The Payoff Nobody Expected
The last time the Gospel of John shows us Nicodemus, it's not a conversation. There are no words. It's an action — and it's the kind of action that would have cost him everything he'd spent his career building.
John 19:38–40: after Jesus died, Joseph of Arimathea went to Pilate to ask for the body. And Nicodemus went with him. He brought about a hundred pounds of spices — myrrh and aloes — and together they wrapped Jesus' body and laid it in the tomb.
This is not a private moment. This was done in public, during Passover, when Jerusalem was packed with people and the religious establishment was watching closely. The same Pharisees who had been plotting to stop Jesus were aware of everything happening around the crucifixion. Nicodemus walked into that moment openly. No night. No shadows. Just: this is who I am, and this is what I'm doing.
A Process, Not a Single Decision
His whole story is a slow walk from darkness into light. It didn't happen overnight, and it didn't happen because he figured everything out intellectually. He came to Jesus at night — that was step one. He defended Jesus before the Sanhedrin in John 7 ("Doth our law judge any man, before it hear him?") — quiet, procedural, but a step. And now this: public, costly, unmistakable.
Most of us will live our faith like early Nicodemus more often than we'd like to admit. Sincere, but private. Interested, but careful about who sees us being interested. Moving toward Jesus, but on the side streets. That's not hypocrisy — it's process. Nicodemus didn't arrive at the tomb in a single leap. He got there one slow step at a time over years.
The encouragement isn't to skip to the end. It's to keep moving toward the light, one step at a time, trusting that the direction matters even when the speed feels slow.
What This Week Was Actually About
We started Monday with a man who came to Jesus in the dark because he wasn't ready to be seen. We end on Friday with that same man standing in the open, preparing the body of the man he'd spent years quietly following — and doing it in a way that would cost him his standing in the very institution that had defined his identity his entire life.
That's what following Jesus does over time. It doesn't happen in one dramatic moment (usually). It happens in a series of small choices, each one a little more open, a little less managed, a little less afraid of who's watching. And one day you look up and realize you've walked all the way from shadow to light.
Where are you in that walk right now? That's the only question worth carrying into the weekend.