Mk14v1-11
The Plot to Kill Jesus
It was now two days before the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth and kill him, 2 for they said, “Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar from the people.”
Jesus Anointed at Bethany
3 And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head. 4 There were some who said to themselves indignantly, “Why was the ointment wasted like that? 5 For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they scolded her. 6 But Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 7 For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me. 8 She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial. 9 And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.”
Judas to Betray Jesus
10 Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them. 11 And when they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money. And he sought an opportunity to betray him.
[0] INTRO
Familiar passage - a similar pouring out of ointment is recounted in each of the gospels. I am, if anything, over-familiar and overly comfortable with this as a parable about “worship” and “giving”, as a metaphor for making art.
In the last few weeks of sitting inside this passage, and chatting with housemates, I’ve been struck by three rough themes that have perhaps more challenging and more urgent meaning.
The Context of the passion narrative ~ I’ve tended to think of this passage as a free floating aromatic vignette merely adjacent to the crucifixion that follow. But I want to explore ways the perfume does considerable work to up the ante in the violent melodrama and political turmoil that Jesus is stirring up.
Is to consider face value Smell taken literally. I have never had this passage unpacked with a view to modifying the actual odour or aroma of the congregation. What would that even be? We think about Christian music, and Christian art and architecture. What would calculated olfactory curation involve in our life of faith?
Is to calibrate Waste as a political and economic tool or strategy. I’ve tended to reduce the ‘woman’ here to a non-player-character expending monopoly money in fairytale fable where the anodyne metaphorical moral of the story is that it’s nice to be nice ~ without attention to the aggressive severity of the destruction of resource that her act involves.
I’m going to try to unpack these, to try to persuade you and to persuade me, there is more going on, these aspects of this woman’s action here demand an answer, demand an application.
[1] Urgent Context
[2] Literal Smell
[3] Provocative Waste
Through it all, I’m interested for you to ask:
[Q1] What is your perfume?
[Q2] How should we smell?
[1] CONTEXT
Jesus context is our context, to a certain extent. We are also contextuated, we have a context, there are forces and politics in play - Jesus operates in a way that is sympathetic to that context an milieu, Jesus operates in a way that subverts that milieu. When we take our cross to follow Jesus, we do not do so in a vacuum. The need to study Jesus as a spiritual tactician remains. The need to be girded against spiritual opposition remains. The need to be wiley political agents remains.
Looking at the perfume passage in context
[1.1] Recurrence, and the way it is immediately positioned in the narrative, bookended by
[1.2] Opposition and
[1.3] Betrayal
[1.1] CONTEXT - RECURRENCE
Jesus ministry happens across time, and he’s anointed like this with perfume, by a woman, three times, because three is a magic number ~ the three body lotions, the beginning middle and end of something -- there is a trajectory in Jesus ministry, and there is a trajectory in your life. Three anointings give us. emphasis, nuance and escalation.
1.1.1 Emphasis through repetition
One could synthesise these accounts as referring to one occasion. But why? Better that this happened multiple times. Spaced repetition and memory, establishing a musical refrain, forging a trope.
The same thing can happen several times for a reason, (Ian Fleming - Goldfinger)
Once is happenstance,
Twice is a coincidence
Three times is enemy action..
Akin to trope of bras thrown on the stage of a rock band on tour emblematic of adulation - this is different but there’s something slightly inappropriate about what’s happening here, and it keeps happening. What means?
I would keep in mind A high view of Jesus authorial agency, inviting these events. High view of the gospel authors intending us to understand these as repeated events - Why be precise about 2 days or 6 days if wrong ~ better Judas re “another one?”
1.1.2 Nuance through Difference (prophet, priest, king)
in defense of two dinners at bethany during jesus' last week in jerusalem
Do you think about ways you meaningfully repeat yourself. ~~ feels a bit like minority report - differential analysis of similar events. Changes over time/season/context
Luke
Early in Jesus' ministry an unnamed sinful woman at the home of the Simon, a wealthy Pharisee, anointed His feet with ointment and wiped His feet with her hair (Lk 7:36-38).
