“Why This Baptist Church Uses Incense”

There’s nothing better than smelling chocolate chip cookies at the end of a long work day. Or in the middle of a long work day. Or, let’s be honest, at the beginning of a long work day!

Speaking of smells. There’s nothing that take me back to my childhood like smelling moth balls. That’s what my grandma’s attic smelled like.

It’s almost as if my mind is transported to Ada, Ohio as I was stuck upstairs, laid up sick with chickenpox. I don’t even have to close my eyes to imagine it. It just happens without me summoning the memory. My mind is lifted to another time and another place.

I realize that, at Redeemer, we have some idiosyncratic practices. At least as it relates to our sister Baptist churches. I often get tapped on the shoulder and asked if we are a “real” baptist church!

So many of the assumptions of what it means to be a baptist church are not really considered all that much by the inquisitor, to be very honest. To be a Baptist means we teach baptism of believers (and not infants), the priesthood of all believers, the autonomy of the local church, and freedom of conscience. [NOTE: For more details of our particular flavor of baptist church, please see the Baptist Faith and Message listed at the bottom of this section of our website] Many of the questions I get stem from cultural characteristics of what people think of when they think baptist church–potlocks, altar calls, no card playing, no drinking, and revivals.

That’s why a lot of times it’s hard for people to believe that a baptist church could and would use incense. It’s not prescribed. It’s not typical of a baptist church. I think it’s the initial wafting in the nostrils that people pause. So if it’s not prescribed, why do we use incense on Sunday morning?

By way of context…We don’t use censors and walk down the center aisle during the service…though that’s not “bad” either. We just light some sticks of frankincense an hour before the service. Why?

Well, the first reason has to do with the physiological connection between our senses and our minds and souls. As chocolate chip cookies and moth balls can transport me to a place of comfort and rest, so also, it is our hope, the smell of frankincense will become an ensconced memory of walking into the sanctuary at 118 Mason Street.

What is more, it is a particular smell that we use so that when we encounter it our minds and souls are ready to engage with the living God. As the smell enters your nostrils, your mind will, over time, be instantly engaged with a time and space that is utilized for a specific purpose.

As we consider the worship of God, we are told to worship him with our bodies. Too often we have divided the body from the soul. Almost like a new iteration of the early heresy of Gnosticism, we prioritize the soul over the body. But God formed the dust of the ground into a very good creature–man and woman. He does not disparage the body. Rather, he uses our senses to engage our souls.

How will we be saved unless we hear the Gospel? The mouth of the preacher. The ears of the hearer. How will we hear unless people go? The legs of the preacher. How will they go unless they are sent in a manner worthy of the Gospel (i.e., from financial gifting to provide for physical needs, like food)? How will they have such gifting unless they have hands of commendation laid upon them?

At Redeemer we want to engage as many sense as we can in an effort to get to the heart. We stand. We sit. We kneel. We hug one another. We audibly confess. We hear the Word read and preached. We see the bread broken and the wine poured. We touch the bread and cup. We taste the sacraments. We smell the same sacraments before taking them. We want the smells of the sanctuary to be reminders of where we are and what we are doing.

The second reason why we use incense is informed by Scripture. While it’s not prescriptive, we do read of a descriptive beauty of the incense burning before the altar of God. Now why would incense be used there? I think for similar reasons I outlined above.

But even more, the incense not only transports our minds and hearts to another place and time to be enjoyed right now…it is a reminder of a transcendent joy and place yet to be enjoyed. We are told that the prayers of the saints are like sweet incense before the Lord.

The smells of the sacrifices on Yom Kippur. The smells of incense in the Tabernacle and Temple. These all pointed to a sweet smell of adoration and petition of the saints of God.

The third reason is a simple reminder that at the birth of Jesus, frankincense was a gift of the magi. It was a gift given to our Great High Priest. Invariably, Mary and Joseph and Jesus used that frankincense in their worship. Perhaps we can find a great boon for our faith in smelling the smells our Maker made and enjoyed.

I do think some of the fears that crop up among us baptists is a sense in which we don’t want traditions to supersede our reverence for Jesus. We don’t want bells and smells and candles to crowd out simple devotion to God. We must also be self-aware enough to realize that the accouterments we assign to “being a baptist” are also traditions that could supersede our reverence for Jesus. Rather than letting fear determine whether we practice something or not, perhaps we can take our cues from our brothers and sisters in the Church at-large and utilize these sensory gifts to lift our minds and hearts toward God. To set our minds on things above. To delineate that the place we are walking is holy ground.

—Matthew Wireman—