WORSHIP KIT
You shall beat some of it [incense] very small, and put part of it before the testimony in the tent of meeting where I shall meet with you. It shall be most holy for you. And the incense that you shall make according to its composition, you shall not make for yourselves. It shall be for you holy to the LORD. Whoever makes any like it to use as perfume shall be cut off from his people." ESV Exodus 30:36-38
Why did God give such a stern warning against using the formula for making the holy incense to make personal perfume? Yeah, I know, “because it was holy.” But that is a lot like a parent saying, “Because I said so.” It doesn’t really explain why.
Ancient Hebrew worship of Yahweh was not only multi-faceted, but multi-sensory as well--
Sights...
Sounds...
Even smells...
Especially smells--
slaughtered animals,
roasting meat,
the sweet pungent aroma of burning incense
The sense of smell is arguably the most powerful of our senses.
The formula for the sacred incense was not a secret. Anyone could duplicate it. Someone might want to recreate the awesome experience of God’s presence at the tent of meeting in his own tent. The easiest and most powerful way would be to burn the sacred incense. I’m sure that it would be very effective (at least for a while) in evoking the memories and thereby feelings that he had experienced at the tent of meeting. It would also be very easy to mistake these feelings for worship. But over time, the aroma of the sacred incense would be associated more with events in the household than the events at the tent of meeting. And instead of bringing the memory of the sacred into the mundane, the memory of the mundane could overwhelm the experience of the Sacred.
You shall beat some of it [incense] very small, and put part of it before the testimony in the tent of meeting where I shall meet with you. It shall be most holy for you. And the incense that you shall make according to its composition, you shall not make for yourselves. It shall be for you holy to the LORD. Whoever makes any like it to use as perfume shall be cut off from his people." ESV Exodus 30:36-38
Why did God give such a stern warning against using the formula for making the holy incense to make personal perfume? Yeah, I know, “because it was holy.” But that is a lot like a parent saying, “Because I said so.” It doesn’t really explain why.
Ancient Hebrew worship of Yahweh was not only multi-faceted, but multi-sensory as well--
Sights...
Sounds...
Even smells...
Especially smells--
slaughtered animals,
roasting meat,
the sweet pungent aroma of burning incense
The sense of smell is arguably the most powerful of our senses.
The formula for the sacred incense was not a secret. Anyone could duplicate it. Someone might want to recreate the awesome experience of God’s presence at the tent of meeting in his own tent. The easiest and most powerful way would be to burn the sacred incense. I’m sure that it would be very effective (at least for a while) in evoking the memories and thereby feelings that he had experienced at the tent of meeting. It would also be very easy to mistake these feelings for worship. But over time, the aroma of the sacred incense would be associated more with events in the household than the events at the tent of meeting. And instead of bringing the memory of the sacred into the mundane, the memory of the mundane could overwhelm the experience of the Sacred.
posted by grateful talmid | 7:16 AM
1 Comments:
Welcome back to the blogdom.
Great post! One of my core beliefs is that worship should be multicensory...and as a planner it is really hard to get to this place, but I'm working on it. Smell is the longest lasting sense from what I've heard. You can recall different smells long after your memory goes.
You're right...the sacred should always subvert the mundane...not the other way around.
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