Christ’s Thirst and Ours
a sermon based on John 19:28
by Dr. David Rogne

When Albert Schweitzer first offered his services as a medical doctor to a French missionary society, the trustees of that society refused to sponsor him. The concern was that while preparing for his medical degree, he had made a psychological evaluation of the mental health of Jesus.  To submit Jesus to such an evaluation, they said, was to treat Jesus like any other human being and did not allow for the fact that Jesus was something else –namely, the Son of God.

The controversy about the nature of Jesus' humanity was not new then, and it continues today   One of the first heresies the church had to deal with in its early years was not the teaching that Jesus was not divine, but that he was not human. Those who held such a view were called Docetists, from a word meaning "to seem,” for they taught that Jesus only seemed to be human. Actually, he was a divine apparition, they said, and any human characteristics were only imagined by those who observed him   This put Jesus so far out of contact with the rest of humanity that the early church had to emphasize Jesus’ humanity. It is for this reason that the Apostle's Creed goes to great lengths to affirm that Jesus was born, crucified, suffered, died and was buried   Whatever else he was, the writers of the Creed wanted to say that he was human. Those two words that make up Jesus' fifth utterance from the cross attest to the same thing   When he said. "I Thirst", he was identifying with our humanity. These words of Jesus remind us that all human beings have needs, and reflecting on those words can help us to remember how Jesus taught us to deal with some of those needs.

The first thing these words remind us of is that we have physical needs. The Christian faith is a very physical religion   It does not play down the physical side of life or suggest that physical needs are unimportant. Jesus’ own thirst was real enough. He lived in a dry and thirsty land with few wells. Getting enough to drink there has been a perennial problem. For thousands of years the classic greeting in the Middle East was to ask for water - and a classic gesture of hospitality was to give water.

And on that particular day the thirst he felt was especially real. It had been perhaps eighteen hours since his last meal, his last supper with his disciples   He had gone through the agony of Gethsemane, the betrayal, the arrest, the cross-examination, the trial, the scourging, the weary walk to Calvary, the crucifixion, the exposure to the sun. Spikes had pierced his flesh, driven home with a sledgehammer.

Dwelling on the physical aspects of Jesus suffering is not pleasant.  We would like to turn away from it, as we prefer to turn away from the suffering of anyone. If it isn't happening to us, we would prefer not to have to look at it.  In Catholic churches worshipers are much more aware of the suffering of Jesus, for the crucifix visualizes that very well. In Protestant churches we say that our empty cross signifies the resurrection of Christ, but it is also more hygienic, more antiseptic, less graphic.

His cry from the cross indicates just how much he was like us. It identifies him with homeless refugees from Darfur. It identifies him with victims of the earthquake in Haiti. It identifies him with homeless and abused street children India.

But Jesus' life and teaching also instruct us in how to cope with some of these physical needs. On more than one occasion, Jesus demonstrated compassion for the hungry and gave us an example by feeding them. He recognized that religion is not just interested in spiritual matters, for in his prayer he taught his disciples that concern for bread takes precedence over the plea for forgiveness. Wood row Wilson echoed that thought after World War I when he said:  “No one can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach.”

Jesus identified with the needy when he said the time would come when he would say to his followers, "I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink", and that when they would ask, "When did we ever see you thirsty, and give you a drink?" He would say. "When you did it for one of the least of these, who are members of my family."  (Matthew 25:31-35) "Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones...—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward,” he said. Christ is encountered by us in the person of the needy, whoever they are. and the thirst he expressed is the thirst they feel.

In his own life, Jesus had to rely on the help of another. The soldiers had tried to give him an opiate earlier, but he refused it. The text says, "A jar full of sour wine was there.'' (John 19:29) When Roman soldiers went out on guard duty, they were issued a jug full of "posca". a mixture of sour wine, water and egg, as a part of their rations. Perhaps that vessel was standing under the cross with a sponge in its mouth to prevent swift evaporation and to keep dust from failing into it. Jesus cried out, and some of the people taunted him; others may have been sympathetic, but they did nothing. But there was one there who couldn't take it, perhaps one of the soldiers. He plunged the sponge down into the wine, put it on a stick, and lifted it to Jesus' mouth. No record of who he was, just one who performed an act of kindness, and who has been remembered ever since.

