Children, this is a sermon about a spice. Now, spices are from different plants and are used to flavor food. What spices do your mum and dad use in cooking? . . . Yes, cinnamon, pepper and ginger, are all spices. The particular spice of interest today is myrrh, because we celebrate today the Holy Myrrh-bearing women who came to the tomb of Jesus Christ to anoint His body with myrrh. That was the Gospel reading today from the 15th chapter of St Mark that we have just heard; and the 19th chapter of the Gospel of St John mentions that when Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea came to take Jesus Christ down from the cross, Nicodemus also came with myrrh, because myrrh was the traditional spice with which a person who had died was embalmed and buried.

In preparing this sermon I discovered that this myrrh is important—much more important than I had realised. Consider the Biblical evidence about when myrrh was used. When the Three Wise Men came to Bethlehem to worship the infant Christ, one of wise men brought myrrh. In the Old Testament book of The Song of Songs, myrrh is mentioned eight times because of its beautiful smell. In chapter 30 of the Old Testament book of Exodus, myrrh was used by Moses to anoint the Holy Tabernacle that contained the 10 commandments. So myrrh was important to both the Jews and the early Christians, as well as to the ancient Egyptians, but why should myrrh be important to us today?

St Ambrose, the fourth century Bishop of Milan and teacher of St Augustine, urges us to “clothe the body of the Lord, … anoint it with myrrh … that you may be a sweet fragrance of Christ.” St Ambrose is reflecting on the words of St Paul in Second Corinthians, chapter 2, when St Paul writes that “We are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life.” In other words, to God and to all people whom we meet, we are the “fragrance of Christ”—bringing to others an experience of death or of life, of sadness or of joy. As St Paul writes in the final line of chapter 2 of Second Corinthians, “we [each] speak in the sight of God in Christ.”

That means that God is watching over us. He listens to each of us. He guides us to be in His sight. Precisely because God is so aware of us, of what we are doing in our lives, it is right that we should be aware of God. We can pray and act in such a way that we each become the “fragrance of Christ.” It’s not going to be easy. I certainly wouldn’t say today that my life has about it “the fragrance of Christ.” But it is a possibility for me and for each of us. We are in the same position as these myrrh-bearing women at the tomb of Christ. Furthermore, the 11th century Orthodox Biblical commentator and preacher, Blessed Theophylact of Ochrid has pointed out that “there were many other women present, but only the most prominent are mentioned.” That’s important: it was not only a few bold women who came to anoint Christ with myrrh, but many others. And, as set out in the Gospel reading we have just heard, “they were saying to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?” That was a realistic question, because this was a huge tomb for a respected member of the Jewish Council—Joseph of Arimathea, who was burying Christ in the tomb that he had built for himself—an act of considerable bravery by a man who was not known publicly at that time as a follower of Christ.

OK. So the question is very much in everyone’s mind, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?” A fourth century saint, St Peter Chrysologus, asked his listeners and us in his Sermon 82, and I quote: “Is it from the door of the sepulchre, or of your own hearts? From the tomb, or from your own eyes? You whose heart is shut, whose eyes are closed, are unable to discover the glory of the open grave. Pour then your oil [your myrrh], if you wish to see that glory, not on the body of the Lord, but on the eyes of your hearts. By the light of faith you will then see that which through the deficiency of faith now lies hidden in darkness” [end of quote].

Now, we all believe in Christ; and yet we have some “deficiency in faith.” We can each grow in faith, but it’s OK to be like the father of the boy with epilepsy in the Gospel of St Mark, chapter 9, verse 23 who asks Jesus Christ to heal his son “if You can.” And Christ replies, “If you can! All things are possible to him who believes.” And “immediately the father of the child cried out and said, ‘I believe; help my unbelief.” As St Augustine says of this passage, the father has “an emergent faith.” The child is healed; and I really feel it is possible that we too with our “emergent faith” can roll back whatever stones are blocking our hearts and our eyes and become “the fragrance of Christ” in our families, in our jobs and in our lives.