The Stench of Sin

October 16, 2012

Dear St. Paul’s Family,

It took us five years of living here, but we finally had our first skunk attack on Sunday night.

I use the word first loosely, of course, as I’d quite prefer never to have another one in my lifetime.  And while the word attack connotes more aggression and violence than what actually unfolded, it certainly felt like a bomb exploded in our house.  A stink bomb, that is.

The fireworks started around 8:00, as Micah, our three-year old puppy, was barking incessantly outside on our deck.  I was in the bedroom and  asked the girls to go check on her, but after several minutes Micah barked even more loudly.

Apparently, the dog had discovered the critter under our deck, and her herding instincts immediately kicked in.  She darted under the deck and stormed after the skunk in a blind rumble, narrowly escaping a direct hit by the spray that quickly covered the beams and planks of the deck’s underside.  By the time I realized what was happening, our poor puppy was reduced to helpless surrender in the middle of the yard, rubbing its nose tenderly in the grass.

And then the stench came.

Though all of our windows were closed at the time, the foul odor wafted through the topside of the deck, through the exterior walls, and into every sorry surface of the main floor of the house. The fragrance was unspeakably rank, an invisible, albeit billowing, mixture of burning rubber and locker room sweat, with notes of decomposing road kill and putrid musk.

I instinctively covered my mouth and nose with my hand, and went back inside to look for the girls.  Grace was in the living room, huddled in a ball on the coach, her furrowed brow revealing a shock too strong for words. Madelyn tried to distract her brain from the smell, plunging her nose into a nearby jar of peanut butter, the first item she could find within reach.

After scrubbing the dog in the bathtub, I conducted a furious Google search for homemade, household, odor-fighting weaponry.  After a quick trip to the grocery store, I returned with an arsenal of five large, scented candles (“clean linen” fragrance), a giant jug of vinegar and disposable bowls (for placing around the house to soak up the odor), a box of mothballs (to sprinkle under the deck to drive the skunk away), and several cans of room deodorizer (pointless against skunk odor, but an effective placebo for my psyche).

Needless to say, we had a pretty miserable night. And while the house smelled better yesterday morning, skunk odor has remarkable staying power, lingering in the air and adhering to surfaces like sandspurs on a sasquatch.

Preachers have developed a unique coping mechanism to deal with such comic misery.  We turn them into sermon illustrations.  We look for the teachable moment, even if it has to be manufactured, in order to find some pragmatic value in the face of sheer dreariness.    So, pardon me if comparing a skunk’s stench to the problem of sin seems like a crude stretch, but I am typing this message on a keyboard that smells like sweaty socks, so I’m going to go ahead and make whatever connection I want to.

Sin creeps into our lives and settles in to stay, an ever-present menace that lurks and lingers around every corner. It is not to say that sin is an external force that preys on us; it is, in fact, even worse than that, an inherent part of our existence against whose effects we are blind.

Susanna Wesley, the most significant spiritual influence on her son John, wrote a letter to him on June 8, 1725, in which she gave him her fullest explanation of the power and nature of sin in one’s life:

"Take this rule: whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off your relish of spiritual things; in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself."

Because the power of sin is so stealthy and steady, trying to combat it with our own efforts alone is like trying to fight skunk odor with Febreeze.  We may cover it up, but we can’t conquer it.  We may obscure it, but we’ll never eliminate it.  Instead, the only effective treatment for sin is surrender.  We must acknowledge our powerlessness against sin and submit to the cleansing agency of the cross, which “blots out our transgressions” and washes us pure.

That act of submission, however, is not entirely passive.  It must be a daily act of the will, a regular, intentional choice to deny our temptations, counter our sinful instincts, and revert our hearts that are turned inward upon themselves.  And once we do, once we make a willful obedience to Jesus Christ a regular pattern of every day life, once we choose to live in generosity and service to others, then the stench of sin is thoroughly removed, and replaced by a kind of fragrant life that only the Apostle Paul could describe:

But thank God, who is always leading us around through Christ as if we were in a parade. He releases the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere through us.  We smell like the aroma of Christ’s offering to God, both to those who are being saved and to those who are on the road to destruction. We smell like a contagious dead person to those who are dying, but we smell like the fountain of life to those who are being saved.  (2 Corinthians 2:14-16)


Don’t you think the world could use an aroma like that?

Now, you’ll have to excuse me.  I have to refill the vinegar bowls.

Grace and Peace,

Magrey

The Rev. Magrey R. deVega
St. Paul's United Methodist Church
531 W. Main St.
Cherokee, IA  51012
Ph:  712-225-3955
Email:  mdevega@sp-umc.org


CHILDREN’S SABBATH OCTOBER 28
Join us at the end of the month for our annual observance of the Children’s Sabbath, a program sponsored in part by the United Methodist Women.  The children of St. Paul’s will lead the service and draw your attention to the needs of children around the world.  The theme this year is “Pursuing Justice,”  and the theme verse is Zechariah 7:9:  “Show kindness and mercy to one another.”

YOUTH CINNAMON ROLL SALE
October 28th will also feature our annual cinnamon roll fund raiser for our youth group.  All the proceeds will fund donations to the Midwest Christian Children’s Home, for which the youth will buy Christmas presents and deliver them in December.  If you would like to donate items, please contact Lisa Sampson or Karla Wilkie.