Good Morning Friends,
This morning I learned something about a small detail in Johnβs Gospel that I never knew before and it made me realize that in some way β¦ we are all connected to one another and to God.
All sorts of ideas are bubbling this morning.
For now, though - Iβm about to go connect with my coffee pot.
βπ»
Glenn || PATREON / BUY ME A COFFEE
I came across something this morning that I never knew before.
In John 19:39 we see Nicodemus (who was one of the Pharisees who earlier in John's Gospel had come to visit Jesus at night to ask him all sorts of questions) show up at Jesus' tomb to anoint his dead body with various spices and wrap it with linens.
Right off that bat I find that interesting, right?
Here's a guy who clearly thought different than the rest of his tribe. While the rest of the Pharisees that Jesus clashed with were out celebrating his death at a local pub, Nicodemus was standing above the dead body of the guy who was kind enough to answer his questions way back in chapter 3 and he was getting ready to do the most honorable thing by anointing his body and making sure he got a proper burial.
And so perhaps Nicodemus was "deconstructing" before deconstructing was a thing?
Since Nicodemus separated himself from the rest of his small tribe he was clearly thinking differently than they were and he was clearly still wrestling with the interaction he had with Jesus all of those chapters ago. And in the midst of that wrestling and those questions he found himself standing in the middle of a tomb doing something that the others surely would have mocked him for doing.
At this phase in my life, that's inspiring to me.
What I never noticed before, though, was that John's Gospel tells us that Nicodemus brought with him about "75 pounds" of spices to wrap inside of the linens that would go around Jesus' body.
Seventy-Five pounds.
Although I've read that a bunch of times, I didn't realize the significance of that number. In his book, "Spirituality According to John" Rodney Reeves says that, "usually a pound of spices - worth quite a bit of money (like the spices that the woman anointed Jesus' feet with back in chapter 12) - would suffice. Nicodemus brought 75 pounds. Why? Kings were interred large quantities of aloes and myrrh. According to Jewish Historian, Josephus, it took 500 servants to carry the burial spices of Herod the Great's funeral. The effect would be obvious: one could smell the burial of a king for miles."
I love this.
Nicodemus didn't just bring enough spices for an ordinary person's body, but enough for the body of a King, so much so that the breeze that blew through the streets of Jerusalem that day would carry the sweet scent right up to the noses of everyone - even the rulers who were responsible for Jesus' death.
Indeed, everyone would know that a King had been buried.
What I love most about this, though, is that Jesus' disciples didn't do it. Right? It wasn't Peter or John or anyone else who took it upon themselves to make sure Jesus was buried like a King, to make sure that the fragrant smell of his death would follow people through the streets of Jerusalem and float into their homes and shops.
Instead ...
It was a Pharisee.
It was someone from a different tribe of people.
It was someone who was intrigued by Jesus, but didn't really "officially" follow Jesus.
It was someone who didn't necessarily "believe" all of the right things.
YES.
It was a Pharisee who brought the fragrant smell of The Christ to the noses of everyone in the community - Jesus' enemies, random Pilgrims, Jesus' disciples, people who didn't care about Jesus one way or the other - so that that the fragrance would be breathed in through their nostrils where it would awaken their senses to realize that something unique and special and important was happening in their midst.
A Pharisee did this.
A presumed "other".
Someone who was a member of the group that gave Jesus a hard time.
And that makes me realize that there really is no "other", right? It makes me realize that we are all one because not only did everyone that day breathe in the fragrance of the death of a King (regardless of who they were, what they thought of Jesus, etc), but everyone breathed it in because the body of the King was anointed by the most unlikely of people.
Does that challenge you?
It challenges me.
In a world of division where everyone is taking sides and declaring who is in and who is out and who is right and who is wrong and who is the holder of truth and who is the spreader of lies ... it gives me hope that at the end of the day we are all breathing the same air, the same air that is filled with the Divine who is all around us, proving in some deep way that it really doesn't matter who we are or what we believe or where we come from - we are all deeply connected and we are all inhaling and exhaling Divinity 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
AND.
That even the most unlikely of characters from a tribe of people that we may despise ...
Can help us see God in a way that we never saw God before.
Can unleash a fragrance and give us a whiff of the Divine.
Can help awaken our senses to the reality that the Spirit of The Christ is all around us, as close to us as our very next breath.