“Nicodemus,” Liahona, June 2023, United States and Canada Section.
Nicodemus
Christ with Nicodemus, by Hendrik Steenwyck the Younger, Petworth House, West Sussex, National Trust Photographic Library / Bridgeman Images
I came at night
Caring what they’d say
Fearing what they’d think
Unsure still what I thought
Unsure what I believed.
I’d marveled at the miracles
Felt that God must be with Him
Hoped.
He spoke with me
Saw my doubts, saw my fears, saw me.
I must be born again, He said,
And I would see the kingdom of God
The kingdom I had searched for
Prayed for
Taught for
Obeyed for.
But He said there was a better way
That He was the light and the life.
Was I beginning to be reborn?
But the rules remained, and it was the rules they saw
And felt and heard,
Not the wind.
They hated Him before they heard Him.
Some never heard Him.
I watched my people shout, spit, condemn
And I wondered,
Had they not seen the miracles
Felt the love?
Surely they’d never looked in His eyes
And seen that God was with Him.
At the end, I cared not
Feared not.
I could do nothing but gather the best,
The freshest, the sweetest,
Myrrh and aloes, a hundred pound weight.
And still, I knew that it amounted to nothing
When weighed against all He’d done for me
For us
And all He had yet to do.
His body was limp, wet.
Joseph took it down carefully
With humbled guards,
Who knew not what they had done—
But knew they had done something
To make the earth quake
To seize and cry
To grieve and mourn
Like Mary, His mother
Like Mary of Magdala,
Who stood at His feet,
Bathed in their tears and the earth’s.
His eyes were closed now
Face pale and empty.
The God in human form
Was He gone?
His lifeless form succumbed, though willfully,
To the cruelty of godless humans.
We cleaned His body
Washed His face
Longed for those loving eyes to open and see us
Comfort us
As He had before
Longed for His hands to bless us, heal us again.
But heavy and cold they stayed.
We wrapped them in linen
And hoped.1
The Entombment, by Harmensz. van Rijn Rembrandt, Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany / Bridgeman Images
The author lives in New Mexico.