The Skin and Scent of the God Who Came Near

The fullness of Immanuel, God with us, encompassed a physical body and a rich cultural background. This season, let’s worship all of who Jesus was.

By Tasha Jun

I

wonder about Jesus’s hands. If I saw them up close, would I notice more than the scars? Would I look close enough to remember the other details of his hands?

My mom has two cesarean section scars on her stomach from giving birth to my sister and me. Now I bear the same kind of scars as a mother of three, with two born via C-section. My mom’s are intertwined and faded now, indistinguishable from one another. Whenever I saw those scars as a girl, I would marvel at what she went through to bring me into the world. I live and breathe because she carried me, released me, and raised me. The scars that mark her middle are scars she will carry for the rest of her life on Earth. They speak stories of strength and survival. 

Her scars mean so much. But it was her Korean hands that fed me, held me, and clenched their fists in fear and prayer for me. It was her scent and skin that came near and colored in the details of my days. 

Growing up, my mom’s dark tan hands always carried the scent of garlic and gardenias. Garlic from her cooking, and gardenias from her lotion. Her strong fingers were the ones that squished the folds of a bright green ball of ssambap, to stuff my mouth full. She has a freckle on the bottom of her thumb, and when I was little I thought it was the most exquisite beauty mark I’d ever seen. Her dark hands tamed my wild black hair, bringing peace to the collision of cultures and heritage in my strands, day after day. It was her tiny hands that washed away the dirt from my everyday life, year after year. I watched her cover the missing nail on her ring finger with a fake one, week after week, and every time she worked to cover it up, I would ask her to uncover the story of how she lost it and why the top of her finger looked the way it did.

To ignore the details of my Korean culture carried in my mother’s skin and scent is to ignore her love, and reject her nearness.

Our Savior had real hands, smells, and skin. His hands held more than the scars he bore for us on the cross; they are real hands that existed beyond a theological explanation of our salvation. His hands grew from the instinctive grasp of a little baby’s hands into a man’s. Do you ever wonder what they smelled like as he was growing up? Was he right-handed or left-handed? Were his fingers hairy, freckled, or thin? They were most likely very brown – like the rest of him. Knowing this should mean something to us. His details, like ours, weren’t an accident or meant to be overlooked.

Jesus’s hands cooked fish. His hands healed the sick and stayed in close company with sticky children. He probably carried the scents of mint, dill, and cumin in the fabric of his clothes, kept the smell of roasted carp or tilapia captive in his hair, and garlic on his breath.

This is the Jesus who came near. Our Immanuel with brown hands. Our Immanuel with the smells of a Middle Eastern home, and the evidence of illness and brokenness from those he did life with.

God came near to us full with color and culture, and didn’t reject any of his humanity. His hands were open wide to the depths and details of his cultural identity.

This Christmas, as his followers of many colors and cultures, may we celebrate and worship our Immanuel, and come near enough to know the skin and scent of those around us, those who are the same and very different from us. This, too, is worship.

Photo by Gabrielle Henderson on Unsplash

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Tasha Jun is a biracial Korean American melancholy daydreamer, wife to Matt, and mama to three little warriors. She’s lived and stood in places where cultures collide for as long as she can remember, and most days you’ll find her homesick and thinking about identity, belonging, and lost things becoming found. She’s been writing about those things ever since she received her first journal in the third grade.