March 29, 2026
• Rev. Dr. Rob Fuquay
St. Luke’s UMC
March 29, 2025
Palm Sunday
Words from the Suffering
“Nakdimon ben Gurion”
John 19:12-15
Dramatic Monologue
Have you ever lost your way?
My father used to tell me when I was a boy that when I lost my way, look for the North Star. Its always constant, never moves. “Find the North Star” he would say, “and you can find your way.”
And then he would put his finger on my chest and say, “And God has put a North Star inside of you. Something that lets you know when you lose your way. That part of you that God inhabits. “Find your North Star and you will find your way.”
I know nothing about the stars, but I know something about the inner star. The inner light. God’s truth and God’s way. To that knowing I dedicated my life.
My name is Nakdimon ben Gurion, but I go by Nicodmeus. My name means “conqueror of the people.” I suppose my parents hoped I would be a king of my people one day…(pics up crown of thorns) but heavy is the head that wears the crown.
They wanted me a young boy to begin studying with rabbis. I took the vows of a Pharisee. Soon I was memorizing large portions of the Torah and could easily quote rabbinic interpretations. My rabbis told me I was already surpassing them. At a very early age I received the semicha, the laying on of hands, as a rabbi. I became a council leader and not too many years later was selected to be a member of the Sanhedrin.
I became known as Israel’s greatest teacher. I was the one people came to for answers. “What is God’s truth about this? What’s is God’s truth about that?” I could dispense truth as readily as a vendor selling goods in the market.
And yet, I lost my way.
Now don’t let your imaginations run away with you. No juicy sins to tell you about. That would have been better…so I hear. No, I experienced something far worse. I became uncertain, confused about what I really believe about God. And in a religion that is all about certainty, being uncertain is not popular…or tolerated.
Knowing is what is important. Knowing God’s truth, so that you can make sure others know that truth and follow it. That was my job as a Pharisee. I learned how to argue my points and substantiate my position with scripture and teachings. You think you know how to argue well? Where I come from you don’t hold a candle! We knew how to argue, and I was the best. I was the one the Council would send to make its most important arguments.
Which is how I met Jesus of Nazareth.
I had heard about him. In fact, I had heard unusual tales about him, like when he was born. Astrologers came from the East. They believed that a sign in the stars had portended the birth of a King in Jews. So they went to King Herod in Jerusalem hoping to ascertain where this birth may have happened. Well, kings tend not to like it when people show up asking, “Where’s the real king?”
That is what led to the great slaughter of the children in Bethlehem. But, as the tale goes, this child escaped through divine intervention.
He reappeared many years later in Galilee, now a young man, a teacher—rabbie-conducting miraculous signs, drawing crowds to him. That news is what first began to worry the religious council. Such a leader could end up leading a rebellion against Rome.
Now, I’m not going to assume you need a history lesson here, but I’ll give it to you anyway. When the Romans took over our land about a hundred years before this time, they reestablished the Sanhedrin, a ruling religious council. They did this first of all to keep themselves out of judicating religious matters, which they didn’t understand anyway. But more importantly, for them at least, they reestablished the Sanhedrin as a clever way to protect Roman rule. You see members of the Sanhedrin were given authority and privileges…as long as Roman peace was maintained. The biggest threat to the Sanhedrin was someone who was a threat to Rome.
So a wonder-worker drawing crowds in Galilee got the attention of council members in Jerusalem. But more concerning to them was Jesus’ teaching. He didn’t violate scriptural law so much as he did rabbinic tradition. He taught principles that were not in agreement with centuries of rabbinic interpretation. He conducted works on the Sabbath that went against tradition. He and his disciples didn’t wash their hands according to tradition. He even had the audacity to say, “You have heard it said,” and then would quote Torah law, but then respond, “But I say to you…” Who was he to speak with greater authority than the teachers?
So the council sent me to straighten out this young, idealistic rabbi. I went at night so as not to draw attention. I said to him “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher that has come from God, for no one could do the things you do if God were not with him.” For a young rabbi to have someone like me pay him such a compliment, I would have him eating out of my hands in no time.
But he must not have been hungry.
He didn’t even say thank you. He replied, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” Was he actually suggesting that I was blind to the ways of God? I knew better than to react. I asked what he meant by being ‘born-again?’ “Can a person go back into their mother’s womb and be reborn?”
Now he became the teacher and I the student. He started talking about the Spirit. How it’s like the wind, you can’t see it, but you can see when it moves. A person born of the Spirit stops trusting in what they know and starts trusting in what they believe.
“But how?” I demanded.
And he said, “You’re Israel’s great teacher and yet you don’t understand? If you don’t get it when I use earthly examples how will you understand heavenly ones?”
Talk about audacity. But he didn’t speak with arrogance. No judgment. There was something very genuine, even appealing about him.
What he said next really perplexed me. “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so I must be lifted up.” You know that story of Moses, don’t you? For heaven’s sake! What has your clerical leading been doing? It might be time for you to get a new one. I’m just saying.
