between her and Jesus—but it affects the entire community gathered there. Everybody is able to smell the beautiful perfume that’s being poured out over Jesus’ feet.
What is true for the perfume in John’s story is true for our heart work. When God truly transforms us within, the effects of that transformation cannot be contained. If we imagined the transforming work of God as a scent, it would be as if that fragrance could be detected by everyone. It permeates our relationships, our activities, our entire presence in the world because we emanate something beautiful and costly that has not been there before.
For Mary of Bethany pouring out the costly perfume on Jesus’ feet is the peak of her journey with Jesus, it’s the culmination of her heart work—her coming to understand who Jesus was and what he meant to her. Earlier in the gospels, we find Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet, listening to his teaching while Martha busied herself with tasks (Luke 10.38-42). Now, she returns to those same feet, not just to listen but to pour out her most precious possession. Earlier in the gospel, we hear her confess her belief that Jesus truly is the resurrection. Now she anoints his body for a grave that she knows will not contain him.
Mary’s act of devotion shows us a number of qualities that characterise heart work. The first thing to note is that her devotion is costly. The perfume she poured on Jesus’ feet was worth three hundred denarii—at the time about a year’s wages for a labourer. Mary’s gesture was not a calculated, measured response; it’s an overflow of devotion that disregarded conventional financial wisdom. Mary spares nothing and gives all.
The second thing to note is how vulnerable Mary makes herself. She literally lets down her hair—something a respectable Jewish woman would not normally do in public. Not only that: she uses her hair as a towel, to wipe Jesus’ feet. In doing so, she makes herself vulnerable to criticism, which indeed comes swiftly from Judas.
The last thing to note is that Mary’s action is prophetic. When Jesus defends her action, he points out: ‘She bought the costly oil so that she might keep it for the day of my burial’ (12.7). Now it’s hard for us to say whether Mary fully understood the implications of her act, or whether she was simply following an intuitive prompting. But I would like to think that her own heart work so closely aligned her with God’s unfolding purposes that she anointed Jesus for burial before anyone else recognised that his burial was imminent.
The fragrance that filled the house that day in Bethany, then, was more than expensive perfume. It was a sacramental action—an outward sign of inward grace. Mary’s perfume symbolises the fragrance of wholehearted devotion, the aroma of love poured out without reservation, the grace of a heart so transformed by Jesus that holding anything back was unthinkable.
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This image of a grace-filled fragrance filling a house finds its parallel in our first lesson, from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. In our lesson Paul writes, ‘But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him’. He continues, by way of an explanation: ‘For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life’ (2 Cor 2.14-16).
In our lesson, Paul uses a vivid image from Roman culture—a triumphal procession in which victorious generals would parade their troops through the streets, accompanied by the sweet smell of incense. In Paul’s image, Christ is the victorious general and the foot soldiers led in his procession are the people he has claimed for his own—you and I—we are the people led by Christ in triumph. Paul goes even further: we are not merely participants in a procession; we ourselves have become the fragrance that announces Christ’s victory.
‘We are the aroma of Christ,’ Paul tells the Corinthians. Not ‘we carry the aroma’ or ‘we distribute the aroma,’ but ‘we are the aroma’. We don’t just speak about Christ or represent Christ; in some mysterious way, through our heart work we have been transformed to emanate Christ. Our very presence carries the fragrance of his reality. Like Mary’s perfume filling the house in Bethany, this aroma of Christ that we become spreads ‘in every place’. It cannot be contained, or reserved for certain relationships or settings. Where heart work is genuine, it permeates all aspects of our lives.
In our lesson, Paul introduces a striking paradox. The same aroma leads to opposite reactions in different people. ‘To the one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life’ (2.16). The very same Christ-aroma that brings life to some brings a sense of death to others. Looking back on our gospel reading, we can also see this paradox at work. The same perfume that Jesus receives as a beautiful preparation for his burial, Judas condemns as wasteful. The same act that shows forth Mary’s devotion triggers Judas’s deceit. The fragrance of Christ fills the entire house, but people respond to it differently—some are drawn to it, others recoil.
Genuine heart work—the kind that makes us the aroma of Christ—will inevitably produce mixed reactions. Not everyone welcomes the fragrance of Christ. To some, it is the sweet smell of life and hope. To others, it is the troubling odour of judgment and death to self. Both Mary’s act of devotion and Paul’s image of being the aroma of Christ point to an important fact: being transformed through Christ, becoming fragrance, is costly. Mary’s perfume was worth a year’s wages. For that fragrance to fill the house, the jar had to be broken open. The perfume had to be poured out—used up entirely rather than meted out in small portions.