A man had a dream that he died and was transported to hell. There he observed a great banquet with all kinds of food on the table. The problem was that everyone had a four foot knife attached to one arm and a four foot fork attached to the other. Everyone was starving in the midst of plenty because the utensils made it impossible to get the food to their mouths. He was then transported to heaven and saw exactly the same arrangement, except that the people were happy and well-fed   They had discovered that the way for everyone to have enough was for each to feed the other. When we minister to the physical needs of others, we satisfy our own needs as well.

These words of Jesus remind me that another thing we humans thirst for is meaning in life. There is something about the way we are made that will not be contented with simply physical satisfaction. In his play Man and Superman," George Bernard Shaw deals with this thirst to be more than we are. Don Juan is in hell, being entertained royally by Satan after a profligate life. The problem is that Don Juan is unhappy and Satan can't understand why, since he has everything he wants   Don Juan tries to explain that there is an inner thirst that keeps him dissatisfied: "I tell you that as long as I can conceive of something better than myself, I cannot be at ease unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it."

A few years ago I read about a woman by the name of Rosemary Russell, who lived in Newport Beach, California.  At twenty-five she was already more successful than most people at fifty.   Smart, good looking, ambitious, Rosemary Russell was pulling down $75,000 a year in an investment firm and owned a staggering string of properties, including her own home with a silver Mercedes parked in front. A meticulous, deliberate young woman with a talent for investment, Rosemary found that her skills paid off handsomely. She had it all, it seemed, both youth and wealth. But something was missing. One day she drove her silver Mercedes sport coupe to a hotel in Laguna Beach, checked in, and then checked out of life with an overdose of pills. She left behind a note that said she was ending her life because, she said. "I am so tired of clapping with one hand.” Apparently, for her, life held out nothing to get excited about.

People are looking for meaning, but so often they are looking in the wrong places. Some think it's going to be found in accumulation. There is an old story about a king who was suffering from a malady. He was advised by his astrologer that he would be cured if the shirt of a satisfied man were brought for him to wear. People went out to all parts of the kingdom searching for such a man, and after a long search they found a truly satisfied man – but, alas, he did not possess a shirt. Satisfaction doesn't arise from the accumulation of things.

Some think that meaning will take care of itself if we just stay busy   Don Ian Smith in his book, By The River of No Return, tells of an experience on his ranch in the west. "I was in the upper meadow, he writes, changing the set in my irrigation ditch, hurrying to get it done before breakfast so I could hurry to my office, so 1 could 'be on time'. Suddenly, I discovered a wonderful, wild raspberry bush growing by the irrigation ditch. I had not seen it before, and it was loaded with ripe wild raspberries.  I remember thinking it would be so good if I just had time to sit down and eat those raspberries, but, of course, I didn't have time. Then something struck me, almost like a conversion experience.   It was as if a voice was speaking to me and it said, if you don't have time to enjoy a lovely thing that will soon be gone and cannot wait another day - what is the use of irrigating, and what is the use of having (a ranch), and what is the use of going to the office and what is the use of living? So I just took the time to eat those wild raspberries, to enjoy their dew-covered freshness on the morning that was so alive with freshness, beauty, and light that one could be certain that the Creator was still at work in his world." Smith discovered a little bit about meaning that day - but it was not through his round of activity. Our minds get thirsty for meaning just as our bodies get thirsty for water

Jesus acknowledged that need in all of us   At the outset of his ministry in Samaria Jesus sat by a well and engaged a woman in conversation   "Give me a drink",(John 4:7) he said to the woman, and then, when he had her attention, he moved beyond water and physical thirst to speak of meaning in life and of a coming Kingdom   He began that ministry asking for water, and now, as his life was coming to a close, he asked again. And in between he played on thirst as a recurring theme.

