Sermons

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The Thirsty God
March 16, 2003
Pastor Dan Baumgartner
2nd in a Lenten sermon series on the Seven Last Words of Christ
John 19:28-29

This week I was in a discussion about the pros and cons of e-mail. As you all know, e-mail can be both a great blessing, and a horrible curse! I probably get an e-mail per day with some goofy list or another, sent to me from a friend or a long-lost relative who thinks it is perfect for me, “you being religious and all.” Normally, I just delete them as quickly as possible. But this one caught my eye with the auspicious title of “Comments Never Heard at Church.” Now, some of them were just sort of churchy things, like you would never hear, “I LOVE it when we sing hymns I’ve never heard before!” A few seemed like they would fit for any church. You would never hear, “Hey! It’s my turn to sit in the front pew!” But one in particular seemed like it was written just for us at Bethany. You would never hear this at Bethany: “Since we’re all here, let’s start the service early!”

This morning is the second in our study of the Seven Last Words of Christ…the words of Christ spoken from the cross, according to the four gospels.

Last week, we looked at the picture of Jesus on the cross, recognizing his mother Mary, and one of his disciples, and calling to them: “Woman, here is your son…and here is your mother.” A simple word of love and bringing people together…even when the day was darkest.

This morning the second word also comes from the gospel of John, connected with the same passage. Turn with me again to John 19:28-29 … just two verses.

ONCE UPON A TIME…some people were thirsty. They were attending a wedding, which in the days of Jesus was a celebration that could last for days. Jesus was at the wedding when the wine -- which was the standard, everyday drink in that day -- gave out. The people were thirsty, and didn’t know what to do. Jesus took some water that was set aside for the Jewish rights of purification … like the washing of hands … and turned it into wine. Good wine. And whatever else happened that day, it helped his disciples to believe. It started with some people who were thirsty. And by the time it was done, Jesus had used that thirst, and drawn people towards Himself.

ONCE UPON A TIME … Jesus was thirsty. He was traveling through Samaria, the country hated by the Jews, who considered the Samaritans so despicable they would normally circumvent the entire land just to avoid contact. Jesus was thirsty, and he approached a well, and asked a Samaritan woman for a drink of water. Though it was very unusual, he struck up a conversation with the woman. He told the woman He could give her LIVING water … a drink that would allow her to never be thirsty again. In the process of the conversation, the woman came to believe that Jesus was the Savior. Believed it enough that she told a whole city full of people, and many of THEM also believed that Jesus was “the Savior of the world.” John never tells us if Jesus received the drink he had asked for. It started with Jesus just being thirsty … and by the time it was over, a whole bunch of people received that living water that satisfied their heart and soul. And Jesus had used his thirst to draw people to himself.

ONCE UPON ANOTHER TIME (the one in THIS story) … Jesus was thirsty again. It’s the only other time in John we know of him being thirsty. He had good reason to be thirsty. He had been arrested and beaten, forced to drag a cross through the streets of Jerusalem and finally nailed onto it. He was dying. The soldiers joked and gambled on the one side, and his mother and friend stood on the other, helpless. And Jesus said, “I am thirsty.”

Someone (Luke thinks it was one of the soldiers) found some very cheap, common wine sitting nearby, the kind that was used everyday not as alcohol but as daily drink when one was thirsty. They dipped a sponge in it…and put in on a branch and raised it to Jesus’ mouth. The details are very important here. The branch, John says, was from a bush called “hyssop.” It is related to the “mint” family of plants. Hyssop has one strong and sturdy stalk. It has tiny white flowers, and tight leaves and texture that made it ideal for dipping and holding things.

If we went on a botanical search through the Bible for hyssop, we would find it in some interesting places. In the book of Leviticus, under the Old Testament rites of sacrifice, hyssop was used as a type of brush, to sprinkle blood over a leper who had been healed, or a house which had been renovated. It was part of the rites of purification, the declaration of something being made clean before God. In Psalm 51, David’s cry for God’s mercy says, “purge me with hyssop and I will be clean.” Hyssop was used to purify, to try and set things right with God.

ONCE UPON A TIME … the people Israel were thirsty … thirsty for freedom. They had been slaves in Egypt for over 430 years. And God raised up Moses to lead them to freedom. Moses and his brother Aaron tried talking. They tried negotiating. They tried threatening. But the pharaoh of Egypt had no desire to give up his work force nor his power. God visited Egypt with plague after plague. Pharaoh was resolute. And finally, in the story Marlene read earlier … the word of God came and Moses instructed the people of Israel to sacrifice lambs … and to take … what? a branch of hyssop and dip it in the blood of the sacrificed lamb, and brush some of the blood on the doorpost of their houses. It would be an identifying mark so that when the last horrible plague came to Egypt … it would “Pass Over” those houses, and save the people of God.

