7 Words: I am Thirsty

The Fifth Word:
“I am thirsty.”
(John 19:28)

Today as we reflect on Jesus’ last words from the cross, I want to start elsewhere. I want to start earlier in Jesus’ ministry, in John 4. Jesus was on his way from Judea to Galilee, and on the way, he went through Samaria. Around noon, he stopped by Jacob’s well to rest. There he met a Samaritan woman who had come to draw water. He asked her for a drink. She responded, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:9-14)

It is very interesting to me that whenever the John the Evangelist talks about thirst, he brings it back to the spiritual metaphor. Thirst for John isn’t just a thirsty feeling. It isn’t just the need for water. It comes back to our need for Living Water, that which only Jesus can provide.

So we find Jesus, on the cross, experiencing extreme thirst. He has lost blood and sweat and is badly dehydrated. On its most basic level, Jesus’ statement, “I am thirsty” was, on the most obvious level, a request for something to drink. In response the soldiers gave Jesus “sour wine” (v. 29), a cheap beverage common among lower class people in the time of Jesus.

But Jesus didn’t just ask for a drink simply because he was physically thirsty, but also in order to fulfill the Scripture. Though John doesn’t specifically reference the scripture, he was thinking of Psalm 69, which includes this passage:

Their insults have broken my heart,
and I am in despair.
If only one person would show some pity;
if only one would turn and comfort me.
But instead, they give me poison for food;
they offer me sour wine for my thirst.
(vv. 20-21)

Jesus’ thirst also fulfilled scripture. But it was also a spiritual thirst; as Jesus suffered, he embodied the pain of the people of Israel, that which had been captured in the Psalms. Jesus was suffering for the sin of Israel, even as he was taking upon himself the sin of the world. His thirst was spiritual as well as physical.

In the book of Ezekiel, chapter 47, we see a prophecy about water coming from the Temple. The river was so pure that even where it empties into the sea, it makes the salt water fresh. Swarms of living creatures will live wherever the river flows. There will be large numbers of fish, because this water flows there and makes the salt water fresh; so where the river flows everything will live. (v. 9)

Jesus lived out this prophecy – do you remember what happened when he touched a leper or an unclean woman? The Law said that anything or anyone who touched something or someone unclean became unclean themselves. So if you knew someone with leprosy, you couldn’t touch them, even if they were your child, without becoming unclean yourself. But Jesus went out and touched them and healed them, and instead of becoming unclean, he made them clean. Because he is that stream of Living Water, making everything he touches clean.

In Revelation 7, John sees a vision of a great multitude in white robes, so numerous that no one can count them. (Revelation 7:13-17)

Then one of the elders asked me, “These in white robes—who are they, and where did they come from?”

 I answered, “Sir, you know.”

And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore,

“they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple;
and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence.

Listen to this: ‘Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst.
The sun will not beat down on them,’ nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; ‘he will lead them to springs of living water.’  ‘And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’”

While Jesus suffered greatly, he knows that others will suffer as well. Jesus died suffering. And right now, in our world, Christians are dying, suffering. Islamic State is killing Christians, raping Christian women and even beheading Christian children and celebrating as they do so. Churches are being bombed and Christians killed in Pakistan. In North Korea, in Saudi Arabia, it is illegal to be a Christian. Christians have been chased from Ethiopia, where one of the oldest Christian groups has worshiped for two thousand years. In his thirst, Jesus fulfilled prophecy, but also, his thirst leads to another prophecy, the prophecy from Isaiah 49 that the elder speaks of in Revelation 7.

Jesus is the spring of Living Water, but on the cross, that water was fouled by our sin. But in his resurrection, Jesus makes that Living Water available for all who would come to the fountain. The problem is that we are thirsty for all kinds of other things. We thirst for money and power. We thirst for material things, things that will not last. But until our thirst is for Jesus, for his Living Water, we will never be satisfied.

Does your soul yearn for the Living Water that only Jesus can supply? If you are satisfied, like the Apostle Paul, you have learned to be content in all circumstances, it is because you do have the one thing that you need for such satisfaction. You have Jesus Christ’s Living Water flowing out of you.