(A sermon on the Fifth-Last Word from the Cross)
John 4: 5-14; 19: 28-29;
Dr. Charles J. Tomlin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Fifth Sunday of Lent, March 21, 2010
Humans are naturally hungry and thirsty for life.
Who hasn’t heard a baby’s cry for food or a dying person’s last request for water? Each and every day and several times a day, our own physical bodies are in need of nourishment, for replenishing and rehydration. One of those times is coming up fast, so I’ve got to get to the point.
Our emotional psyches and spiritual souls are just as hungry and thirsty as our bodies. Souls need replenishing and nourishment too. If we don’t feed our spirits or quench the deepest thirst of our souls another kind of problem develops. We begin to compensate.
Often we compensate for our soul-needs by over-feeding or abusing our bodies. This is when a person mistakes eating and drinking to live with living to eat or living to drink. Any kind of food, drink, or other substance or even a “life” activity can become addictive and thereby, destructive. Instead of bringing us life, this “over” feeding of bodies and addictive behavior that starves our souls, can bring death. Our society is discovering this the hard way—that living only for whatever we want whenever we want it, leads to destructive behavior.
To avoid self-destruction, humans must learn balance and moderation. But the most important and also most neglected form of ‘nourishment’ education is learning about the right “priority” we should have in life, not only the right diet. All experts of human addiction, which includes addictions to both good and bad substances, will affirm that the problem behind addiction is not the substance itself, but it is a greater, unresolved spiritual thirst residing in the soul.
So, now, as we come to this fifth, last word from the cross, “I Thirst!” we must confront and consider this great thirst of the human soul. Because, at the cross, we not only encounter Jesus’ physical thirst, but we will have to confront our own spiritual need. And, if we will listen closely, we might discover what we are really thirsty for and we will also encounter God and his tremendous thirst for us.
LIFE CAN MAKE YOU THRISTY
On the cross Jesus is dying and he cries out for a drink, but this is not the ordinary cry of a dying man. Jesus was more alive when he was dying than most of us will ever be in our living. This cry of Jesus was not only a cry of a man dying for a drink of water, but this is a man who died showing us what we are really thirsty for.
This cry of “thirst” for water from Jesus is an intentional quote from Scripture. Do you see how the text reads in verse 28? “He said (in order to fulfill the scripture), "I am thirsty." This is not an exact quote from Scripture, but it a reference to the negative experience of the Psalmist, who in his thirst had his own “tongue cleaved to his jaws” as he was “brought to the dust of death” (Psalm 22:15). Instead of receiving the water of life, both Jesus and the Psalmist were given sour “vinegar” (69:21) to drink.
You can’t miss the spiritual reference that Jesus is making. This request for water is not only a physical request. If you read Psalm 69 you will notice that the Psalmist who has a “parched throat” (69:3) is also the one who is up to his neck in “deep waters” with “floods” sweeping over him (69:2). This is anything but a mere description of physical thirst. Jesus is revealing his obvious thirst for water to reveal to us his thirst for life and thirst for God. What Jesus is most thirsty for as a dying human being, we all have a thirst for; but the real question is this: “how” will this spiritual thirst be quenched?
It was in my first pastorate, that, as a pastor, I attempted to help my first alcoholic. I had been to college and had studied quite a bit of psychology, but it was not enough for me to know what I was doing at that time.
When the man started attending our church, I went to visit him and he told me he was trying to recover from an alcohol problem. I took him at his word. This was my first mistake in dealing with alcoholism and alcoholics; you should never trust what an alcoholic tells you. I realized this when the guy told he wasn’t drinking any more, but later I discovered that he was. He was trying to fool me, his AA buddies, and even God. He was so thirsty he learned how to realize he had a problem, but he had no ability to resist, and he developed a great ability to lie. Even though he was a good, gentle, loving man, he continued to lie to try to cover up his constant, undying need for a drink.
One day, after he had missed a couple of Sundays, I went to visit him at his home. During our conversation, I discovered that not only had he stopped coming to church, he had also stopped his AA meetings. What he hadn’t stopped was his drinking. When I asked him about that, he was embarrassed and humbly asked for my help. I wanted him to show me that he really wanted my help, so I asked where he was hiding his alcohol. He was willing to show, at least some of it to me, and upon finding it, I proceeded to pour it all down the sink. I’ll never forget the desperate look in his eye as I poured out the last drop. I couldn’t tell if he wanted to thank me or kill me, but I thought I was doing him a great favor by getting rid of his drink. Maybe I was and maybe I wasn’t.
