John 19:39 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.

There I was Easter Sunday listening to the pastor preach on the resurrection and all I could think was; “How big is my Lord that He should need a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes to be buried?”

That sounded like a lot of weight for preparing a body for burial. So I searched for some information about Jewish burial traditions. They changed over the years so the only way to anticipate what they might have been thinking at the time was to address the customs of Jesus’ time.

Gamamiel, Paul’s teacher in the Mosaic Law, was buried using eighty-nine pounds. King Herod oddly enough had five hundred servants carry his to his grave. Even if each only carried four pounds, that would have been a ton. Obviously the issue of weight had little to do with function and said more about the value of the ointments, which were expensive. The rich man gets the expensive funeral.

Jesus did not earn money. He had no house, no place to rest His head. He gave no thought of saving for his own funeral. Joseph of Arimathaea gave up his tomb and Nicodemus gave up what was surely all he had saved for his own funeral.

So what did I learn from my little bunny trail, off the beaten path of the resurrection story?

Oddly enough, I learned about traditions of the times and all of the traditions which were expected of that time were not honored. His leg bones were not broken which was a tradition of quickening the death on the cross. He was buried in a borrowed tomb, very untraditional. No family member was allowed to stay with the body until all the rituals of burial were complete. His burial ceremony was put off because of the Sabbath. The biggest and most untraditional of all, He didn’t stay put.

Yet all those tradition violations were told of in prophesy.

What’s the odds?

John 14:24 He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s which sent me.

Unrequited love is defined as love that is not reciprocated, not returned. Can you think back to a time when you loved someone and they chose not to return that love to you? Did you stop loving them or did you just ache? I sometimes think back on young love. I wonder still, why couldn’t she love me?

To love, is first and foremost a choice. We do not often think about that second barrier. The ability to be loved. There are always barriers, things that get in the way of making that choice to return love. In people those barriers are pragmatic. We do not deal in abstracts, we take a cold hard look at reality and choose to push those barriers aside and love anyway.

Human barriers are often associated with human emotions, or conditions. Race, religion and poverty are difficult obstacles, but couples have learned to put love first and do not allow those barriers, no matter how varied, to come before the marriage. Age is difficult for some, not for others. I know a woman who fell in love and married a quadriplegic. Tell me she didn’t put aside some real and very difficult barriers.

Imagine how God must feel about His love being rejected. With God, there is a more difficult and real barrier. Sin. No sin can come before our thrice Holy God. We cannot see any way for us to have a loving relationship with this Holy God. How could He love us, sinners?

Hebrews 10:9-10 Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second. By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

God no longer has a problem with sin. He has dealt with it thru the death and resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ. We are the ones that have a problem with sin.

The only way over this barrier is to accept the free will offer of grace which is Jesus Christ.