The Thirst of Christ

“After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill scripture), ‘I thirst.’”  --John 19: 28

During the Season of Lent, I’ve been preaching a sermon series on Jesus’ Seven Last Words from the Cross.  This is the fifth of the seven last words of Christ, and it is the shortest of them all.  In Greek it is just one word, “dipsao.” And yet despite its brevity, this word from Christ has a powerful message for us.  While the other words Christ spoke on the cross were directed outward, this is the only one that focuses on Jesus himself.

We see in this word both Jesus’ humanity and Jesus’ longing for love from his people.  The cry, “I’m thirsty,” gives voice to one of our most basic human needs.  If you have gotten up in the middle of the night to bring a glass of water to a thirsty child, or if you have ever given sips of water to someone who is sick, you know the urgency and sense of need that thirst can bring. 

Did you know that human body weight is 50 – 70% water?  Our bodies contain about 10 – 12 gallons of water.  You’ve probably heard that we all should drink 8 – 10 glasses of water a day, but did you know that the average adult loses 10 cups of water every day?  No wonder we should be drinking so much of it.  Without enough water, our bodies and minds don’t function as they should.  We don’t think as clearly when we haven’t had enough water, and we can even get headaches when we don’t drink enough.

In his thirst on the cross, Jesus experienced the basic human need for water.  He had been beaten and bloodied, forced to march down the road carrying his cross, and then endured the extreme cruelty of crucifixion.  The pain and brutality he had experienced left him extremely thirsty.  And the reality was that Jesus’ human body was dying, succumbing to the torture and nearing the physical end.

An ancient heresy said that the Son of God did not really suffer and die on the cross, that when the crucifixion occurred, Jesus’ spirit separated from his body so that he was spared the worst.  Even today, we do not like to dwell on his pain and suffering.  It would be easier not to think about Jesus going through this. But here we are called to step close to the face of this suffering man, to lean near to hear the word he is trying to speak  . . . Through dry, cracked lips, he whispers, “I thirst.”  And in that word we hear the real humanity of Jesus.  We see his bruised and bloody face.  We look into his eyes and see his need.  This is our brother, a fellow human being whose need is before us.   

In this word from the cross, we experience Jesus’ real humanity.  In this word from the cross we also hear Jesus’ longing for our love.  John says, “When Jesus knew that all was finished, he said, (in order to fulfill the Scripture), ‘I thirst.’”  Jesus knew, all along, that this would be the end of his journey.  Here, on the cross, he knew that he had fulfilled his purpose.  This ending was not an accident; it was not some failure of what was supposed to happen.  It was part of God’s plan, as Scripture had shown.  The scripture John is referring to here is Psalm 69.  The suffering servant speaking in this psalm says, “I am weary with crying; my throat is parched . . . for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink” (vv. 3, 21). 

The divine plan had come together for one reason:  love.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son . . .” God the Father and God the Son were completely one in this.  There is no greater love than Jesus’ love to lay down his life for us.

And this is the symbolic part of this fifth word from the cross.  While it gave voice to Jesus’ true humanity, his physical need, it also speaks of his thirst for us, his thirst for all of his people to know him and to return the love that he gave.

“I thirst . . . for you,” Jesus said.

One of the most respected and beloved Christians of our time was Mother Teresa.  The ministry she founded, the Missionaries of Charity, has established work on every continent.  In each house of the Missionaries of Charity is placed a crucifix, and next to it are the words, “I thirst.”  This word from Jesus became the centering focus of Mother Teresa’s life.  A biographical statement about her says, “On September 10, 1946, during the train ride from Calcutta to . . . her annual retreat, Mother Teresa received her ‘inspiration,’ her ‘call within a call.’  On that day, in a way she would never explain, Jesus’ thirst for love and for souls took hold of her heart, and the desire to satiate His thirst became the driving force of her life” (Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Women for Faith and Family, www.wf-f.org/MotherTeresa.html).  All that she did, she did out of love for Christ, in response to his love that she came to know in a powerful and mystical way, through his word, “I thirst.”

Jesus speaks the word to each of us today:  I thirst.  He thirsts for our love.  He thirsts for our hearts and souls.  So often we fill our lives with so many other things that we don’t have time for Jesus.  We turn away from his voice.  We refuse to hear his cry.  And yet he thirsts for us.