What I later realized I wasn’t doing was helping him deal with his undying thirst. For this was his real problem. He had attempted on his own to get rid of his drink, but the thirst kept coming back. Then he came to me and the church, and what did I do, but the same thing he had done---tried to reinforce his sobriety? This was good, but it wasn’t enough. I was only addressing the drink and wasn’t addressing the unrelenting spiritual thirst in his soul.
You don’t have to be an alcoholic to know that life can make you thirsty. For all kinds of reasons and in all kinds of ways, life can give you an almost unquenchable thirst for something more.
The way to quench this unending thirst is much less a question of what you shouldn’t drink, but it much more about finding the right drink and from drinking from the right cup. Like that alcoholic, we will never control ourselves or our destiny, if our only approach is learning what we must stop doing, even when it is killing us.
You and I know people who will drink, smoke, eat themselves to death and they do this even when they know it is killing them. They keep doing this because they’d rather be dead than thirsty or hungry. The pain of thirst or hunger is so great and painful in their souls and their ability to quench it in other, healthier ways is so limited, that they have to cover it up or keep themselves numb to it. This is why they attach themselves to some addictive, numbing, denying or even destructive behavior. Because we don’t know how to ask for the right drink, we will go after whatever we can get that will cover up our unquenchable thirst. The problem is that, while this substitute behavior may cover up our deep thirst, it never really quenches it. In order to quench the greatest thirst we have, we must discover the cup of life we should be drinking from. Only by this discovery, will we quench the thirst of our souls and learn how we should feed our bodies.
WE NEED TO LEARN HOW TO ASK FOR THE RIGHT DRINK
What is taking place on the cross is directly related to something that happened in Jesus’ ministry with the woman at the well in the gospel of John (4: 4-14). As we hear Jesus ask for water on the cross, it echoes what Jesus said earlier, when he asked a Samaritan woman for a drink of water from a well. You already know, even before the story starts, that Jesus is not really trying to get a drink of water, but Jesus wants to give this woman ‘living’ water. He wants to quench the thirst of her soul. This other story is a strong clue for understanding Jesus’ fifth word from the cross.
Do you remember how that conversation went? Jesus goes up to a woman and asks her to give him something to drink. Jesus knows what he is doing, but the woman does not yet realize it. She reminds Jesus that he a Jew, should not be asking her, a lowly Samaritan for a drink. But the Savior of the whole world would have been in greater trouble if he hadn’t approached this woman and broke this stupid law. For you see, Jesus is not only reaching out to save her, but he is trying to save the whole Jewish understanding of Messiah as salvation.
During their conversation, Jesus wants the woman to “ask him for a drink.” “If you only knew who was asking you for a drink, you’d ask him for living water….” (John 4.10)? Now, in these words, we can see fully who Jesus is and what Jesus is doing in the world. Jesus has come to give this woman, and every woman, every man, every girl and every boy, the living water of life. He has come to quench the raging spiritual thirst of every human being and to pour out himself as the solution to our unending need and desire for God.
But the question Jesus put to the woman, is the question that must be put to us, especially right here as we confront the cross: Do you know how to ask for the spiritual drink you really need? Do you know how to ask for living water for your soul? Like this woman, many people can even have Jesus and his spiritual presence right in front of them, and they know he is the one who has in his hand everything they need or desire, but they still don’t know how to ask him for a drink. Do you know how to ask Jesus for a drink?
I knew a lady, who was very much like the woman at the well, but in some very unsuspecting ways. She was very much a church person, even calling herself a Christian, her Father had been a pastor (who I knew well) but she had some unrealized and unmet needs in her life, which finally came out in some very tragic and even destructive ways.
When her new pastor came, she went to him as a leader of one church’s ministries, asking if there was anything he, as the new pastor wanted her to do. From his standpoint, it looked like she was doing a good job and I told her to go out there and keep doing the good she had been doing. This was not what she wanted to hear or needed to hear. Her last pastor was very much a different personality than the new one. Her former pastor had a need to control everyone and everything. She had the great need to be controlled and her security was found in being told, especially by him and other men, what she should do. Her new pastor didn’t know how to order women or people around like that. So, in this way, he did not meet the unrealistic need that she had, and she came to believe that this new pastor should not be her pastor.
