Fifth Word from the Cross: 'I Thirst'

A Sermon originally preached on Good Friday 2013

So far in these Seven Words from the Cross, we have seen irony and paradox. We have seen how many of Jesus’s last words, and the circumstances in which he spoke them, are reminiscent of things that he said and did earlier in his ministry. This is never more true than it is in John’s Gospel.

There are no coincidences in the Fourth Gospel. John’s style is incredibly plain and simple, and yet what he has to say can be unspeakably profound. At times, there are profound statements that seem to be quite simple, until on further contemplation, they explode like a tiny burst of fireworks, and the reader can almost be thunderstruck. I have had opportunity to preach on John’s Gospel for now slightly more than ten years of parish ministry, and I still constantly find new layers of meaning, hidden underneath what I had already seen. No doubt years from now, as I prepare for retirement, John will still sparkle and crackle with excitement and energy as I read it.

So it could hardly be any other way than that when Jesus simply says the Word ‘I thirst’ as he hangs dying, it has strong echoes of an earlier story in John’s Gospel. It’s the story of Jesus’s encounter with a woman who is, perhaps, the most broken woman in the whole Gospel story. She’s a Samaritan woman, who comes to Jacob’s well at noon to draw water. She could have come in the early morning when the other women of the village would be there, but she comes at noon. This suggests that at the very least she is ashamed. In all likelihood she is the subject of scorn and derision. People look down upon her because of her brokenness in marriage and in relationships.

So here she is trying to avoid being seen, and instead there is someone at the well. Not just someone, but a man. Not just a man but a Jewish man. In that time and place men and women were not to be seen in public together. And Jews and Samaritans had nothing to do with one another. She is startled to see him there. She is even more startled that he speaks to her.

Jesus, we are told, is tired. As he addresses this broken, lonely and ashamed woman, he asks, “Give me a drink.” It is an invitation to be at risk. It is an invitation to cross boundaries and ancient taboos. But he is thirsty, and she has a bucket, and there is the well of their ancestor Jacob.

Notice how Jesus does not look down upon her as the others do. He calls no attention to her brokenness. Instead, he acknowledges his own weakness. He is tired. He is thirsty. What Jesus is seeking here is someone who shares his thirst. His thirst is a thirst for peace. This is a thirst for justice and healing for all people, especially people like this Samaritan woman. Most of all, Jesus thirsts for dignity and respect for all people. Not some people. Not a lot of people. All people.

This woman knows no respect. But Jesus reaches out to her from his need, not hers. By reaching out to her from his own need he gives her dignity and respect—there is something she can do for him. Jesus gives her identity and purpose. Suddenly something new, something real, wells up inside of her. It is a new confidence, a new spirit. And from this new spirit her thirst is revealed. It is a thirst that will not be quenched by the waters at the bottom of Jacob’s well. She thirsts for real life, authentic life, and Jesus gives it to her without cost and without condition.

After some astonishingly frank and assertive conversation, her response is that of total commitment. And why not? She, who had no life and no purpose, but only heartache, pain, and shame, is suddenly given the gift of eternal life with Jesus who is revealed to her as God’s own anointed one. It is in responding to his need that she comes to realize who he is. In realizing this, she comes to realize that the water he has to offer is something even greater.

There are no coincidences in the Fourth Gospel

Is this not exactly what’s happening at the foot of the Cross? The same Jesus who had asked the Samaritan woman for water now calls that he is thirsty. The irony, of course, is that if anyone who could hear him knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to them ‘Give me a drink,’ they would have asked him, and he would have given them living water. The water that Jesus has to offer is not just a cup of water from a bucket, or sucked from a damp sponge. Jesus is offering what will become a spring of water, welling up from inside us, and spilling out to spread eternal life into the lives of everyone we encounter.

This same Jesus who cries out in his thirst, will also shed blood and water out of his side when he is pierced by the soldier’s spear. This is a detail of the crucifixion that only occurs in John’s Gospel, and only in John does Jesus say ‘I thirst.’ This is not a coincidence.

Jesus began by asking the Samaritan woman for a drink and ended by offering her something to satisfy her own deeper, spiritual thirst. Her life was so transformed by the encounter with Jesus that she returned excitedly to the village, telling her friends ‘Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did.’ On the cross, he cries out to anyone who would hear (including us, nearly two thousand years later), and then pours out his own abundant love.

The blood and water still flow into our lives, straight from the Body of Christ. That Body is not a physical body in the same way, but it is the Church, his mystical body. From the Church flows the grace of the sacraments, and they transform us. Through those sacraments, we are given new life, reborn into Christ’s body. Those those sacraments, we are given Christ’s own assurance of pardon and forgiveness. Through those sacraments, we are fed with the mystical food of his body and blood. Our lives are changed, and in as much as we are now part of that Body, the fountains of living water flow out of us, touching the lives of those around us.

In his weakest moments, while he was exposed to shame and mockery, Jesus had water to offer. Even as he cried out in his own thirst, he was drawing others to himself to receive the living water that would flow from his side. Even as the Church seems most irrelevant, most marginalized, most exposed to scandal and shame, we are still the stewards and the ministers of his sacraments, and you and I, as members of his Body, still have living water to offer the world.

Other water is the kind that people drink from, and one day grow thirsty again. The water that Jesus offers is the kind that satisfies, that becomes a spring of water welling up to eternal life, as his life and love is brought forth into our own, bubbling up to fill our own.

And just like with the woman at the well, on the Cross, his invitation is not ‘Come and get the water that I have to offer,’ but a much more subtle call: ‘I thirst. Give me something to drink.’ You and I are here today because we have heard that call. We may be drawn to the Cross by pity, but it is only in opening our hearts to him that we are made fit to receive the great gift he pours out for us.