The text for today’s message for the sermon series “Words from the Cross, About the Cross…” comes from the Gospel of St. John, the nineteenth chapter:
After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.” A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth.Thus far the text.
Dear Friends in Christ,
“I thirst.” Two very simple words. Perhaps even words you yourself have said in some fashion or another.
I remember once when I was about 14 years old. I was in the Boy Scouts and we were camping somewhere in the hills of Northern Kentucky. Now it’s not a very mountainous area down there, but the hills, when you’re climbing them, they seem somewhat daunting, especially when you’re an overweight little kid like I was.
We were about 10 miles into a 14-mile hike, and all of the sudden, my strength was sapped, gone. I couldn’t go on. My back was sweaty and had soaked the contents of the framed backpack I was carrying (which as you may know, is a hard thing to do). My legs were cramping and giving out. My lungs were heaving, trying to take in any oxygen I could find. My head was spinning. I had finished all the water I had brought with me 2 miles back. I had left the rest of my supplies back at the camp. I was the antithesis of the Boy Scout motto. I was not prepared.
I sat down on a rock, just waiting to see if I would get better, to see if I would recover. There wasn’t really a hope for me. Until... One person noticed that I was missing from the line of hikers. He asked what was wrong. I told him I couldn’t go on. Mercifully, he took his backpack off, dug down into it, and came out with a can of Pepsi. I drank it greedily, sat for a couple of minutes and soon was ready to continue on my way.
Now, I don’t know if it was because of the gesture of the man or if it was because of the combination of sugar and water that made me able to go on, but go on I did. I completed the last 4 miles of the hike, even taking the lead of the hiking line.
We find the Lord Jesus Christ today, still on the cross, and giving us two simple words, “I thirst.” Christ was thirty. He had been hanging on the cross for nearly 6 hours at the time he offers up these words. They are some of the last He utters before He dies, bowing His head and saying, “It is finished.” No wonder the man was thirsty.
Nails hammered in between the bones of his hands, bone grating against metal as Jesus hangs down against the nails and tries to raise Himself up to draw in breath. Lungs slowly filling with water as Jesus drowns from the bottom up. Blood flowing from his torn back, ripped open by the Roman scourges, lined with bits of glass and stone, digging in inches as they strike muscle and sinew. Wooden splinters grasping at that torn flesh and Jesus’ back rubs up and down the cross as He breathes. No wonder the man was thirsty.
The man was thirsty. Have you thought about that idea? Jesus Christ was a man, is a man, certainly a man who was different than any man who had come before Him, but still a man. You see, Christ is God. God in human flesh. Christ, the Son, the second person of the Trinity, at a very special time took on human flesh. Jesus, in a pre-incarnate form, before He took on flesh, He always has existed. Since before time, Christ was begotten of the Father. We have no idea what this looked like, we aren’t given to know what that looks like. But, what the Scriptures do tell us is that the man we see hanging on the cross is the very God who spoke His Word, and when He did, all of creation came into existence. Form and light and land and sea and sun and moon and stars and plants and birds and beasts and fish and… man.
Jesus Himself took the very form of man, the very form that He Himself created with His own two hands. Jesus Christ became a human. Why?
Jesus, God, the one who is, who was, and who is to come, watched as His creation, as you, rebelled against Him. It doesn’t take long for God’s creation to say to Him, “I DON’T NEED YOU! I HAVE MYSELF AND THAT’S ALL I NEED AND ALL I WANT!” This displeased God, but more, it made Him sorrow. God was sad that we rejected Him, but in His great love for us, and in His foreknowledge, He already had a plan of love in place. He already knew what He was going to do. He already knew just how He was going to redeem, to save, to rescue His creation. He promised the serpent, that wily devil who had led God’s people astray that He would send a child of Adam and Eve to crush the serpent’s head into the dust.
But God also promised that, in destroying the Devil, the Devil would bruise the heel, would hurt, harm, mangle, disfigure, destroy, this child of Adam and Eve. While news of the destruction Satan is certainly good news for us, it’s not very good news for the child of man who had to die.
A child of man who dies does no good for Himself. After all, He’s dead. But the man must die, as God has promised, to strike down the Devil. So, what must God do? He made a way. You see, it would not be just any child of man, any child of Adam and Eve, but it would be God’s own child, the Son, the second person of the Trinity, who at the right time took on human flesh, binding Himself to that very flesh forever. This human, this man, this enfleshed God, He would take the punishment for the sin He has seen His creation engaging in. He would take the pain of killing the Devil, He would take the repercussions.
And it had to be this man, this God man who would take the punishment. If it were just a god, just a spirit who died, then it would have no bearing on you. It would have no promise, no fulfillment for you. Because you are more than spirit. He had to be a full man, complete with a human soul and body. But Jesus had to be full God, too, for only God can make complete satisfaction for all your sins.
You are not a spirit. You are a life, whole and complete with a soul and a body. Your soul cannot be separated from your body by your own effort. It was never intended to be. That is why when you die, and you will die for you are a sinner, it really, really is a horrible thing. You will die, unless Jesus returns first, because you are a sinner. And the wages of sin is death. Even if you had committed only one sin, you would die. You would be guilty of breaking all the Law. And in your death, your body displays the awfulness of sin, the awfulness of the punishment for breaking the Law. For when you die, your soul is ripped apart from your body in a way that it was never intended to be. You were never intended to be less than the life you have, in soul and body.
Now, for the Christian, while this process of death ripping your soul from your body is awful and horrifying, we also have the promise in Christ that we will be welcomed into the arms of Jesus by our Creator. Our souls shall be saved from this life until that final day, the Last Day of time itself, when Jesus will return to earth and will remake everything, form and light and land and sea and sun and moon and stars and plants and birds and beasts and fish and… man. Christ will remake everything the way it was meant to be. That means your soul and your body will be rejoined. We who were sinful will be made perfect, gloriously reflecting the perfection we find in our Creator, the God-man, Jesus Christ.
All of this from, “I thirst?” Absolutely. We have this promise and it is made ever more sure in that we Christians see Christ on the cross in all of His gristly humanity. We see the bleeding, dying, sweating, heaving, hurting Savior thirsty. He is not some effervescent spirit giving the idea of perishing on the cross. He is God in human flesh, forever joined with humanity, to give us the promise that we will forever be with Him, humanly in humanity, resurrected from the dead, forgiven and perfect for all time.
Jesus was thirsty on the ordeal of the cross. He needed a drink, any drink, in order to complete His mission, to declare that it is finished on the cross. He was given a drink that was meant to mock, a sour wine that was intended to revive Him long enough to torture Him more for the soldiers’ entertainment. Yet, this drink, this mocking drink, Jesus made into something that declares God’s glory, that all of Christ’s work is finished on the cross. And after receiving this sour wine, Jesus died, in His flesh, for you and the forgiveness of all your sins. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Now may the peace that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.
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