John 19: 28-29 "I Thirst"

To be thirsty. It represents one of our most basic human needs - for water. Fluid, especially water, is essentially to life. While people can last weeks without food, we can only live three to five days without water. In fact, when people are dying, they stop eating, but they are still thirsty. In the midst of so many profound statements that Jesus makes from the cross, this one seems simple, mundane, and very human. He was thirsty.

Each of the gospels have a different account of Jesus being offered wine to drink during the crucifixion. In Matthew and Mark, Jesus was offered wine with some type of poison (gull or mhryh) when he arrived at Golgotha, which Jesus refused. Why would Jesus refuse to drink this wine laced with chemicals to help ease his pain and speed up his death -  because he was choosing to suffer. Choosing to bear the entire weight of the punishment for our sins. The magnitude of the suffering he endured also allowed him to understand any type of suffering that we may go through in life. Jesus choose to undertake it all and face the suffering of death - the punishment for our sins - head on. If any of Christ’s disciples want to claim that following him is simple or easy, they only need to Christ’s example on the cross to see how false this notion is. Christ took the hard way even though he was given an alternative. How often do we instead look for the easiest way instead of perhaps the way that Christ is calling us? 

When I consider the depth of what Christ was communicating two quotes immediately come to mind. The first is from Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Less Traveled”: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” Jesus took the road of pain, suffering, and brokenness. He took the hard way, but he did that for us. What an amazing statement of love. The second quote is from G.K. Chesterton who wrote, “the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and left untried.” Brothers and sisters, Jesus told us in the gospels that if we are to be his disciples we must pick up our crosses and follow him. And when Jesus spoke to his followers about his impending suffering he talked about the cup that he was to drink from, asking them if they could drink from the same cup. That is difficult. It is inconvenient. But it is the way that Jesus modeled for us.

This semester, the students at Mansfield have chosen to study the book of Revelation in bible study. While the book is filled with things that have captured the students attention, one of the topics that generated the most discussion was the church of Laodicea being described as lukewarm, neither hot nor cold leading Christ to spit them from his mouth. Another way to describe being lukewarm is being a fair weather disciple. Jesus, by modeling for us what it means to suffer and choose the most difficult path, calls us to be disciples who are sold out, not fair weathered, in our faith.

The gospel of Luke gives a different account of Jesus being offered wine. The soldiers offered him sour wine in a mock gesture, as if knowing that he was thirsty, but holding the wine just out of reach. Toasting him as they cried out “Hail, King of the Jews”. Can you imagine desperately wanting water, but not being allowed to have it. It’s like the line from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner: “water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink”. Yet another harsh punishment inflicted  by the cruel hands of the guards that day. 

The last statement about the wine Christ is offered is found in the gospel of John and is today’s text. In this account Jesus stated that he was thirsty and was offered wine in return. Yet in two short verses John communicates so much to those hearing this account. First, the text states that Jesus said that he had thirst in order to fulfill the scriptures. This was probably alluding to another Psalm, just as last week we heard how the cry “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me” comes from Psalm 22. The Psalm being fulfilled in today’s gospel message probably came from the 69th Psalm, where it is written for my thirst they gave me wine with vinegar to drink. Sour wine, or cheap wine, was what was available to the poor and the Roman soldiers. Adam Hamilton proposes that it would be equivalent to drinking basaltic vinegar. Not great tasting, but better then nothing.

Second, the wine was given to Jesus by being dipped in a sponge attached to a piece of hyssop. Hyssop is a small bushy plant. Affixing a sponge to it would be difficult and it would possibly be hard to have it reach far enough to quench Jesus’ thirst on the cross. But this is not the only time hyssop appears in scripture. Think back to the Exodus the story, the story that had just been retold at the Passover celebration the day before. When the final plague, killing the firstborn, was to strike Egypt, the Israelites were instructed to use hyssop to spread lamb’s blood above their doorposts so the plague would pass over them. John also uses the title “lamb of God” to describe Christ, reminding us that he is the new Passover sacrifice. The new source of our salvation. The beginning of a new covenant between the people and God.

In our Lenten Bible study this past week we got into a discussion about how much we miss out on in scripture because we don’t know the things that would immediately be brought to mind for those hearing. Those things that are so innate to a culture that they do not need to be expounded on. Psalm 69 and the meaning of the hyssop branch in the Exodus story, just celebrated the eve before, are among those thing. But just as much as their are hidden aspects to scripture, things that we do not fully understand in our day and age, there are other things that are so blatant that sometimes we overlook them. And this scripture above all communicates that Jesus had the same basic needs as us. He was thirsty. He was human.

Thats one of the paradoxical beliefs of our faith - fully human and yet fully God. John is writing to an audience that had some people who believed that Jesus disappeared before he died. Or that he was replaced on the cross by someone else. John is stating that it truly was Jesus who died for us. He was thirsty like us and died like we do. Because if he wasn’t fully dead then he could not have been raised back to life and we would not have hope in the same resurrection. 

Friends, stop and think about it. The one who said that he came to bring life giving waters was thirsty. The one who was and is and is to come was thirsty. The one who bore all of the weight of our sin on the cross was thirsty. Think back to a time when you were thirsty. A time when the lack of water to drink seemed to mock you. A time when you would have given anything for a cup of cold water. Jesus felt that. He was thirsty. 

At the end of each week’s bible study this semester the students are asked where they find hope in the scripture we are studying and what they are going to take away with them for the week. Friends where do we find hope in this scene of Jesus dying? Where do we find hope in his thirst? We find hope because it reminds us that he was human as well as divine. And that he died the same death we will die some day. And we will be raised with him in the resurrection. All because Jesus choose to follow the hard path to the cross.