Sermon Good Friday
2022
Seven Last Words
“I Thirst”
Jesus is Thirsty. This may appear overly simplistic. The temptation is to take these words and interpret them in some overly spiritualized manner. We might equate “thirsting” with Christ’s call to “hunger and thirst after righteousness” (Matthew 5:6).
Another possible connection would be to link this statement with Christ’s invitation that all who are thirsty are invited to drink from the waters of life (Revelation 22:17).
Our Text It is near the end of Jesus' human life. He senses it. He has hung on the cross for six hours now.
It has become hard for Jesus to even get a breath. He Can’t Breath! Hung from his arms, he must pull himself up each time he wants to breathe. His shoulders ache, and his mouth is parched. He is exhausted.
And yet he does not want to die without a final word. He asks for something to drink to wet his lips for this final effort.
On the cross, Jesus hangs in a position of self-suffocation.
His only relief from the physical pressure upon his lungs is to hoist his weight upon his nail-scarred wrists and feet.
As the hours passed, crucified in the burning heat of the noon-day sun, this action would become more and more difficult, and increasingly more painful.
Understand The Romans designed this way of punishment for this very purpose. The cross was a means to inflict the most amount of pain possible. So effective was this that a new term had to be created to describe its effects: excruciating – literally “out of the cross.”
It is out of this place of physical exhaustion that Jesus declares his thirst. The hours spent in the sun, coupled with the physical pain he was feeling, would have created mild, if not severe, dehydration. Jesus speaks of his own thirst out of a real human need for sustenance and relief. On the cross, Jesus is physically thirsty. First and probably of greatest importance, Jesus' word "I thirst," reminds us of Jesus' physical nature, his humanity.
But This is all also an allegory, Like the parables that Jesus used to teach his disciple. Jesus was once again teaching even from the cross. What is the lesson "I thirst" reminds us of Jesus' extensive knowledge of the prophetic scriptures concerning his suffering and death -- and his willingness to fulfill each of them to the letter.
The best-known passage, of course, is the Servant Song from Isaiah 53:
"He poured out his life unto death
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many
and made intercession for the transgressors." (Isaiah 53:12)
He knew it well and referred to it again and again.52 Jesus' action to ask for a drink is deliberately prompted by his knowledge of Scripture and determination to fulfill it:
"... So that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, 'I am thirsty.'" (John 19:28)
But I must also say that Jesus was also showing us that what we need when things get to their worst is a thirst to overcome our dry faith.
When people say they have “Dry Faith,” they usually mean they feel distant from God or are struggling to grow spiritually.
They don’t see God working, the burdens of life press in, and they begin to feel discouraged.
They search for God “in a dry and parched land where there is no water” (Psalm 63:1)—it is a time of spiritual dryness.
I want to announce that there are times when the church is simply dry. I need you to hear me a lot of the reason folks are not coming to church is because service and our rituals and our praise have gotten dry.
We don’t talk about the things that are relevant to keeping faith well fed. During the midst of the Pandemic, when our community was out in the street saying they could not breathe, I was teaching bible study on Black Presence in the Bible and African Christianity before Slavery. And even though we were on zoom and conference call, many of the members Got excited about the idea that our faith is not based on something we picked up in the bondage of Slavery but something that Jesus and the disciples handed directly to us on the continent of African. The members got a real thirst for knowing more about how God had been God to Black Folks like me and you.
What are you saying, Rev? I said that My Class got thirsty when I touched on something that is real to them. I am saying that if we want to make the seven last sayings of Jesus Real today, we, like James Cone have to connect the lynching tree and the cross as the most emotionally charged symbols in the African American community—symbols that represent both death and the promise of redemption, judgment and the offer of mercy, suffering and the power of hope.
You see Both the cross and the lynching tree represented the worst in human beings and at the same time “an unquenchable ontological thirst” for life that refuses to let the worst determine our final meaning.
As Jesus was an innocent victim of mob hysteria and Roman imperial violence, many African Americans were innocent victims of white mobs, thirsting for blood in the name of God and in defense of segregation, white supremacy, and the purity of the Anglo-Saxon race.
Both the cross and the lynching tree were symbols of terror, instruments of torture and execution, reserved primarily for slaves, criminals, and insurrectionists—the lowest of the low in society.
Both Jesus and blacks were publicly humiliated and subjected to the utmost indignity and cruelty.
They were stripped, in order to be deprived of dignity, then paraded, mocked and whipped, pierced, derided and spat upon, tortured for hours in the presence of jeering crowds for popular entertainment.
In both cases, the purpose was to strike terror in the subject community.
It was to let people know that the same thing would happen to them if they did not stay in their place.
When blacks sang about the “blood,” they were wrestling not only with the blood of the crucified carpenter from Nazareth but also with the blood of raped and castrated black bodies in America—innocent, often nameless, burning and hanging bodies, images of hurt so deep that only God’s “amazing grace” could offer consolation. When We sang about the
The reason our faith is dry is we have lost the connection with the Blood; You need to know that it was the blood that saved our soul, and it is still the blood that makes us whole, and it is still the Blood that allows the movement of the Church.
You see, The mistake they made was when they allowed the Blood to flow from Jesus. For I know it was the Blood, I Know it Was the Blood
