I’ve always thought that living in the desert gives us a different perspective on scripture from those who live in areas where water is not as big of a concern. When you have seen a completely dry river bed turn to a flowing river several feet deep in just a few hours, then when we hear the prophet Isaiah say that God will make a new thing, that there will be rivers in the desert and pools of water, we understand the significance of that reality and what it means for survival. When you are used to having plenty of rain and everything is green all the time, that passage just doesn’t have the same significance for those of who have known parched lands, parched skin and parched tongues. And so perhaps we can also understand Jesus’ cry from the cross here in John that he is thirsty. After all, he’s hanging on a cross, in the afternoon sun, in the desert, so of course he’s thirsty, and except for the hanging on the cross part, I’m guessing that most of us have been there as well, and have probably even said something like, “Man, I’m thirsty.” Hopefully we also received some release, either through our getting something, or through the assistance of someone else, which is what happens here as Jesus is given some sour wine.
Now the passage says “they” gave him wine, and it’s not clear who the they are. It could be his mother and the other women along with the beloved disciple, who are standing at the foot of the cross as we talked about two weeks ago. This is possible because there is not any mocking with the offer of one as there is the synoptic gospels when the soldiers try and give him wine. But, tradition has held that it’s still the soldiers who give him the wine, and we might notice that since there isn’t any mocking perhaps this is a gesture of mercy on behalf of the soldiers. One of the things that indicate that this might be the soldiers is the fact that the wine that was mentioned, which is translated as sour, was a special type of wine used by soldiers, that was cheaper than regular wine and also more potent in relieving thirst. Of course, it was also used by peasants, so that clue is still not definitive. But several points here. The first is that while there is reason to spiritualize this statement about his thirst, and we’ll come back to that, we should also just see this as real thirst which highlights the violence and brutality of the cross. One of the things that John does is to heavily emphasize the divinity of Christ, and so when we see the human side we should recognize that. Similarly, when the synoptic gospels show the divine side, we too should recognize that, because Christian belief is that Jesus is both human and divine. It’s not half and half, but fully human and fully divine. We all tend to have a side of that that we prefer, which leads us into heresies, and so we need to keep the human and divine elements both present.
Secondarily, although John says that Jesus said I am thirsty in order to fulfill scripture, and maybe as a rejection of what I just said, sort of implying that Jesus wasn’t really thirsty he just pretended to be for appearance sake, but there is actually nowhere in scripture that says “I am thirsty” for Jesus to quote. The passage most people look to is Psalm 69, which has a line that says, “They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” (69:21) Others think it comes from the 22nd psalm which Jesus does quote as we covered last week, but it says, “my mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws.” (22:15) Both of these seem like a stretch, but I think it might be reasonable to wonder what Jesus was thirsting for, which led me to immediately to think of Psalm 42 which begins “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” I certainly imagine that John would be happier Jesus quoting that and thirsting for God the father. Or perhaps Jesus thirst for righteousness or justice or even faithfulness. But whatever the reason, or the scripture that might be quoted, there is a response given to Jesus and they take a branch of hyssop and attach a sponge full of wine to it and bring it to Jesus’ mouth.
Hyssop is a small bushy plant in the mint family, and is certainly not strong enough to hold up a soaked sponge, which is the reason why paintings of the crucifixion don’t actually tend to picture hyssop, so why would John include this detail which seems very unlikely? Because hyssop plays an important role in scripture in that in the story of the exodus, God orders the Israelites to paint their door posts with lamb’s blood so that the angel of death will pass over their homes. And what do they use as a paintbrush? Hyssop. Now, some scholars argue that making the connection is digging too deeply for a meaning, but I would disagree because John works so hard to make the connection to Jesus being the lamb being sacrificed for Passover, or the paschal lamb as it is known. It is in John that John the Baptist declares “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (1:29) It is in John that Jesus is crucified not on the day after the Passover, as happens in the synoptic Gospels, but instead on the day of preparation when the Passover lambs are slaughtered. And it is in John that the soldiers come by to break the legs of the people on the crosses so that they will die and can be taken down before the sabbath, but when they get to Jesus they see he is already dead, and so don’t break any bones, as the Passover lambs are supposed to be unblemished without any broken bones. John wants to make it very clear that Jesus is the lamb who is sacrificed for the world and so his story makes every effort to emphasize that perspective, and so seeing the hyssop here as part of the Passover story is completely in keeping with John’s vision of Jesus’ role from God.
