"I Thirst"

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 rigorous baseball game in the middle of Summer, remember, Jesus knows what that feels like.

I suspect, however, that few, if any, of us have ever experienced this level of thirst–this intensity of exhaustion–this combination of physical pain, mental anguish, and spiritual devastation.  

Jesus thirsted so strongly that, despite the fact that He was about to give up the ghost, He drank the sour wine offered to him on the hyssop branch. 

Our Lord and Savior, the God-man Jesus Christ, was thirsty.  In the wilderness He was thirsty.  At the well in Samaria He was thirsty.  On the Cross He said, I thirst.  Jesus drank His fill from that cup that would not pass, and, so, He thirsted.

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He was thirsty that we might drink.  His unrivaled, unquenchable thirst granted us living water.  The moisture was wrung out from His frail, failing body that our sins might be drowned and our thirsts satisfied.

The tree of Golgotha has turned the bitter water of Marah into the sweet, living water of Heaven.

There is life–abundant life–in this living water.  If you bathe in it, you will be clean.  If you drown in it, you will be resurrected.  If you drink your fill of it, you will never thirst.