Over and over again, when people came to Jesus searching for the spiritually significant life which would satisfy their thirst for meaning, he indicated that it was to be found in ministering to the needs of others. A little eight-year-old girl was riding one day with her father through the slums of an American city. Depressed by what she saw, she said to her father, "One day I'm going to build a house among the poor people so the children can play in my yard." Her mother had died when she was two years old. The child suffered from a spinal curvature which gave her much pain in later life. She went to medical school to become a doctor but had to give up because of her health. Later, she studied social service in order to understand the needs of the poor. At the age of twenty-nine she secured a house among the underprivileged in a slum area of Chicago. She opened her home to the poor and the needy of every race, creed and color. After some years she won the Nobel Peace Prize, and at the age of seventy-five Jane Addams of Hull House, in Chicago, said that she never worried about whether life had meaning. When people asked Jesus about what was important in life, one of the things he said was "Love your neighbor as yourself."

These words of Jesus also remind me that we have a thirst for God. It is an experience as old as time. The Psalmist expressed it long before Christ when he wrote: "As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God."(Psalm 42:1-2)

In the Book of Ecclesiastes King Solomon describes an experiment he conducted several thousand years ago. He set out to find the good life. He worked hard to gain knowledge, to get pleasure, to acquire wealth and he succeeded   He built swimming pools, had numerous wives, fine clothes, stables of horses, expensive houses. But the more he got, the less satisfied he was. One day he added it up, and the total he got was zero   "I considered all that my hands had done...," he said. "and all was vanity." Nothing. Then, by accident, he stumbled on the reason: God, he said, has put eternity in the human mind.(Ecclesiastes 3:11) Something about us longs for the eternal, and we cannot be completely content with the accumulation of things that are passing away

At the height of his success, the great Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, was deeply troubled by the temptation to take his life. In recounting his despair he wrote: "I felt that something had broken within me on which my life had always rested, that I had nothing left to hold on to, that morally my life had stopped. An invincible force impelled me to get rid of my existence, in one way or another. Yet, while my intellect was working, something else in me was working too, and kept me from the deed.... During the whole course of this year, when I almost unceasingly kept asking myself how to end the business, whether by the rope or by the bullet...my heart kept

languishing with another pining emotion   I can call this by no other name than that of a thirst for God.”

It is that thirst in all of us that Jesus sought to satisfy when he taught us to think of God as father.   When you pray, say "Our Father," he taught. When you have been hurt by the world, remember that God welcomes you back as a waiting father welcomes back the prodigal who has wasted his resources.

 

Some years ago a pretty young mother of two children was found dead in a London flat with her head in the oven and the gas jets wide open. Her name was Sylvia Plath, a thirty year old American poet whose star was rising in the field of literature. Within a week of her death, intellectual London was reading a strange and terrible poem she had written during her last sick slide toward suicide. Its title was "Daddy" and its subject was the enormous vacuum that had existed in her life since her father died when she was ten years old. Little Sylvia had tried to be daddy's darling. Her father was a professor of entomology and from the time she was three she could identify hundreds of insects by their Latin names. But when she was ten Daddy died. It was the trauma of her life and pitched her into a void that ended so tragically twenty years later. Her poetry, it was said, was her heroic attempt to deal with a void that was never filled. If only she had been able to understand that there is a heavenly Father who loves, accepts and cares for us, she might have filled the vacuum left by the loss of her earthly father.

Jesus found his own spirit lifted from desolation to hope by his understanding of God.  The one who, in his agony cried out, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:33) was able to utter his last words from the cross: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” (Luke 23:45)

Each of us knows what it is to thirst - to be involved in a quest for fulfillment - it is part of the human experience with which Jesus identified when he cried, “I thirst.” Let us learn from Him to seek the things that really satisfy.