Seven Last Words of Christ: I am thirsty.

Seven Last Words of Christ: I am thirsty.  (John 19:28).

The water of life is going physically dry.

As Jesus hung on the cross, that part of him that was human, his physical body was dying. He had lost a lot of blood, had really been too busy and preoccupied to eat and drink the past day. In fact, since the Last Supper, he probably hadn’t had anything. Then he was arrested, and his physical comforts were not foremost on the soldiers’ minds.

He was worn out, wrung out, bled out, sweated out. And his body called out, I am thirsty.

John 19:29 says A jar of sour wine was sitting there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put it on a hyssop branch, and held it up to his lips. One of the soldiers, in an odd act of mercy, gave him something to drink.

The sour wine, or vinegar as one translation calls it, was not an insult. It was ordinary cheap wine the soldiers drank. If the wine was good, it went to the richer people. If it was not as good, it went to poor people and soldiers. Having been a soldier, I know that they do not care a lot what they drink as long as it does its job.

The soldier put it on a sponge and on a branch and held it to Jesus’ lips.

The irony here is strong. In John 4, Jesus told a woman that he was the water of life, that in him was no thirst. And yet he is thirsty, thirsty beyond anything he could imagine.

In 1969, I was in Basic Training in the army in El Paso, TX, right in the middle of the desert. We did our marching in an area to the east of the White Sands Missile Range. It was mostly sand and scrub brush. And it was dry.

We went marching one day, walking through the sand in the extreme heat of the desert. We took salt tablets to keep us from dehydrating so our shirts were white stained where we had sweated around our pistol belt harnesses were.

After a particularly long walk – during which they would not let us drink, supposedly to teach us to do without if needed (but mainly to be mean, as I felt at the time) – we were resting. Then the drill sergeant told us we could have some water.

I took my canteen off my belt and uncapped it. Someone had decided that plastic was a good idea for the canteens and they were colored olive drab green like everything else.

I took a drink of the hot green plastic water and it was the most wonderful thing I had ever tasted in my life. At that moment, I would have drunk almost anything.

Jesus was to that point and he drank the sour wine the soldiers gave him. But verse 30 says it was the last thing he did.

With his last breath, the water of life was dried up, the beautiful life-giving flow stopped and Jesus died.

But like those springs in the desert that all you have to do is dig down a ways to find them again, the spring of water that was Jesus was not exhausted. Three days later, it bubbled up again and he was alive.

And now he gives us that chance to bubble up again, to be alive, to drink the water of life again.

The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” Let anyone who hears this say, “Come.” Let anyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who desires drink freely from the water of life. (Revelation 22:17)

He is alive.