It is this “Passover” that Jesus had come to Jerusalem to celebrate, a defining moment in history for the Jews. It is still, of course, celebrated to this day. And so it was no accident that John tells us … that the wine for Jesus … was raised on a hyssop branch. Hyssop was used to try and set things right with God. But here was God, THE THIRSTY GOD, setting things right for people. Here was the Thirsty God acting as both the lamb of sacrifice and the protection over the doorpost of humanity. It started with Jesus just being thirsty … and before it was over, Jesus had drawn SO VERY MANY people to Himself.

ONCE UPON A TIME … you were thirsty. I was thirsty. We ARE thirsty. Thirsty to know that life counts for something. Thirsty to let go of some of our baggage from the past. Thirsty to believe in new starts. Thirsty to believe that God cares about our life. Thirsty to believe that we don’t live and die alone. It all starts with our thirst … and somehow it ends with Jesus drawing us to Himself. “In life and in death,” several of our Confessions say, “We Belong to God.” “YOU belong to God,” says the thirsty Son of God from the cross.

There must have been an easier way. Sometimes I think we have this idealized picture of Jesus hanging there, asking for a drink like he was ordering a glass of ice water at a nice restaurant … instead of God Himself in agony shouting out, “I’M THIRSTY!!”

Good Lord! It’s a wonder that the Jordan River didn’t instantly overflow its banks, totally change its direction and come barging over the top of the hill, sweeping away Pharisees and Saducees and councils and pieces of silver, knocking over Roman soldiers and uprooting crosses…it’s a wonder the whole bloody mess wasn’t washed away in the flood. It COULD have happened … but it didn’t. And once again we are left with the strangest feeling that Jesus is somehow in control here. In control because it is now okay to be thirsty, in control because (scripture says) He knows that all is now finished. Finished as in completed. All that God had given Him to do was accomplished … by his hanging there. “Behold,” John the Baptist had said so long before, “The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

When we started into this series on “the seven last words of Christ,” I wondered if we could do it … or even wanted to do it. I wondered if it was important for our journey of faith. How does one spend seven weeks looking at Christ on the cross. It’s not very pretty. It doesn’t break down into three easy points. In fact, it’s a little morbid, isn’t it? But now that we have begun, it makes total sense to me. In these two weeks of looking intently at this passage … I have felt absolutely overwhelmed. As though there is something so powerful that it is too much for me to talk about. I went to the Dominican Reflection Center yesterday where Bethany was having a day of prayer, and I walked out on the grounds and stood in front of a statue of Christ on the cross … and felt glued to the ground. I couldn’t move. God has visited us … and we know it clearly because of the cross.

You see, the journey of faith, no matter which way you have come … MUST go by the cross. Stephen Neill:

“In the Christian theology of history, the death of Christ is the central point of history; here all the roads of the past converge; here all the roads of the future diverge.”

No matter where we have come from … somehow the road winds and we find ourself staring up at the cross. We must not avoid it.

And so in these seven weeks, we park ourselves nearby … and we look up. There are huge dangers in doing so. We may fall prey to one of the two great heresies which have plagued the church since the earliest centuries. They have big words, but they are quite simple. One is called docetism, which comes from the word meaning “appears,” or “seems.” It claims that it only appeared that God suffers and dies on the cross in Christ … but He doesn’t really. It just seemed like it. Thus God may save us, but he does not know what it is like … to lose a child. To be in pain. To be lonely. To die. Jesus is divine, but not truly human. The other heresy is called ebionism, which is the opposite. It says that Jesus truly died … but that He was not God on earth. Jesus was human and so understands suffering … but he was not God. But the Orthodox faith … has for two thousand years affirmed that BOTH are true, that Jesus was truly God AND truly human. That He both covers our sins AND knows our pain.

If we wait long there at the ground in front of the cross, we may begin to think that what has gone on is merely interesting history, a development of one of the major religious traditions of the world. That Jesus was a historical figure executed because he was politically uncomfortable. And the more we think that way, the more distant the person on the cross seems. And we forget that Jesus did not say that he would die for a political cause … but as the only remedy for sin. OUR sin. The cross is intensely personal. The great Dutch painter Rembrandt once painted a piece entitled “The Raising of the Cross,” which shows exactly that…Jesus on the cross, and the cross being raised and put into place in the ground. At the foot of the cross, more visible even than the soldiers doing the task is a man who stares directly at the viewer. The face … is Rembrandt’s own face. It was his way of admitting his part ...his sin. I wonder if we would be so honest. The cross … is intensely personal.

John Stott said it this way:

“The cross undermines our self-righteousness. We can stand before it only with a bowed head and a broken spirit. And there we remain until the Lord Jesus speaks to our hearts his word of pardon and acceptance.”

ONCE UPON A TIME, Jesus said “I am thirsty.” And before it was all done, Jesus had drawn so many, many people to himself. Perhaps you. Or perhaps He is drawing you now. In the last chapter of the New Testament, we hear again the words of the Thirsty God, now resurrected:

“Let everyone who hears say “Come.”
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes take the water of life…as a gift.”

Amen.