The Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost - Matthew 15:21-28 - The Rev. Colette Hammesfahr
August 16, 2026 - Matthew 15:21-28 In 1987, Baltimore Gas and Electric decided they needed a better way to teach their customers what a natural-gas leak smelled like. Natural gas is odorless. So people would notice when there was a leak, a chemical called mercaptan is added to natural gas. The chemical has a distinctive rotten egg/skunk smell. The company came up with a clever idea. They planned to send 300,000 scratch-and-sniff cards to customers so they could learn the smell. But there was a big problem with this idea. Apparently, the cards were made a little too realistic. The mercaptan smell escaped from the envelopes. People opened their mailboxes, smelled what they thought was leaking gas, and immediately called the fire department. The Baltimore firehouses were flooded with calls reporting gas leaks all over the area. This warning designed to teach people, “If you smell this, pay attention!” became so loud that people couldn’t help but pay attention. Sometimes that’s...