And then there are two last aspects. The first is that in John, Jesus’ first miracle is the wedding at Cana in which water is turned into wine. But, it’s not just ordinary wine, but the best wine, which gets remarked on by the servants. So, Jesus gives people the best wine, whereas when Jesus’ asks for a drink, he receives a poor substitute. Similarly, one other time in John does Jesus asks someone for a drink, and that is when he encounters a Samaritan woman at the well in chapter 3, he says to the woman “give me a drink,” which surprises her as we are told that Jews and Samaritans do not share things in common.
But in their interchange about this water, Jesus tells her “everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up into eternal life.” And of course the woman asks to be quenched with this water. So, when Jesus cries out in thirst, people try and quench his thirst with the things of this world, just as we try and quench our own thirst, whatever that thirst might be, with worldly things, but they are never satisfactory. They never fill us, they never quench our thirst, but only leave us searching for more and more because only Jesus can provide us with the true living water that will leave us never thirsting again. Only Jesus can fill our souls with what we need, which is not necessarily what we want, but it is what we need. When we cry out in thirst, only Jesus can quench us, because he is the one who completes and fulfills God’s creation, which is what he says when he declares, “It is finished.”
There are times in which Linda will ask me how my sermon is going, and my response will be “well, it’s written.” That means I don’t think it’ very good, but at least it’s done. Or when we have been through a particularly grueling event, we might say “thank God, that’s over.” We could see Jesus’ statement here as being something similar to that, of saying it’s all over, that the project is terminated, and then he dies. But that is not what is happening. We should hear this statement not as potentially a word of despair, but as a celebration. There are lots of different takes on how we might see this statement, and among some of them are “it’s perfected,” “it is completed” or “It is fulfilled,” that’s a particularly popular one, and it fits something that Jesus talks about several times earlier in John, like in 17:4 when he says to God “I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do.” That is, he has done, he has accomplished, what God sent him to do. I think the best analogy of this comes from Rev. Daniel Horan who said that at graduation, those graduating can cry out “It is finished,” which is not despair, but celebration. And it represents not just an end, the completion, but it also represents the beginning a new story. A new chapter is about to be written, and so it is with Christ and with us.
The work that God sent Jesus to do has been completed. The work that God began at the beginning of time has been completed, because God so loved the world, as John says, that he sent his son not to condemn the world, but to redeem it. To bring us back into right relationship with God and into right relationship with each other. And so, Jesus completes that work, and we celebrate, but now the new work must begin. Jesus gave up his life of his own accord. It is finished does not mean that suffering and loss and the rivers of tears are a thing of the past. It is finished means they do not have the last word. The powers and principalities of the world that they had control, and they handed Jesus over to be killed, they gave him up, but Jesus proved that God was ultimately in control, and so he gives up his spirit, he hands it over to God, and the Spirit returns to empower us to be Jesus’ witness to the world. Witnesses of God’s love, because just as God loved the world, so to are we called to love the world, because, Jesus says, that is how we will be known. Jesus’ work was finished, but our work has just begun. We are called to pick up our cross and to die to our old selves and to lead new lives in Christ. Jesus says to us, you are going to die anyways, so are you going to die without a purpose for your life, or are you going to die as a companion of Christ, because the world cries out I am Thirsty and we have access to the living water, the water that can quench all thirsts so that we will never be thirsty again. The fulfilment is a celebration of the work of Christ, and the work to which we have been called. And so, as Jesus was hanging on the cross, he said, “I am thirsty” and when Jesus had received the win, he said, “It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. Amen.
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