After Moses led the Hebrews out of bondage in Israel, and they were living in the wilderness, the people started complaining against God. So God sent serpents into their camp and they began biting the people, filling them with poison making them sick and even die. So the people cried out to Moses for relief and God told Moses to make a bronze serpent and put it on a pole and lift it up, so that when the people after being bitten stared at the bronze image, they would be healed.
The point is that we must be able to see the source of our sickness in order to be saved.
We must be able to admit it when we lose our way. He said to me that night, “And when I am lifted up, people who believe in me will have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave his only son so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send his son to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.”
He said enough right there to justify my bringing him before the Council. He called himself God’s Son. But I didn’t do it. There was a strange authority that came from his words. It’s hard to explain.
I suppose you could say my visit was a failure. I hadn’t set him straight, but my colleagues didn’t wait for my report. They made alternative plans. They sent temple guards to spy on him, to listen for any blasphemy he would speak. At our next meeting they reported how people thought he was the Christ. But when asked why they didn’t bring him in, the guards said, “Because no one ever spoke the way he does.” The guards could see.
Then the Council leaders dismissed them scoffing that they had fallen under his spell and so had the crowds. I thought, “Wait! This isn’t how we act. We don’t dismiss people just because they don’t agree with us. We’re called to be their leaders! This isn’t what we believe. I told them, “The Law says you don’t condemn someone without first hearing him out.”
And that’s when they turned on me and said, “Are you from Galilee! Look into it and you will find no prophet comes from there.”
Now I wasn’t so sure of what I thought of him, but suddenly I wasn’t so sure of what I thought of them. I was starting to become uncertain. Have you ever been so sure of the way you are going and suddenly realize you’re lost. It’s very disorienting. That’s how I felt, and it didn’t get better.
The Council still found a way to have Jesus arrested and brought before them for trial. If you can call it that. They brought in false witnesses who made up accusations against him. And all of this authorized by our leaders. They passed judgment and sent him to Pilate under the charge that he was an insurrectionist, that he claimed to be a king, a Messiah.
And here is where we need to pause again and understand a bit of history. Pilate reluctantly issued the order that Jesus was to be crucified. But the truth is Jesus wasn’t crucified because of Pilate. He was crucified because of a man named Sejanus.
Do you know that name? Sejanus had been the Prefect of the Praetorian Guard. One of the most powerful men in Rome. He was the right-hand to Emperor Tiberias. It was said that Sejanus was the one who carried out Tiberias’ trash, until...Sejanus questioned a decision Tiberias made. Tiberias took that to mean that Sejanus was no longer loyal, and he had Sejanus arrested and executed.
The reason Caesar gave to the Senate was that he was “no friend of Caesar.”
When the religious leaders presented Jesus to Pilate calling for his crucifixion and Pilate was equivocating, they said, “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.” They knew what they were doing. They chose their words very carefully. Pilate remembered Sejanus and consented to have Jesus crucified.
But not without getting one last jab. Pilate was a compromised man, but he was a political man. He presented Jesus to the leaders one final time, and asked, “Shall I crucify your king?” and they shouted back, “We have no king but Caesar.”
I was standing there. I couldn’t believe what I heard. Pilate had gotten the chief priests to renounce their faith. That’s what they did. If they would have just said, “We have no king,” that would have been enough. Because we don’t, at least no earthly king.
The psalmist says, “Sing praises to our King, sing praises! For God is king of all the earth.” (47:7) There is only one king we worship. But here were our leaders saying, “We have no king but Caesar?”
When we put anyone or anything above God and God’s ways, we lose our way.
They had lost their way…And so had I. Because I didn’t do anything.
I followed the procession to the cross. I watched as Jesus was lifted up. I heard my colleagues shout derisively at him, “Come down from the cross!” I saw him breath his last. And at that moment I remembered his words that night we first met. “The Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in Him will be saved.”
Was this what he meant? Was this His way of being lifted up, because he didn’t have to? At any point he could have said what people wanted to hear and walked away, but he didn’t. Saving himself was not his goal.
Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so I must be lifted up. We have to see the source of our sickness in order to be saved. Seeing him lifted up I suddenly understood what he meant. I saw everything that put him there. The pride. The arrogance. The selfishness. The lust for power. Even the cowardice. If we can see, if we can just see the source of our sickness, we can be healed. Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so I must be lifted up and all who believe in me will have eternal life.
Soldiers put a sign above him “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” That’s what the astrologers called him when they asked King Herod about his birth? “Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews?” Was he? Was he who he said he was?
If so then what does it mean to worship a king like that? With kings, its all or nothing. No king takes second place. If this is truly the kind of king God is, then what does it mean to serve a king like that?
That question stayed with me the rest of my life, but my answer started when I helped remove his body from the cross, and I provided burial spices to anoint him and helped wrap his body in burial clothes, so that he would have burial fit for a king.
And because I did, I was removed from the council. I was no longer allowed to teach. I could not enter the temple nor a synagogue for the rest of my life.
And I have never been freer. I found my north star again. My father would be proud. I found my way.
Song Begins as image of shadowy figures remove Jesus from the cross. Then men carry body of Jesus to table in front and stand back as Nicodemus stands over the body and gently touches him before motioning carries to take him away and Nicodemus follows.