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.

hot green plastic water

I lie in the dust; revive me by your word. (Psalm 119:25)

Have you ever been thirsty? I mean really thirsty, not just needing a drink. To the point that you were thinking of nothing but something to drink, anything at all.

I took basic training in the US Army in Ft Bliss at El Paso, TX. We did all of our marching and outside stuff west of El Paso near White Sands. They would truck us a certain distance out and then we would walk the rest of the way.

The terrain was desert. There were little or no plants, and the ground was sand. When I got out of basic and went to AIT where I was to be trained in communications, I had thighs that were so big that I had trouble wearing pants that fit my waist. I had to buy larger pants just to get them over my thighs. That came from the marching through sand.

But as we marched, the sergeants would not let us drink. This served two purposes.

One was that we learned how to go anyway even though we were so thirsty we thought we would die. Sometimes it is impossible to get water and you may not have enough time to stop and drink. That was helpful in combat.

Second was because they were cruel and enjoyed the pain and suffering they could inflict on the trainees. I believed that at the time and getting to know more and more about human nature (especially after coming to know jail and prison guards) I believe it more now than before.

We would get thirsty. Real, painful, skin crackling thirsty. Marching through sand in well over 100 degree heat in the blazing sunshine thirsty.

After a while we would stop to rest. But then again they would hold us off on our water. After a few minutes they would tell us we could drink. And we did.

Not long before I came into the army, someone had the idea of making the canteens from olive drab green plastic. So in the heat the water inside the green plastic canteens would be warm and even tasted green.

We stopped and drank our hot green plastic water. Nothing in this world has ever tasted so good as that hot green plastic water. Our throats were so parched, we were so dry. It was as fine a water as I have tasted before or since.

There is a perspective you have to have in order to enjoy hot green plastic water. The perspective is that if you don’t get some water soon, you will die.

In the Louis L’Amour novels, the characters do not drink much water even though they are in the desert. They know that they cannot waste any on just casual drinking. Of course, being a Louis L’Amour novel, they always have enough for coffee, but still. They know they have to make it last. They cannot always count on finding a spring.

And sometimes they find a spring, but it is brackish or alkaline water. Even so, they drink it and are grateful for it.

Most people go their entire lives and are not really thirsty or hungry for that matter. I have been both.

But when you are really thirsty or really hungry, what you eat or drink matters less than you ever thought it would.

We get to a point in life where it seems like a spiritual desert. We are alone. We are afraid. We are lying in the dust of life and we are spiritually thirsty. Then we look at the written word and the living Word of God. We take them into us and we are revived.

We are not revived simply by reading the Bible. We are revived when we allow the Word, that is Jesus, to come into our hearts and satisfy us, for lack of a better word. We are revived when we read his written word and take it to heart and are encouraged by it.

There is no reason to be thirsty in our spiritual lives when we have such great water, and such great satisfaction at our disposal, at our fingertips, near our hearts.