PROPHET (appointed to convict sin and call repentance)
“If he were a prophet..” - Jesus at the fringes, touching the marginalised, and inviting repentance.
Also particularly about Jesus relationship with women in public. Scandalous. Worship as a liberal unboundaried propriety scandal Vs the behaviour of women in public. Whereas the forgiven persons response of excessive hospitality as having an equivalent to or directly erotic dimension.
John
Mary of Bethany anointed Jesus' feet and wiped His feet with her hair on Saturday, 6 days before the passover - the day the sacrificial lambs or kids were to be chosen (Exodus 12:3), Jesus rode into Jerusalem-the sacrificial Lamb of God (Jn 12:1-3).
PRIEST (mediating atonement)
Jesus as sacrificial lamb
Mark/Matt
An unnamed woman anointed Jesus' head at the home of Simon the Leper in Bethany two days before the Passover. (Mt 26:1-16: Mk 14:1-11)
KING (defeat enemies, freeing captives, ruling a domain)
Annoints the head.
Wherever the evangelion is preached - political valence, a come at me bro.
An inscription that heralds the supposedly benevolent reign of Caesar Augustus (27 BC-AD 14) reads: “…the birthday of the god [Augustus] was the beginning of the good news that came through him to the world.”
https://www.nae.org/theology-behind-euangelion/The English word gospel is derived from the Anglo-Saxon godspell (“good story”). The classical Greek word euangelion means “a reward for bringing of good news” or the “good news” itself. In the emperor cult particularly, in which the Roman emperor was venerated as the spirit and protector of the empire, the term took on a religious meaning: the announcement of the appearance or accession to the throne of the ruler. In contemporary Greek it denoted a weighty, authoritative, royal, and official message.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/biblical-literature/New-Testament-literature#ref598075
1.1.3 Escalation through progression
1.1.3.1 - This time it’s different - Timing and crescendo
Where as John’s account 6 days before, Matt/Mark’s account 2 days before..
Count down timer - ‘His time had come..’
In Time - Justin Timberlake In Time Clip - 'Natural Selection'
Do you think about ways time is short.
Spending time without reserve
Chronos time vs kairos time
Wedding photographer in the dressing room
1.1.3.2 - This time it’s different - This time it is terminal - no more anointings - breaks the bottle, breaks the pattern - the end of the beginning
Intractable - breaks the jar, there will be no encore. She breaks the bottle, can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. Narrative Hinge point, seals the deal
1.1.3.3 - This time it’s different - This time it is the climax of the melodrama - Judas turns, The straw the breaks the camel’s back, breaks Judas - beginning of the end
Like clockwork (Clockwork Orange, or Zoolander..) - The wound up machine now, like the row of dominoes falling, not a coincidence, pushing Judas to breaking point
Before foreshadowing - the dimming of the lights (v1-2)
??happening at night
??reclining at table
Cat and mouse -
Low-lit, darkened room, Other senses are heightened
passover and fever pitch
During - the sound of the breaking of the bottle
After the lingering after smell - she has anointed me for burial (vs John’s let her alone that she may keep it for the day of my burial)
Jesus is agent, he could have opted out
[1.2] CONTEXT - OPPOSITION (14v1-2)
It was now two days before the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth and kill him, for they said, “Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar from the people.”
Placing this act of perfuming in between its bookend passages
1.2.1 - There is an unseen opposition
Stealth and opposition - Would we be better Christians if we considered Christianity as a true conspiracy theory?
Jerusalem, opposition, pre-Passion, stealth
There is another side on the field. A conscious, intentional calculating opposition, waiting. Over against a naive sense of Jesus ministry, and a naive sense of your own ministry
1.2.1.1 - Opposition: Waiting - timing
Forces arrayed against you are Waiting, Seeking, Biding-their-time - waiting for vulnerable moment vs fair weather christianity
Ambiguous waiting, waiting for an opportune time.
Waiting til you are Hungry Angry Lonely Tired - four horsemen
Holy moments, Kairos, - not all times are the same, not all moments have the same power, the same valence, - seasons and the signs of the times, his time had not yet come - time is not flat
1.2.1.2 - Opposition: Mustering - the mischief of a committee
Moments of change are anticipated by the mustering of forces, the polarisation of politics.
