Jesus is done. He's done everything He came to do. He hasn't declared it yet, but, in fact, his work on the cross is an accomplished fact and he is ready to die. However, there is one last thing He wants to round out, one last detail.
He is filling up the Scriptures. This is not an explicit prophecy that must be addressed, not a "t" to be crossed or an "I" to be dotted ... it is a nuance with which Jesus wants to shade this event. He wants to take a scripture and endow it with a deeper, richer texture. In so doing, Jesus is taking this last action of his life, this last expression of His humanity and charging it with something more:
Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, "I am thirsty." A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus' lips. (John 19:28-29 TNIV)
Probably, no other statement of Jesus on the cross so forcefully expresses His humanity
His care for His mother is human, surely, but it shows a divine insight and a transcendent love. This statement, on the other hand, may be read as something straight out of any man's medical chart. It could be the cry of the lowest criminal or sinner. I love the way Charles Spurgeon expressed it in his message, "The Shortest of the Seven Cries":
“The sea is his, and he made it,” and all fountains and springs are of his digging. He poureth out the streams that run among the hills, the torrents which rush adown the mountains, and the flowing rivers which enrich the plains. One would have said, If he were thirsty he would not tell us, for all the clouds and rains would be glad to refresh his brow, and the brooks and streams would joyously flow at his feet. And yet, though he was Lord of all he had so fully taken upon himself the form of a servant and was so perfectly made in the likeness of sinful flesh, that he cried with fainting voice, “I thirst.” How truly man he is … (Spurgeon The Shortest of the Seven Cries).
As truly God and truly man, this cry is a cry of true humanity, for humans cannot long endure thirst.
When we feel our last fever. When our bodies rebel and bring on an overwhelming sweat that drains us of our moisture. When our throats tighten and we are left unable to swallow. When we have bled, we too will thirst. Our bodies will cry out for the moisture they need to thrive.
For Jesus, then, this is not news. The Man has lost a lot of sweat, blood and tears. Dehydration is, after asphyxiation, according the Journal of the American Medical Association, one of the secondary causes of death by crucifixion.
He's already been offered something to drink a couple times. The first time, early in His ordeal, it was mixed with myrrh or gall. This was a pain killer, specially prepared by the Jews as a compassionate act for people being crucified, to ease their suffering. Jesus spits it out. He wants none of it. He will drink the whole cup of suffering. He will consciously and willfully endure the pain He has chosen to embrace for your eternal well-being and mine.
He may have been given a second drink. Coordinating the details of the four Gospel writers is not always easy.
But here at the end, the loss of blood, the heat of the day, and the work of staying alive for just the right duration has taken its toll. Jesus feels the strain on His body. Psalm 22 is of powerful significance to the whole of His crucifixion and the passage continues to enlighten Jesus' mind:
My mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death. (Psalms 22:15 TNIV)
Jesus is identifying with His ancestor. As much as the elements and the strain of battle may have affected David when he wrote this Psalm of Trust, Jesus is feeling it too. His tongue is feeling like a dusty, broken, discarded piece of oven dried terra cotta clay. The Sun has sucked the saliva from His mouth so he cannot even wet His throat to say the last thing He has to say to the world. He fills this psalm with new and extended meaning, taking it upon Himself.
And this is certainly the last drink He takes. In asking for this one, He is not given the medicated anesthesia they tried to give Him earlier, but He is given the stuff the soldiers keep around to wet their own throats, a cheap, watered down wine. They soak it into a sponge, hook it on the end of a reed of hyssop and hold it up. And like any other thirsty man ...
Jesus drinks.
But there is more to Jesus' thirst
• Listen to the shouts of the mockers surrounding Him
• Listen to His former cry of isolation and abandonment
• And listen to this other Psalm, number 42, that is now being painted with a new brush:
As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, "Where is your God?" (Psalms 42:1-3 TNIV)
Jesus is not only expressing the dryness of His parched throat and mouth; but the dryness of His soul.
• No one has ever felt the complex and all encompassing pain He now feels
• No one has ever ached with His inner void
• On one has ever faced and tasted the massive gore of sin that gorges His spiritual gullet
And at this same time sensing an isolation from His Father that is so unfamiliar as to be like an arid wind in a desolate, desert wasteland.
• Where is My Father?
• When will this suffering be done and I feel the relief of death?
• When will I drink in my own deepest spirit, the refreshment being poured out for the people I love?
Jesus is the one Man who has known the refreshing presence of God in physical person. He sat beside the well and freely offered a sinful, Samaritan woman the Living Water which He now cannot taste. He is the source of the washing of the water regeneration, the one who gives baptism itself true meaning. And in His spirit He is dry as a bone picked clean by the vultures and baked in the equatorial sun.
His situation is so unexpected, so ironic that he fills Psalm 69 with a whirlpool of significance:
Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in the miry depths, where there is no foothold. I have come into the deep waters; the floods engulf me. I am worn out calling for help; my throat is parched. My eyes fail, looking for my God. (Psalms 69:1-3 TNIV)
Though He is even now immersed to His neck in the cleansing waters of salvation, flowing from His own bleeding wounds, dripping with the sweat from His fevered head, flowing with His tears for the lost souls surrounding Him, soon to pour with the blood from His own pierced side, He cannot drink.
Like the Ancient Mariner of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem, he is surrounded by "Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink."
• In His body
• In His spirit
• He is thirsty
He is given a taste of sour wine to ease his tongue. Now His throat is eased and wet enough to shout His last temporal message to the world, but His desolate spirit must wait a few more minutes for His own eternal satisfaction.
He was thirsty for your thirst
Know this,
that when you are feeling alone, Jesus has felt alone ... for you.
When you are suffering from physical pain and illness to the point of palpable pain, Jesus too has suffered in His body ... for you.
When your spirit is wandering in a dusty and wasted wilderness and God is hard to find, Jesus has felt that same isolation ... for you.
Talk to Him in your extremity as you would talk to a friend who has been there before you and knows what it's like. Ask Him to give you the benefit of His experience and the salvation bought by His sacrifice. When you want God so badly you ache, when life is hard to endure, when it feels like an eternity since you last truly gulped a spiritual drink, Jesus has gasped out that same thirst ... for you.
• For the dryness of our own spirits
• For our own parched souls
• For our baked, hard hearts
He endured the cup of suffering, that dry cup he prayed in Gethsemane to pass on, but drank according to His Father's will.
His thirst is your cool drink of living water
Drink and be refreshed.