Jesus comes to us today, whispering his word in our ears.  So now, as we draw close to the cross, let us open our hearts to our Lord, understanding that his humanity was for our sake, his emptiness—for our sake, because he thirsts for us; he thirsts for us to reciprocate the great love he has for each one of us.  So let us draw near to the cross and look upon our loving Lord, and let us give him all the love of our hearts, souls, minds and strength, for the sake of Jesus Christ, our Lord. 

Does God Forsake Us? The Fourth of Jesus’ Seven Last Words

“Jesus cried out with a loud voice . . . ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”  --Mark 15: 34

This is a word that can shake the core of our faith.  How could Jesus say these words:  “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Could God really have forsaken Jesus?  Does this mean that Jesus’ faith in the Father was without base? What kind of God forsakes his Son?  What kind of Father sends his Son to die?

The question strikes at the heart of our own relationship to God, doesn’t it?  We may wonder, if Jesus said this, what does it mean for us? Does God forsake us?  Does God leave us alone? 

There are two things we must understand when we hear this word from Jesus.  First, we must understand Jesus’ words when he said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).  The will of God and the will of Jesus are inextricably linked.  We have not two Gods or three, but one God, in three persons; we do not have a situation here where a Father has sent a son to do that which he does not understand or take on willingly.  Jesus freely took on the form of humanity, knowing that he was born to die.

Why?  The will of the Father and the will of the Son were one for our sake.  To the end of saving of us from our sin.   Throughout the years and ages, God gave humanity the chance to turn from sin, to keep covenant.  But humans continued to sin, and they began relying on the sacrificial system, replacing ritual with relationship with God, forgetting that what God wants is not sacrifice, but repentance.  But although we were unfaithful to God, God was always faithful to us.

In Jesus, God himself paid the price we could not pay and thus united us to himself through the new covenant in his blood.  The will of God the Father and God the Son was one, and it was a will to save us, the children God created and loves.  God wills our salvation, and so on the cross, Jesus felt that separation from God that we would have felt for all eternity but for the sacrifice of the Son. 

The second thing that we must understand if we will hear this word rightly is that in this word from the cross, Jesus was saying more than we might realize.  One of our faults in the 21^st century is that we do not know scripture as well as we should.  Today we are too busy for such mundane and uninteresting things as reading, and certainly not reading the Bible.  We are too captivated with our technology, mesmerized by our cell phones and gadgets, our I-pads and I-pods, to take time to read.  And why memorize anything when you can Google it?

And so we don’t hear the full meaning of Jesus’ words in this passage.  If we knew scripture as well as those standing at the foot of the cross that day, we would know that Jesus wasn’t just speaking randomly.  We would have known that Jesus was quoting scripture!   When he said, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me,” he was quoting from Psalm 22.

Jesus was quoting words that he knew every one of his followers would immediately recognize.  It was as if he said, “Twinkle twinkle little star,” and everyone knows the next line is, “How I wonder what you are.”  Or “Jesus loves me, this I know,” we all know the next words are “For the Bible tells me so.” 

When Jesus said, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me,” they knew that the end was, “Future generations will be told about the Lord, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.”

Saying that he has done it!  That is how the psalm that begins in forsakenness ends, by thanking God for delivering him, and saying, He has done it!

Do you see the difference that makes?

This Psalm, like many of the Psalms, begins in despair, but ends in victory.  It tells the story of one who went through an excruciating time, but in the end he realized, that God was there all along, and that God delivered him and was worthy of praise. 

The description of the man in the Psalm fits Jesus’ crucifixion.  The Psalmist said that he was scorned and despised by the people; they mocked him and told him to call on God to save him.  The Psalmist speaks of his bones being out of joint, his mouth being dry.  He says, “They stare and gloat over me; they divide my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots.” 

But then there is a turning point in the Psalm.  After describing his desperate situation, there comes a point where the Psalmist says, “The Lord did NOT hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him.”  And so I will praise him! 

And the Psalm that Jesus quoted on the cross proved true; the deliverance of God, the deliverance Jesus won in his death, was a deliverance not just for those who stood at the cross that day but to a people yet unborn!  That means all of us! 

So great is the love and faithfulness of God.  Although humans throughout the ages were unfaithful to God, God was always faithful to us.  God kept reaching out to us, through priests and prophets and kings, and when we continued to turn away, God kept turning toward us, kept turning toward us even in our sin, and finally turned into one of us, to bear, once and for all, the cost of our sin, to be the ultimate sacrifice, so that no longer would we be separated from him.  On the cross, God himself felt the forsakenness that we would have felt for all eternity, if not for his sacrifice.  And so now we do not have to fear.  Our God does not forsake us, but has delivered us from sin and evil and even death itself.  And like the Psalmist, we can say that he has done it.