Collective opposition, mob,
Luke17v37 “..the corpse.. ..there vultures will gather..”
Mustering - coalescing a perfect storm, temptations compound
Pride, Lust, Gluttony wait in the wings.
A co-belligerent alliance of conservatives & liberals, in this case, a freedom fighter & the putative establishment
You will know where the battle line lies, just follow the smell of death, and so follow those species who are most attuned to death’s odour as 2Co2v16.
1.2.1.3 - Opposition: Unseen - by stealth
By Stealth
Waiting to pick up a scent
Fee fi fo fum - i smell the blood of an english man
Great white shark
Smell and the unseen - the gathering vultures around the carrion
1.2.2 There is a signal - you have a tracker planted in you,
There are dark forces which are arrayed against you. Overstating the case, but one could say, if you are not provoking the establishment to violence against you, you are not trying hard enough. How much do you have at stake, especially as 20-somethings, especially in this Disneyland. Jesus kicking the hornet’s nest. What is your perfume, how should we smell - if we’re taking up our cross there is an olfactory preamble..
1.2.2.1 - Signal: Smell as a lab leak, smell as harbinger of contagion - goes before you, lingers after you. Smell spreads to others
You do smell ~ it is the nascent latent graduated brownian percolation osmosing a concentration - the coming of the kingdom is imperceptible as a slowly boiling frog.
Jesus is patient zero - The walking dead
v37 _”..where the corpse is.. ..there vultures will gather”_ around a particular locus.. Changes sparks from a node, the hinge crux fulcrum that bends history toward justice. The seed’s spring point.
1.2.2.2 - Signal: Smell as a tell-tale, smell as a give away - give yourself away. Be found out. Take up your cross ~ intentionally, make yourself a target, be conspicuous. Smell leads others to you.
You should smell ~ intentionally, up to and including, provoking opposition.
**The scent in Attack the Block - the pheromones that will lead the enemy to him. - Moses - Douse me in it. Come at me bro.
Gradual spread from a node, Circling a source, tightening a noose
He that smelt it dealt it, smell a rat, smells fishy, sniff out a mole
Vs the deer stalking
Ominous - like bleeding into the water when Jaws is about
In your typical pandemic fiction, a disease outbreak begins with a single, dramatic moment: A vial of infected blood breaks, a sickly monkey escapes a lab, an alien satellite falls from the sky.
“..not in ways that can be observed..” Change* is a’happening beneath the surface, it can’t be observed because it is hiding in plain sight in the very midst of you.
The Coming of the Kingdom
Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, “The kingdom of God vis not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”
[1.3] CONTEXT - SIDES ~ BETRAYAL - (Mk14v9-10)
10 Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them. 11 And when they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money. And he sought an opportunity to betray him.
So then v10, the smell, it seems, was the last straw, conspicuous and impractical and costly - offensive in every way to anyone with a sense of justice or decency. I rather imagine Judas gets to the chief priests' lair still smelling pungent and multivalent.
How prophets should speak to priests - viz Nehemiah and how should prophets speak to Kings.
How to argue for risk over against care
1.3.1 Priests, Compassion and how to achieve care
The Chief Priests - exceptional treatment by the Romans, and these priests were held responsible for maintaining very fragile peace.
I think it is unproductive to read the Pharisees as mere pantomime baddies, I wonder what that conversation was like, was there a debate, who proposes such a motion, what recent terrorist attacks loomed large in the mind of this parliament of priests and scribes, and who rallied opposition rebels at the eleventh hour with the spectre of revolution and what greater-good was presented as just cause for just war?
I plot minor violences, how do I vote with my feet and by default to serve a status quo and obscure collateral damage by veiled cryptic ethical language. My responsibilities to my dependents are clear, the moral case for drone strikes against this Galilean threat to my city’s peace is vital - my position has nothing to do with organised jealousy, risk-averse self-reliance, politickal pride, faith in the tradition of the nation state nor affection for the comforts of the market economy.. Sometimes murder is just the most responsible thing to do. While I enjoy the comforts of a nuclear armed country that
1.3.2 Judas - Switching sides and how to achieve change
One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Are we the bad guys?
