Delivered on as part of The Seven Last Sayings of Christ on the Cross at St. John's Anglican Church in Canton, OH (Good Friday, 2026). 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. (John 19:28-29) We have all been thirsty, I trust. We all know what it is like to have parched lips, a dry palate, a frothy tongue. We all, to one degree or another, can identify with the weakness–the faintness–of dehydration. Jesus, a genuine human being with a genuine human body that had genuine physical needs, experienced genuine thirst as He hung from the Cross. He experienced what we experience. He felt what we feel. As the author of Hebrews says, we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses . When you’re thirsty after a hard day of work or a ri...