Smells are potent, in part because they carry connections in our brains to memory and emotion. This is why a scent can immediately transport us to the past. Smell is quite useful. It serves as a warning, such as when you catch a whiff of burnt rubber while driving on the freeway. Is something wrong with my car? Or when you smell something sour in the kitchen. Has the milk gone bad?

But despite its potency and usefulness, smell is often neglected. Perhaps it has something to do with its invisibility, its soundlessness. Smells often waft through the air, covertly sneaking into our awareness. Suddenly you are tilting your head and thinking to yourself, What is that smell? Some scents we all know — like the aroma of coffee brewing or the distinct odor of a skunk — while other smells take us a minute to recognize.

Hence, “waft-y” smells are easy to overlook, and they are especially absent from written texts, which you are about to see evidence of as we survey the Gospels. Smell is the physical sense mentioned the least. But it doesn’t mean it’s missing from the setting. And it certainly doesn’t mean that it’s unimportant. Do you believe that smell matters to how we engage the Gospels? It’s true, the presence of smell is mostly hidden within narrative worlds, leaving us to imagine what a setting might have smelled like. I suspect that for some, grappling with implied smells in the Gospel narratives does little more than describe the text more fully. In other words, many will still consider smell more decorative than critical to our understanding of the Gospels.

But this is not true of everyone. Helen Keller reminds us of the importance of aroma. During her lifetime she was often judged as having lesser intelligence because of her lack of sight and hearing. Her response to these critics demonstrates otherwise, as she beautifully articulates a world governed by taste, touch and smell. About smell specifically, she once famously wrote, “Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across thousands of miles and all the years we have lived.” Keller brings out aspects of this multisensory life that many who rely mostly on sight and hearing would never pick up on. All of us are better for her contribution.

Why does smell matter to our study of the Gospels? There are two reasons. At the risk of sounding overly simplistic, contemplating smell reminds us of the holistic beauty and goodness of God’s big world. It can heighten our response of praise for a God who cared enough to fill in every last detail of our experience of this world. And it’s remarkable that scents have been designed to infiltrate our bodies to the point that they influence our memories, our emotions, our affections and our actions.

How can smell help us engage with the Gospels and Jesus today in our setting? After all, most of us read Scripture using our eyes, or we listen to it with our ears, or we talk about it with our mouths, as we flip through the pages of a Bible with our fingers. I’d guess that all of this tends to occur in settings that are either fragrance-free or are fragrance-friendly-to-us environments. Perhaps a starting point is to consider how smell figures into devotion to God.

What do certain smells remind you of? What scents unearth nostalgia, and which ones trigger sadness, anger or anxiety? Which ones make you want to dance, celebrate and express gratitude to God? Now, can you dig deeper? Why do these smells prompt such emotions? Do they tie back to a core memory? What about that memory brings up such deeply held feelings about yourself, or God, or others?

Can a certain smell bring you into conversation with God? How might a particular scent in your life resonate with something you read about in the Gospels? Do the smells associated with devotion to God prompt you to create your own patterns of scent as you consider your own life with him? If you have not yet considered the role of smell in your life as a reader of the Gospels, I invite you to simply pay attention, reflect, and relish in the goodness of the fragrant corner of the earth you occupy.

Adapted from by Jeannine Marie Hanger (M.A. ‘04; Th.M. ‘09, Associate Professor of New Testament Studies), ©2024. Used by permission of Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group.