The Seven Last Words from the Cross: Being the Body of Christ

“When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Here is your son.’  Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’  And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.”  --John 19: 26 - 27

Jesus’ mother and a few others were with Jesus in his final moments, standing at the foot of the cross to hear Jesus’ last words. For Mary, his mother, it must have been almost too much to bear.  Children are not supposed to die before their parents, and especially not in such a horrific, painful way.  And now she stood before the cross, and Jesus was about to be taken from her.  But Jesus did not leave those he loved alone.  Before he died, he looked at his mother and at the disciple whom he loved, and he said to his mother, “Here is your son,” and to the disciple he said, “Here is your mother.” 

Now, it is good, isn’t it, that Jesus’ thoughts were with his mother, that he wanted her to be taken care of when he was gone?  But if we think that this is all this passage is about—caring for our mothers—we are mistaken.  Here, in some of Jesus’ last words, in one of his last acts, he affirmed once again what God saw at creation, when in Genesis God said, “It is not good for man to be alone.”  It is not good for us who are humans to be alone.  God created us to be in community with one another.

Earlier in John’s gospel, after Jesus had told his disciples that the time had come for him to leave them, he prayed for them.  He prayed that THEY WOULD BE ONE, even as he and the Father are one.  This was Jesus’ prayer--when he knew that his arrest was imminent and that the crucifixion was coming--this was Jesus prayer, that his Father would bind the disciples together and make them one.

In saying to his mother and his disciple, this is your mother, this is your son, Jesus has created a new kind of family, a family bound not by ties of blood or genes or DNA, but created by the adoption of the Father who claims all of us as his children. 

In his self-deprecating humor, Will Willimon told about his reaction to a businessman in his city who was indicted for embezzling millions from his company and “bringing thousands of his employees to ruin.”  Before he appeared in front of the federal court, he was (quote) “saved.”  A month later, Willimon saw the man on a Christian talk show on TV.  “There he was, before God and everybody,” Willimon said, “Bible in hand, pious and sweet as a lamb.”

“It was more than I could take. . . ‘The creep!’”  I exclaimed to my wife, Patsy.  ‘Is there no limit to his hypocrisy?  Can you believe this?’

“She, passing through the den, mumbled to me, ‘It’s unbelievable the sort of creeps Jesus is willing to forgive.  Even more incredible is the sort of creeps Jesus commands us to be in church with’” (Will Willimon, Thank God It’s Friday:  Encountering the Seven Last Words from the Cross).

Here at the foot of the cross, when it seemed as if all was torn asunder, when these disparate people could have gone their separate ways and mourned Jesus on their own, Jesus called them together and created something new, gave them to each other as a family.  And although the physical presence of Jesus would be gone, his body would not be, because the body of Christ exists wherever his follows are together.

A Question of Faith: Crucified Criminal or Conquering King?

“Then the thief said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’  Jesus replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.’”  --Luke 23:42-43

During Lent and Holy Week, I’m preaching a sermon series on Jesus’ Seven Last Words from the Cross.  The second word is “Today You Will Be With Me in Paradise.”  When Jesus was crucified, there were two other men who were sentenced to death and crucified with him, thieves or highwaymen, men of violence and robbery.

Here was Jesus, the one without any sin at all, sharing the same punishment as these criminals, hanging on a cross just like theirs, placed right between them.

And yet, isn’t this just where Jesus placed himself all his life?  Jesus was always getting in trouble for hanging out with the wrong people.  He sat down and ate with tax collectors and sinners, he touched lepers, he let a sinful woman bathe his feet and dry them with her hair.  And even in his death, here he is in the midst of sinners.

The first thief mocked Jesus.  He looked at Jesus and saw a man who was dirty, bloody, beaten and bruised.  Nothing about Jesus looked like a teacher, a healer, a worker of miracles.  Surely this was a man with no power, no authority, no connection to God.  The first thief looked at Jesus and saw what he expected to see in someone being executed.  He saw a criminal, just like him.

