Good Friday Ec. Service, John 19:28 6th April 2012

“I Thirst”

I. THE HUMAN NEED OF JESUS

Years ago, when I lived in Virginia, I had a friend in college who had grown up on a farm. I used to visit him from time to time at the farm, and his father often asked us to help with farm work. One sunny Saturday in June we helped with haying. John’s dad drove the baling machine, and John and I were on a flat-bed trailer to catch the bales of hay and stack them. It was heavy work on a hot day. After a few hours in the June sun, we took a break – and I drank over half a gallon of iced tea. I needed liquid badly after all that hot, dry work.

In John 19:28, Jesus says, “I am thirsty.” Of all the things Jesus says on the cross, this is one of the most understandable and most human. After all, he had been in the hot Judean sun for hours. He had had to do the hard work of carrying his cross from Jerusalem to Golgotha outside the walls of the city. Who wouldn’t be thirsty after that work and that sun?

And of course, we cannot forget that before he began his journey to Golgotha, he had been brutally beaten by the Roman soldiers. The whips used for such beatings had pieces of bone and metal tied into the cords of the whip, so that every blow would tear into the skin. It was not uncommon for the cuts from a beating to be so deep that the victim’s bones could be seen. By the time Jesus arrived at the site of his execution, he had lost much blood – fluids that his body needed to replace. The cry, “I am thirsty” is very understandable. No person could go through what Jesus had experienced without being in desperate need of water. Psalm 22 has many verses that speak to the crucifixion. In verse 15, the psalm says, “my mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death.” This verse, like so much of the psalm, was fulfilled during Jesus’ time on the cross.

Jesus’ words, “I am thirsty,” point to the very real humanity of Jesus. Many of his other words from the cross are more than we would expect from a mortal, but “I am thirsty” we can certainly understand. In his first three “words,” Jesus asks God to forgive those who nailed him to the cross, promises the believing thief that he will enjoy forgiveness, and commends his mother into the care of his best friend. These are extraordinary statements. If I were being executed, I doubt that I would be thinking very much about the needs and concerns of other people. Then when Jesus cries out, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” we can understand his horror at the loss of God's presence and fellowship. Then comes his very human statement of “I thirst.” The next two, and final words, are, however are hard to grasp at first. When Jesus says, “It is finished,” we wonder “What is finished?” And when he says, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit,” we wonder how he can entrust himself to someone who had just forsaken him. The seventh word puzzles us greatly.

II. THE CREATOR IS THIRSTY!

Of the seven last words, two make very clear sense to us: his cry when abandoned by the Father and his thirst as he hung in the hot sun. And yet even this cry of thirst is amazing. After all, the one who was thirsty was no ordinary man. In John 1:3, we hear this about Jesus: “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” The man who hung on the cross was the one who had created the world.

The man who cried out, “I am thirsty, “was the one who had made the oceans, who had formed the rivers, who arranged that the rain would fall and the dew form morning by morning. Water was his invention – and yet he was thirsty. He could have caused the rain to fall into his mouth, or commanded a spring to gush water out of that hilltop – but he did not.

The creator of water was thirsty. He was thirsty because he had chosen to enter the world he had created on a rescue mission. All had not gone well on his creation. The pinnacle of all his works, the human race, had turned its back on him and had declared independence. Misery and alienation had entered human experience. God the Son had come to earth, becoming a human being. He aim was to live the life human beings were meant to live, in perfect fellowship and perfect obedience to the Father. His final obedience was to offer his life as the Lamb of God, a perfect sacrifice to atone for humanity’s rebellion. He would be alienated from God, bearing the punishment we deserve, so that we could be reconciled to God and enjoy the fellowship that the obedience of Jesus deserved.

When Jesus had come to earth as God the Son in human flesh, he had accepted the limitations of being human. He did work miracles, to be sure, but every miracle was to benefit others, not himself. So as he hung on the cross, he brought no rain to relieve his thirst. He suffered the full agony any of us would have suffered. The creator of the world cried out in thirst, and left his needs in the hands of those who had nailed him to the cross.

III. BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO … THIRST FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS

Jesus had another thirst. He had had it all his life. In Matt. 5:6, Jesus speaks of this thirst, saying, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” Jesus longed to do God's will. He hungered and thirsted for righteousness perfectly – and he was satisfied, as he carried out the will of God. In John 4:34, Jesus says, “Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work.” And Jesus did the will of God, even to offering his life as a sacrifice for our sins. He would have loved to have turned aside from the cross. We heard him cry out in prayer, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” He did not want the physical pain of the cross, nor the spiritual pain that he knew would come as he bore God’s wrath on sin. Yet in spite of that desire to avoid both physical and spiritual pain, he also said, “Let not my will but yours be done.”

Jesus thirsted for righteousness, and his life was righteous. He was tempted to disobey God, but his thirst for righteousness was greater than his desire to please himself. He remained obedient. Even as he struggled with the Father’s will in the Garden of Gethsemane, his thirst for righteousness was greater than his desire for life.

IV. THE THIRSTY ONE OFFERS LIVING WATER

John 4 is another place in the Bible where Jesus speaks of his thirst. In John 4:6, 7, we read, “Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” Again, the full humanity of Jesus is on view. It is a hot day and Jesus has walked a great deal that day. He is thirsty and needs water.

But he also offers water. John 4:10, 13, 14 says, “Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’”

Jesus offered the Samaritan woman spiritual water, water that would never dry up, water that would refresh her and sustain her in all circumstances. He freely offers this spiritual water to all who thirst for God. And the reason he can offer this living water is that he was willing to be thirsty himself. He was willing to come to earth as a human being, subject to the pains of this life, and even to temptation. Even more, he was willing to be whipped, to bleed, to carry a cross, to be nailed to that cross, and to be exposed to the intense sun of Judea, so that every fiber of his body cried out for water. His physical suffering was devastating. It would overwhelm any of us. It was not as bad as the spiritual suffering he endured when the Father turned away from him as he took the sin of humanity upon himself – but the physical suffering was a mirror of the abandonment we all deserve because of our sinfulness. He took what we should experience, so that he could offer us forgiveness and fellowship with God. Because he was thirsty, both for water and for righteousness, he can offer us living water.

When I spent that long-ago Saturday tossing hay bales, a good drink of iced tea restored the water I needed. Jesus had no such relief – only a sip of vinegary wine at best. But he had the satisfaction of redeeming humanity from the power of sin and death. With his thirst, with his suffering, he opened the path to heaven to all who believe. He thirsted for righteousness, and, having done all that was right, he offered his righteousness to anyone who believes and accepts it. To do the will of God was refreshing to his thirsty soul. And because he was thirsting for righteousness, we can be restored to God and have that well of the water of eternal life springing up in our hearts, bringing us life now and evermore.

To him who thirsted for water that we might never be thirsty again be glory now and evermore. AMEN.