Speaking to myself, venturing nothing
Anti utilitarian - Over throw the bourgeois
1.3.3 Judas & Priests - Smell divides opinion - Multivalent
Disgust and co-belligerence.
Ambiguous meaning - To one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. (2Co2v16)
How subtle the notion of sides is - are we the bad guys?
[Q1] What is your perfume?
[Q2] How should we smell?
[2] SMELL & THE BODY IN PRACTICE OF COMMUNAL FAITH LIFE
I want to provoke you to think about smell, about perfume, about the act of consciously augmenting the air we breathe. I don’t generally do it or think about it much, but I should, you might and you could if I can find words.
Preaching about smell, is like dancing about architecture. I’ll try.
Smell is interesting to me, because of its absence today.
My aim, beyond recreational contrarianism, is more serious. The bible uses smell extensively and it is not enough to relegate this to metaphor - as people in the past smelt so that we could spend our time on more the important matters of a theory of mind and the problem of access.
The bible uses smell extensively and I want to nudge you and me beyond smell as a nice to have that will generally be value-engineered out… to arrive at a justified imperative regarding smell?
How do you setup such a question as a question worth your time?
What is it to smell smell? Do we, should we and how?
ways of thinking about smell
2.1 What opposes smell? (in me, in church and in the world)
2.2 What benefits of attention to smell?
2.1 What opposes smell? (in me, in church and in the world)
SMELL VS
You become like what you worship: _“Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat. Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them.”_ Ps115v4-8
I would observe a spice deficit in modernity’s life hygienic generally and in the tawdry banality of low protestant faith at large and in my life in particular, and so, to riff on a theme, and to ask, how should we then smell?
Rarified high-art homeopathic minimalism and austerity’s bleach bath medicalised asceticism both strip out the smell of life. Why? Great labour is expended achieved smell-free places. Why? In church too, we are still cost engineering prophetic perfume performance in the low churches to spite our nose. Why?
Modernity
2.1.1 neutrality
2.1.2 impersonal
2.1.3 disembodied
2.2.1 Smell vs modern neutrality
In modern life, nothing tastes. Bothersome Man captures a universe in which a preeminent virtue is made of laboratory sterility, the blank canvas, the white box. Perfect fungibility finds no aroma, follows no scent and leaves no trace. Arriving in our motel reality, the homogenised clientele are served by no single smell better than no smell at all, no association better than no association at all, we are suspicious of everything except infinite neutrality. The generic and the universal commodified commodity must be sanitised, antiseptic and deodorised, for we sell to cyborgs dreaming of electric sheep.
Agent Smith interrogating Morpheus - he despises the smell, if there is such a thing..
Smell as airborne and pervasive vs hygiene
Disgust at boundaries disgust at lack of boundaries
Unseemly and inappropriate
Open plan modernity - the spread of smell
Christianity controlled by notions of what is appropriate
Carnival of rich become poor
Neutral and universal
One size fits all
2.2.2 Smell as essence/identity - personalism vs modernity
You have an essence and perceive essences
Unique signature vs mere fungible parts
Having a smell and being a smeller are constituent to subject formation - who you are.
Dogs picking up a scent - the trace of a thing - locator by its parts
“Somewhere between proust and the psychogeographers - Given the proven importance of smell to our subject formation, then, we ought to be suspicious of these tenacious efforts to deodorise the spaces we live in: chemical air fresheners, odourless materials, and rigorous hygiene regulations are nothing less than an attack on our most precious memories and collective cultural identities. wholesale deodorization, he warns us. The American motel bathroom, sanitized for your protection, is the antiseptic symbol of sensuous death..”
You are in many ways the sum of your memories
When everything is masked, everything is sanitised for your protection..
Smell is a true truth - clearing demons - empty house
Smell is a true truth - an inevitability in an organic world. Nothing smells of nothing for very long. A church that persists to avoid the consciously proactive aromatic, will invariably become musty, stale, stultified, as faintly the bleached and synthetic air mingles with spilt ribena and peeled varnish from the warped parquet floor.
