Three verses. One paragraph of scripture. How long did this moment take? This moment of Jesus knowing that all was done… accomplished? This moment from thirst to death?
I’ve been told that by the time a person feels thirsty they are already dehydrated. We are supposed to avoid thirst, to keep hydrated. Drink 8 glasses of water everyday. And that’s 8 glasses of water, not 8 other drinks; not coffee or soda or beer. We are supposed to put into our bodies those things that are good for us; to avoid those things which will cause thirst and dehydration.It’s not always easy though. If you are one of those people who actually drinks 8 glasses of water every day, I am impressed. I don’t do it. It’s more likely that I’ve drank 8 cups of coffee today than even 1 glass of water.
And I know it’s not good for me, but I do it anyway.
John’s gospel tells us that Jesus’ thirst is a fulfillment of scripture, a reference to Psalm 69:21: “They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst.” But it’s hard to imagine that Jesus wasn’t actually thirsty.
Of the four gospels, my favorite has always been Luke, but I am in love with John’s gospel in a way that I do not feel about the other three. John is a theological writing, a book written to explain who God is. It was most likely written as an argument against other gospels that were circulating at the time.
These other gospels that John was concerned about were gnostic, what we consider to be a heresy. Gnosticism involved the belief in salvation through esoteric mystical knowledge by an initiated elite. As a rule, gnostics were extreme ascetics and believed the body to be evil. Gnosticism has been making a comeback with the highly popular book: The Da Vinci Code and the now with the emergence of the Gospel of Judas.
John wrote against the idea that one could attain a higher spiritual knowledge of God and because of that the Jesus of John’s gospel feels more human and real to me than the Jesus in Matthew, Mark, or Luke.
Jesus didn’t just say the words so that scripture could be fulfilled; Jesus really was thirsty and his thirst was a fulfillment of what was in scripture. Jesus didn’t just go through the motions of being crucified in order to make for an interesting story; Jesus really did get nailed to a cross, Jesus really did die.
There is a comfort in that. Death is a reality. It is not a higher spiritual existence or worse one that we can avoid by reaching a higher mystical knowledge of God.
What Jesus endured wasn’t esoteric… it was real.
I get thirsty and I’m sure you do too, even when we do our best to put all the right things into ourselves; we still get thirsty.
This past Sunday 49 year old, John Schettenhelm, a pastor in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod in Orange was riding his motorcycle and turning into his driveway when he was struck from behind and killed.
Stories like that make me thirsty.
In an article in the New Haven Register Orange First Selectman James Zeoli said late (Palm) Sunday he was struck by the reality that Schettenhelm’s congregation could not have lost its leader at a worse time, just one week before Easter.
Can we agree that there is never a good time for someone to get struck and killed in a motorcycle accident? There is never a good time for someone to get sick. There is never a good time for someone to lose their job. There is never a good time for huge medical bills. There is never a good time for a car to break down. There is never a good time to get in a fight with your spouse or your kids. There is never a good time for things like this to happen.
There is never a good time for extra stress in our lives. There is never a good time for suffering or sorrow or pain.
But this is reality… bad things happen and they happen at indiscriminate times.
There’s something else about John’s gospel that makes me madly in love with it: timing. While life is filled with happenstance, John’s gospel is filled with purposeful timing. Everything that happens, happens when it is supposed to and this real, human, Jesus begins to reorder creation, to reset the clock of our existence.
Jesus’ thirst isn’t just a fulfillment of scripture; it is God getting into our suffering at just the right time.
29A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. 30When Jesus had received the wine, he said, "It is finished." Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
This very real thirst, this fulfillment of scripture, was for us. It was purposeful and necessary so that God could be in our suffering. And that moment of Jesus’ refreshment with sour wine is God finding a way into our dehydration, into the arid places of our lives.
Jesus died at just the right time so that he could be in all the wrong times of our lives. And that action was done fully; it was completed, finished.
Jesus died and finished the thing that ensured our bad times would never be alone times. Jesus died and finished what was required for us not to be alone when we forget to put into us what is good for us and for those times that we can not seem to get enough.
Those 3 verses, barely one good paragraph of scripture and God did what was necessary to re-hydrate our lives.
Amen.
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