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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text for this morning, or this evening, comes from that gospel reading regarding Nicodemus and Joseph. You may be seated.
There was a great deal of goings-on that Friday. Now you have to remember the Jews began their days at sundown. So for us, when it’s still like this, we consider it today still Wednesday, but soon as that sun goes down from the Jews’ perspective, Thursday begins. So on that Thursday evening, after the sun went down, it became Friday. And there were a lot of goings-on that Friday.
It began with Jesus instituting the Lord’s Supper, where he gives his church his very body and blood with the bread and wine. After that very momentous event, he taught the eleven, because Judas had left, as you remember. He taught the eleven more things in the upper room before heading out to the garden of Gethsemane, where he prayed about the cup being taken from him, and God made him drink it to the very dregs, did he not?
After leaving the garden, he left not by his own power, but yet he did. For he was betrayed by that kiss, that kiss of Judas, when the soldiers came and took him away from that garden. Willingly did he go. Peter had denied him three times while he was being taken to the Sanhedrin; the cock crowed. Jesus was tried before the Sanhedrin and his peers, who should have embraced him, called him a blasphemer because he claimed to be God. The Sanhedrin were finished with him, and they sent him to Pilate to be crucified. Pilate then sent him to Herod.
Let the king of Israel, Herod, take care of this. Herod agreed and became friends with Pilate because he saw this could benefit him. He sent him back to Pilate. Pilate gave the crowd the opportunity, did he not? And they chose Barabbas. And then Jesus had to carry that cross all the way to where they crucified him.
After having been up all that time, Pilate, after having been beaten and flogged and spit upon and mocked, finally he stretched out his arms as he was nailed to that tree and died. Now they have to take care of a dead body. Enter Joseph of Arimathea. The only place that we know anything about Joseph of Arimathea is in this account. And we’re introduced to him and we never hear of him again. We do know some things about him. Joseph of Arimathea was a very wealthy man. He was an Israelite and a member of the Sanhedrin. A good and just man, the texts say, who was also looking for the kingdom of God.
He was a follower or a disciple of Jesus, but did not declare himself to be such for fear of the Jews. And yet note this. Nowhere in the texts does it say that he should be rebuffed and degraded because he didn’t confess Jesus openly, at least not yet. For it was very open when he went and asked Pilate for the body. And it was very open and very public when the body was taken down off the cross and he took possession of it. And it was very public as he brought that body, carrying it with whomever, to a tomb of his own.
Interesting. Risking everything with his standing in that community and among his peers in the Sanhedrin, somehow God gave him courage, although he did not think about his courage. If it was like you or like me, his mind doubted and feared as he walked with that body to his tomb, wondering what would be the repercussions, wondering how this would be played out in his life. But also knowing at the self-same time he believed this to be true. He was a follower of Jesus.
Enter Nicodemus. Now though the other gospel writers introduce us to Joseph of Arimathea, only the gospel of John tells us of Nicodemus. And only in three different places. The first place that Nicodemus is introduced to us is when he comes to Jesus at night. For he too was a follower of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews. Again, nothing said in the text in degradation of him. He comes to Jesus to talk to him about his teachings. Jesus cuts through it and says, “You must be born again.” He asks the obvious question, “How?” And Jesus informs him of baptism: born again of water and the Spirit. Amen.
The next time we see Nicodemus brought into the text is when there’s a conversation going on, actually an argument among the Pharisees. They want to condemn Jesus, and Nicodemus stands up and says, “Yes, but does not our law say that we should hear this man out and learn about his teachings before we condemn him?” Well, for someone who followed Jesus secretly for fear of the Jews, that was a pretty public thing for him to do as well.
The last and only time left that Nicodemus is mentioned in the text is here, where he goes to buy 75 pounds at least of aloe and myrrh. Nobody, but nobody buys that much. That’s somewhere in the neighborhood between $150,000 to $200,000 of spices. Nobody does that. That’s five times the amount used for the average Joe. Rarely would a king even have 75 pounds of spices reserved for them.
Now, if there ever was a public spectacle of Nicodemus following Jesus, buying 75 pounds of spices is it. Did he have to buy it from several of them in order to make the amount of 75 pounds? Who knows? But whether it was one or several to get that many, the spice dealers knew about it. And you know they asked the question. And if they didn’t, they wondered how a silent act can be very powerful, as seen in Nicodemus’ life.
And what a great risk these men did. For in complete and open light, because they had to get that body in the tomb before sundown. Did they take that dead, lifeless, gray, ashen body to that tomb with those spices? In my mind, they had to have someone help them. The body had to weigh 150, 160 pounds. You got a 75-pound bag, or bags, of spices. Someone had to help them. Servants, whomever.
Once again, a silent witness and testimony to their faith. Though the text says they were… Fear of the Jews. Do you remember when the woman anointed Jesus with that pure nard? And it was Judas who said, “You could have sold that and it could have been used to give to the poor.” And Jesus said, “The poor you will always have among you, and yet you will not always have me.” She did not get discouraged or downtrodden at all. She was encouraged, in fact.
That is the same kind of a thing as what Nicodemus and Joseph did, spending nearly a quarter of a million dollars on spices that Jesus wouldn’t use because he was going to rise from the dead. Money gone. Money wasted. And yet the text never talks about how horrible it was that they wasted all that money. If anything, it told us how they honored him as king. And if anything, it tells us we’re like them a lot. We’re very fearful. We’re fearful. Not wanting to offend in our proclamation of this good news.
And yet God uses us in our fears as he used Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea in their fears. Where were the disciples? They weren’t around. Where was the family? They weren’t around. That these two people who have no relationship with Jesus, familially or otherwise, other than being believers, took responsibility for the body of our Lord. God used them. What a beautiful example for you and me.
Though fearful, we risk. And lots of times in our risk, we find ourselves to be taken advantage of. If there ever was one taken advantage of, I guess it would be him, would it not? And we give, though what we give sometimes isn’t used the way we think it ought to be used. Or we withhold it because we don’t think it’s as valuable to give to that as to this. Yes. Or we want to give him to a specific thing so that that thing can go rather than the bigger picture.
And yet there is one man who gave everything regardless of the outcome because of his great love. And yes, you and I sacrifice, and we have. And we’ve sacrificed with fear and anxiety. And yet he did it with complete confidence because he loved you, because he loved you. He used it. That is God. He used this sacrifice for so many things, but he used it especially for you because you were the one he had in his mind’s eye for that sacrifice.
Jesus said in the last chapters of Matthew, “If you’ve done it to the least of these, my brethren, you’ve done it unto me.” The people that Jesus served, like you and like me, we don’t always appreciate it. And yet he still served us regardless. So there will be many people in your life and in my life that may not appreciate what we bring to them. And yet God will use it as he used Joseph and as he used Nicodemus, who had no idea where that $200,000 would come from and dropped it and moved on because of that glorious resurrection on that eighth day Sunday morning.
We will continue to do such things because he continues to serve us as he comes to us this evening with his priceless body and blood.
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
