Where were you last night?

I think one question that Nicodemus didn’t want to get from his friends, colleagues, family… or whoever… the day after he met with Jesus after hours was, “Where were you last night?”

He had gone to seek Jesus when and where he felt safe.  And in order to do so he must have trusted that Jesus would not have given his little secret away.

“Why don’t you ask Nicodemus… He and I have talked!” was not something that the gospels record Christ saying in any of his subsequent conversations with the Pharisees.

Jesus respected Nick’s privacy.

He treated him as valuable.  He listened to him.

He answered him honestly.

Nick didn’t seem the type to falsely deny to encounter.  He must have carried the conversation with him wondering if it would ever come up.  Had someone asked, he would have to admit it.  And with that admission came the risk that he would be an outcast.

But that encounter, that demonstration of sincerity, of authenticity, of honesty and respect made an impression.

“And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight. Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury.” John 19:39,40 (emphasis mine)

I don’t know if Nicodemus ever became a Christian.  But I know this… he accepted Jesus as a Jew.

He honored Him the way he knew how to.  The verse makes special mention of the amount of the myrrh and aloes that he brought with him.  “An hundred pound weight.”

I wonder if he asked for it back when he saw Christ risen?

Jesus treated everyone as though they were the only one.

Maybe we need to do the same.

We never know who might have met with Him last night.

We just have to make sure everyone who bumps into us sees Him today.


SDG