What is it to value or not value smell?
Disbelief in the power/effect of smell
By contrast - Lush/Subway
Devaluation of benefit, cannot justify risk/cost
By contrast - aromatherapies/perfume
Diminution of the priority of the salience
By contrast - smellovision and the need to tell memorable stories
Smell as organic vs Neutral synthetic smell
Air freshener that displaces one smell with another
Smell as a covering over, smell as a compensation
2.2.3 - Smell as breath-work vs disembodiment
We’ve all spent 3 years on zoom calls, behind masks, at precisely a distance to prevent that same airborne transfer of virus and smell. We have become, inthis way, thorough modern
Smell is old fashioned, a brownian pervasion, something in the air of the elevator.. Consider Lynx’s fishman
- what an embarrassment of biology we are, what a danger embodiment is, what an impediment to your self-actualisation this sweating husk of a frame is.
If we are not bodies, if we have not bodies, if we consider our true self to exist in a disembodied form then better to double down on the cyborg version of ourselves - that avatar of true being. We want to believe in ot aloof detached brain-in-vat sovereignty of self made self-hood. But smell, perhaps more than any of the senses gives the lie to this.
Atmospheric spice: God is Spirit* Charlie Cleverly cite’s Coco Chanel in his Song of Songs commentary,
“[Perfume] is the unseen, unforgettable, ultimate accessory of fashion that heralds your arrival, and prolongs your departure..”
She identifies something vital about the behaviour of fragrance, which is not incidental to its use in scripture. In fragrance we are perceiving the pervasive and invasive noumenal, that pneuma that rushes ahead of you. If we are to be the aroma of Christ we must approach the world with sensitivity to atmosphere, of breath, ruach:
(n/a) What does that smell like?
Pete Grieg - He breathes out we breathe in
What is within you
Lungful
COVID and aerobic being
2.2 What benefits of attention to smell?
2.2.1 connecting with the body
Incarnation - right and positive use of the body, entering the real
Wisdom is a body theology Rm12v1
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship
The body is a primitive shame, and smell is a pre-conceptual acknowledgement of that embodiment. Smell bypasses language to access memory and association - and as such is, perhaps it is wise to be cautious with a potent tool for manipulation.
Smell is like the gift of tongues, it has a sprawling way of seeping through your armour.
Smell is embodied cognition
2.2 Embedded Cognition
2.3 Extended Cognition
2.4 Enactive Cognition
Smell - being in a body - you move through air
Smell - being in an environment - air moves through you
2.2.2 language/memory
SMELL AS LANGUAGE
*Signifier signified* So then, spice as a metaphor and smell as an allegory. I think, it is only effective to enrich language, if we are actively participating in the semantic signified. What good are the prayers-of-the-saints-like-sweet-smelling-incense Ps141v2 if there is no incense to smell _like._
Cheap hollow metaphors appealing that the world should taste-and-see the aroma-of-Christ.. these should not be played recklessly by dour disembodied ones, unwilling to pay the price to do the labour of furnishing metaphors with felt and received meaning.
Mt2v11-12 (2) 'Frankincense' and smell memory. Wisdom recognises aroma 2Cor2v15 and its power to convey truth Mk14v9 to your memory.
Smell as language & memory
2.2.2.1 - intentional taking smells
2.2.2.2 - intentional making smells
2.2.2.1 - intentional taking smells - life examined, attention economy
Memory - smell is.
History and memory, personal and collective
What we preserve from past as conservatives Vs what we share
Nostalgia - smell can be
Conjuring a past smell being Vs entropy Former glory
smell and memory
ritual
dementia
early deep engrained memories
muscle memories
musical memories
**aromatherapy
I remember I had friend who was acutely attentive to smell, discerning who owned a scarf and where it had been. What would it be to be mindfully attentive of the pheromonal spirit of the age. I consider that all of life could be wine-tasting, all of life could be discerning the bouquet of wet-saddle, cat’s-pee, nutty musk, cherry soil and cardamom toffee. Ours should be a life examined, a connoisseurial comportment to every inch of God’s creation.