But the second thief . . . Somehow the second thief saw something different.  What was it that man saw in Jesus?  Had he perhaps seen Jesus when he was teaching or healing?  Had he seen his compassion toward the least of these?  Or was it Jesus’ words as he hung there on the cross, “Father, forgive them,” that opened this man’s eyes so that he saw not just another criminal but something else entirely?

I’m amazed as I think about this man’s ability to see Jesus.  I wonder if, had I been in his place, I would have had such faith, such ability to see beyond the circumstance, beyond the pain and the shame, to see Jesus.  To look at death and failure and forsakenness and see a king.  To look at the end of life and see the future.  To look at the object of despair and see hope, hope so great that he could say, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” 

This man believed that the bleeding, gasping, dying man was a king!  And contrary to what everyone else believed—the soldiers, who saw just another criminal, the disciples who saw the end of their dreams for a throne and power—this man believed that there was a kingdom, and that the man hanging on the cross had power, power to remember and help him in the place of his glory. 

Somehow this man understood that it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.  It is in the death of this one who was without sin that we have life and salvation.  It is the great reversal at the heart of the gospel, that in what the world sees as the ultimate failure and shame, the Son of Man is glorified.

If we can understand this, then we can understand the true nature of who God is and how great is God’s love for us.  For without that love and the sacrifice of Christ, death would be the end for all of us.  But because Christ died and was raised from death, we are raised with him to life eternal.  We are resurrected from death and from the sin that would lead to eternal death by the life-giving gift of God. 

There, on the brink of death, that second thief looked at Jesus and saw eternal life.   He understood that this is not the end, this is not all there is. And when he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom,” Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” 

I have always loved C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia.  The last book in the series is called, The Last Battle.  In that book, the Pevensie children, who are the main characters in the series, were in a beautiful land, with “the deep blue sky overhead, and the air” blew gently on their faces like a day in early summer. As they walked along through a grove of trees with the sun shining, they came upon a group of dwarfs huddled together and grumbling among themselves.  When the children tried to talk to them about the beauty of the place, the dwarfs couldn’t comprehend what they were talking about!  What, “In this pitch-black, poky, smelly little hold of a stable!” they said. 

“’But it isn’t dark, you poor stupid Dwarfs,’ said Lucy.  ‘Can’t you see?  Look up!  Look round!  Can’t you see the sky and the trees and the flowers?  Can’t you see me?’” (C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle, pp. 136-144).

But all that the dwarfs could see was darkness.  The darkness of their hearts and their evil deeds had consumed their sight until the dark was all that they could see, even though the light shone all around them. 

The second thief was blinded, seeing only the same darkness that filled his heart.  But when we open our hearts to Jesus, when we allow the light of his love to pour in, when we recognize our need for him, for his saving grace, then we see him aright.  Then our eyes are opened to see the one who is our Lord and Savior, victorious over both sin and death.  And then we hear him say to each of us, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.” 

Grace in the Dentist’s Office

Yesterday I went to the dentist’s office for a check up.  The dental assistant was bent over my file, going through the routine list of questions.  “Do you have any new medical conditions?” she asked.  I let her know that recently I had been diagnosed with breast cancer and was going through chemotherapy.  She put her pen down and looked at me.  “Is your husband the guy who was in two weeks ago with the pink shoes?” 

Yes, I told her, the guy wearing the pink Converse high tops was indeed my wonderful, supportive husband, who had ordered the shoes to show his support and encouragement while I’m going through treatment. 

A huge smile spread across her face. “We all thought that was so wonderful!” she said.  Then she surprised me by saying, “The very same day your husband was here, another one of our patients came in wearing the prettiest pink toe nail polish.  I complimented her on what a pretty color it was, and she said, ‘My friend was just diagnosed with breast cancer, and I painted my nails pink in support of her.’” 

Her smile grew even bigger when she said, “I told her, ‘We just had a guy in this morning wearing pink tennis shoes, because his wife was just diagnosed with breast cancer!’ And the patient replied, ‘That was my friend’s husband, Joseph!’”

Who would ever have imagined that Joseph and my friend, Vicki, both would be in the dentist’s office on the same day, wearing the color of their support?

That has been the way of my journey with cancer.  Again and again, I have been surprised by gifts of love and grace—sometimes in the most unlikely places!  I am reminded of how God works in ways we might never expect, works through people and things that might seem ordinary, but in fact can reveal the divine.  If we just keep our eyes open, we might catch a glimpse of God, even through things like pink high tops and toe nail polish.