Similarly, for us to become the aroma of Christ requires a similar breaking open—we break open our lives. As Paul says elsewhere, ‘We have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us’ (2 Cor 4.7). The treasure—the aroma of Christ—is released when the vessel is broken. This is heart work at its most demanding. It requires us to be broken open, to pour ourselves out, to hold nothing back in reserve. It means living with the vulnerability that comes from authentic discipleship, from letting the hearts that have been transformed by God be fully expressed in our words and actions.
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Judas objects to Mary’s extravagance with seemingly practical concerns: ‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?’ (John 12.5). In a seeming aside, John tells us the real motive: ‘He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it’ (12.6). Judas here represents the calculating mind that always seeks to limit devotion, to keep it within reasonable bounds, to maintain control. Mary, on the other hand, represents a transformed heart that knows no such bounds, that pours itself out without calculation.
Which are we more like? Do we measure our devotion carefully, making sure it doesn’t cost too much or make us too vulnerable? Or are we willing to be broken open, to become the fragrance that fills the house, to be the aroma of Christ?
Jesus defends Mary with striking words: ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial’ (John 12.7). He reminds his disciples that Mary’s extravagant act of devotion is actually a preparation for his suffering, death and burial—and, by implication, for his resurrection. The aroma of Christ is always connected to death as well as to life. Paul tells us that to some it is ‘a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life’ (2 Cor 2.16). The two cannot be separated. The perfume that anoints for burial also fills the house with its living fragrance.
This is the paradox at the heart of our faith: that the way to life leads through death. The path to resurrection passes through the cross. The heart work that transforms us into the aroma of Christ involves both dying and rising with him. As we approach Holy Week, we are invited to follow Christ on this path—the path of self-giving love that leads to death but doesn’t end there. We are called to be broken open like Mary’s jar of perfume, to pour ourselves out without reservation, to fill the houses of our lives with the fragrance of Christ.
Letting ourselves be opened up and poured out in this way is not easy. Even Paul, after describing believers as the aroma of Christ, exclaims, ‘Who is sufficient for these things?’ (2 Cor 2.16). On our own the task of becoming Christ’s fragrance in the world is beyond our capacity. If we rely on our own strength or try to manufacture the aroma of Christ through our own efforts it is artificial, hard work. Because true heart work is not our achievement; it is God’s gift. The transformation that makes us the aroma of Christ is the work of the Holy Spirit within us. Our part is to yield to this work, to allow ourselves to be broken open, to pour out what God has poured in.
What does this mean for us as we continue our Lenten journey and move toward Holy Week?
First of all, it invites us to consider the aroma that emanates from our lives. What is it that people experience in our presence? Do they sense something of Christ—his love, his truth, his grace? Or do they smell only our ambition, our anxiety, our judgment? The fragrance we emit reveals the state of our hearts more accurately than our words ever could.
Secondly, it calls us to be willing to be broken open. Mary’s perfume could not fill the house until the jar was broken. The aroma of Christ cannot emanate from lives that remain tightly sealed, carefully controlled, invulnerable. Heart work requires that kind of vulnerability—a willingness to let God break open the protective shells we build around ourselves.
Thirdly, it reminds us that the same aroma will produce different reactions. Some will be drawn to the fragrance of Christ in us; others will be repelled by it. We cannot control how others respond to the aroma we emit. Our responsibility is not to manage the reactions of others, but to ensure that what emanates from us is truly the fragrance of Christ, not the odour of our own self-importance or self-righteousness.
And finally, it points us toward Holy Week—toward the ultimate breaking open and pouring out that occurred on the cross. As we walk the way of the cross with Jesus, we are invited to allow our own lives to be broken open in new ways, to pour ourselves out more completely, to become more fully the aroma of Christ in our world.
In a world filled with the stench of violence, greed, and despair, you and I are called to be a different kind of fragrance—the aroma of Christ: a scent that speaks of love poured out without reservation, of sacrifice that leads to life, of hope that persists even in the face of death.
This Lent, I pray that God would give us grace to commit ourselves to the heart work that makes us this fragrance. I pray that we, like Mary, are empowered to break open the most precious parts of ourselves—our hearts—and open them up and pour them out in devotion to Christ. I pray that, through our heart work, the houses of our lives—our homes, our workplaces, this community of faith at the heart of Melbourne—would be filled with the unmistakable aroma of Christ.