2.2.2.2 - intentional making smells - we make and remake culture
Memorial - smell should be
Smell as memorial Conjuring a future memory
Tombs of the prophets and the embalmed faith of a dead teacher
The instinct to spice, Extravagant, excessive
Cloying Scratch and sniff sentimentality
Smell as language & affect
The role of smell in associative communication
Smell as ceremony / annointing
king
priest
prophet
Smell in the ceremony of the dead
*Smells concern death* To acknowledge embodiment is to acknowledge decay, a flaking dissipation into the air, to concede we are mortal frames ebbing towards death, subject to unseen forces, ultimately overcome by the bacterial breakdown and a return to dust. Over and against this, given resurrection, we are empowered to boldly smell, with a full-bodied funk, with an oak-aged well-steeped substance of somatic totality.
Meditation on Smell Memories
Calm Sleep Stories | Stephen Fry's 'Blue Gold'
🌸 Again, on the balcony this morning, the crystal air presses into the foreground as next door’s dawn warmed jasmine perfumes a thickness to the air-as-air. I mean no gooey mindful oneness by dwelling on this presence, but a note to self, against my own future forgetfulness of air. In peace time as well as this current crisis, we steward what we put into the air - we individually, and as a church, have a responsibility for the olfactory emanation that hangs in our wake.
Mk14v5-6 It's the smell, if there is such a thing. We are still cost engineering prophetic perfume performance in the low churches to spite our nose. Fragrances, odours, smell is a shortcut to body memory (v9), and body memory is how we habituate the gospel. Man dwells aromatically. We are in Christ and Christ is in you, by the lungfull, as if stood at the tea factory's furnace, saturated with a potent inimitable preconceptual description of salvation.
2.2.3 Smell as skill/power - beauty/cost
2.2.3.1 - Smell as power/skill
Pheromones / Perfume film - Smell in nature
Desire and disgust - Smell in Culture
Smell as a skill
deskilled and so vulnerable
Vulnerable to misplaced disgust
We could go so far as to take a real concern that we are
As manipulable
Don’t study what is dead, but rather
No longer need to ask what is safe to eat
No longer immersed in integral smells - all is noise no flowers no lawns
Consider Tykwer’s film, _Perfume_ the genius of creating smell-scapes
and the oblivion of having no smell
_Perfume_ captures old-fashioned worlds of fish markets and open sewers, a carnal and so criminal world. I will be interested to see if the Netflix remake carries the same visceral plausibility. [Of old fashionedness, but re liturgical practice - why is incense in contemporary church so inevitably uncontemporary? It has a Latin creeds feel to it, a historical reconstruction feel to it? Even Emergent hair-shirt bleeding edge prophetic innovators lack unselfconscious abandon with what invariably feels like primitivist cultural appropriation. Incense is visited as a kitschy New Age hand-me-down.]
*Smell is old fashioned.* Literally, you can only smell that which has passed, and you can only associate to a smell from your past, smell must be an acquired taste. Smell is a function of memory and association. You cannot smell the future. Smell is a lingering half-life, a teleport in time - and as such is condemned as nostalgia. Smell is alchemy, preconceptual mystery and so is condemned as superstition.
Smell as manufacture, industry, curation and design
Distillation
Storage
hard to digitise - more unique
? receptors in the nose
like performance, fire works display
2.2.3.2 - Smell as a beautiful thing / theatre / time
Subjective
Ephemeral
Smell as beauty at cost
The broken jar - Specific to mark - Writing off security £37k or average salary - 1 denarii per day
alabaster from egypt
nard from himalayas
*Smell costs* As with the alabaster flask of ointment Mk14, this impulse to worship via smell, and to grieve via smell, is alien to me, and it is anathema to every mode of churching I have experienced - with the exception of brief and peripheral Catholic encounters.
The flavour of evangelicalism that I have experienced and proliferated is one of avowed mediocrity, sanctimoniously bland. We are still cost engineering prophetic perfume performance in the low churches to spite our nose.
Exuberant spice: God is flavour and saviour In Mt23v23 Jesus critiques the Pharisees for tithing spices ~ mint and dill and cumin. This is contrasted with weightier things.. Is Jesus uninterested in our spices? No. Just as he is actually not uninterested in our crossing land and sea - contra an over-reading of Mt23v15. There is something in the weightless lack of exuberance in so spicing that seems the more salient application of a critic of mint-tithing. But, then who does this? Spice, like the salt of the earth Mt5v13 is both a flavour and a preservative.
Smell as art / story telling
how we derive meaning from art via narrative and temporality - tell a story with a smell - perfumes are curated as tryptyche - beginning/middle/end front/middle/back of a lingering or layered smell
human smell true/authentic - over against unreal smell
good smell bad smell - like good film bad film - aesthetic but also truthiness dimension
curating smells vs smell snobbery - architecture can have beauty and decency, and the abscence of x or y
Smell as beauty in the bible
Song of songs
Aroma death/life
Prayers of the saints
Attractional nature of Antiphonal Pheromonal
cost/benefit - vs aromatherapy and vague pleasure
[Q1] What is your perfume?
What is your perfume what is it to spill it
As testimony as art - Ecstatic over flow
[Q2] How should we smell?
[3] WASTE & EXCESS IN THE POLITICAL ECONOMY
Expenditure without reserve
Irreversibly burning that rainy day fund, Liquifying Liquidity, the finalisation of fungibility, extending the shelf life by the abandon to sell all. Not so flippant as merely an abundance mindset.
Sentiment Vs sentimentality
Irrational Vs arational
3.1 - Waste as testimony
How you spend it - what you value, what you emphasise. Know what you value by what you spend. By the conversion of a man’s checking book. Know what you hold sacred by what you sacrifice.
Waste time with Jesus - not so much how to do you curate your utility for Christ, but rather how do you shape your leisure for Christ - the fun, the pleasure, the excess. Waste as worship as declaration of abundance
She is a weirdo - making public waste - people notice waste, as a justice issue. It is a rational response to ask what would it take to do the same with.
pearl of great price - has an application
[Q1] What is your perfume?
Non-trivial, nest egg, pension pot - not saying to give it to the church so much as to, perhaps, burn it.
[Q2] How should we smell?
Why/how should the church care? - calibrate what we organise against vs tutting utilitarianism. We in the low churches, cutting off our noses to spite our face
3.2 - Waste as protest - subversive waste
Who has permission to waste - over against utilitarianism?
Who has the motive to waste - eg - protesting a system of empire?
Waste vs modern utility and effective altruism
Categorical imperative hiding behind utilitarianism - like duty or honour
How to break the power of money over you? Give it away
3.2.1 Waste as economic protest
Michael Landy's Break Down involved all his possessions being destroyed. https://www.artangel.org.uk/project/break-down/
~ buy nothing day vs planned obsolescence
3.2.2 Waste as political protest
3.3 - Waste as revolution through community
Waste creates sacred bonds
a bit like a gift economy - but with a frivolous, flamboyance for the commons. Abominate philanthropy that by miserly calculation presumes to dole out what they deserve, rather, Jesus invites the profligacy of transgressive giving
Who wastes?
Who polices who gets to waste? Who is the waster? Who gets to waste?Deserving vs undeserving poor? Taboo - you need permission to be irresponsible - don’t you know there’s a war on. The sovereign and the trickster
Worship as waste esp re burial and memory. Worship as as social justice scandal - Vs charity for the poor. Late Capitalism we live a such a circus of perpetual excess, but homogenous, generic, marketised slop where we’re all workers as cogs identical. in getting rid of money, your purge your generic networth and reveal your distinct worth, in an heterogeneous reality.
Waste as creation of the sacred
Incandescent joy of Bataille’s tricksters - transgressive giving to forge outlaw spaces for the derangement of the senses.
Against waste - top-down / bottom-up
True freedom is the ability to waste over against being under an empire create value. We are servants to a system we don't understand, interpretting only market signals from economic rationality. True sovereignty must engage in profligacy and must abominate tawdry committee run faith forms must pursue the carnival’s subversive deep play.
The institutions are congealed egregores, demonic suprapersonal forces, we are egregore neurons by our economic activity, we are complicit or we resist.
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