But the real problem came when, instead of leaving the church to find the kind of pastor she needed, or instead of admitting her need to the pastor so he could address it, she wanted a different pastor, so she proceeded to use her tongue to destroy this new pastor. She started protesting his messages and taking advantage of his weaknesses. In one opportune moment, she decided it was time to make a major strike. She was with the Senior Adults on a trip and the bus broke down. She called the pastor and told him they needed a replacement bus to pick them up. The pastor called the associate pastor, who had been the community much longer, to inquire about a bus. The associate pastor told the pastor that he would be glad to take another bus and drive them home. So the pastor called another church to get the bus and the associate when to pick them up. It all worked out wonderfully.
But when the lady got home, because of her unmet need, she felt again that the pastor did not care for her and she got on the email and told church members how the pastor did not care for the senior adults either and would not come and get them. Fortunately, most everyone saw through her story, because they already knew some of her manipulative ways. But the whole episode still did personal damage to new pastor and to the church, especially to people who heard rumors did not know how to take them. Eventually, the woman left the church, because she was wasn’t taken seriously. But within a month or so of leaving, her husband, who didn’t want to leave, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. All because of her unmet need and her self-destructive behavior, she had hurt the church, the new pastor and now, her husband was left to die without his church.
What I want you to see in this story is how dangerous it is when people have hungers and thirsts in their souls and they don’t know ask for the drink they really need. One of two things always happens when we who don’t how to get what we need in our soul. We will either turn inwardly to address the thirst with some self-destructive or addictive behavior, or we will turn outwardly, lashing out and becoming destructive toward others, choosing to hurt them so we don’t have to hurt alone. This is the way many will wrongly address the hunger and thirst of their soul, but there is another, better redeeming way.
WE MUST LEARN TO DRINK FROM THE RIGHT CUP
How can we learn to drink from the kind of living water that will quench the deepest thirst of our own souls? How can this thirsty Jesus dying on the cross, teach us what this water is and how we should drink it? What can a dying man teach us about living?
Maybe, he can teach us everything. Maybe he can teach us how drink from living water by teaching us to drink from the right cup.
Jesus was all the time speaking about the “cup.” Don’t you remember about “the cup”? Especially when Jesus came closer and closer to his death, he started talking about the “cup” he had to drink. Once when Simon Peter pulled out his sword and attempted to save Jesus from those arresting him, Jesus turns to Peter and says, "Put your sword back into its sheath. Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?" (John 18:11). Jesus even prayed not to have to drink this “cup” (“Father, if it be possible let this cup pass” Mark 14: 36), because the living water we must drink is sometimes like having to take your medicine, it does great good, but it even good medicine can also kill you (it has to at least kill the bad bacteria or bad cells).
Jesus had a “cup” to drink from and it was a life-giving cup to all who would drink with him from his cup. But for Jesus, giving us the cup of life meant death, but for us it means life. Strange sort of talk, I know, but maybe if you’ll get it, if you’ll open your heart, and feel your deepest thirst that has parched your own soul. For strangely enough, people who try so hard to “live it up” often kill themselves doing it, and people who try to kill themselves by denying themselves and serving others, often are the ones who find the very elixir of life that eludes everyone else.
What Jesus did, in his most masterful way, it make sure, that when he had to take the cup, he did not take the cup alone. Do you recall what Jesus did right before he went to the cross when he was in the upper room? The Scripture says, “
23 Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it. 24 He said to them, "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. 25 Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God." (Mark 14:23-25)
What Jesus did, before he went to the cross and died so thirsty, not just thirsty for water, but thirsty for God and thirsty for us, that he made sure that he would not be drinking alone. This is one of the worst things any of us can do, the experts say, is to start drinking alone. It is only when we take the cup together, with Jesus, and with each other, that we can find the living water we all need. This is what communion is about. This is what church is about. This is what living water is. This is the right cup we all need to drink from. We need to drink the cup of life and living together, and never to try to drink alone. It is the most dangerous thing we could ever try to do, is try to get through this world, this life, without God and without each other.
In that same church, where I failed miserably to understand the undying thirst of an alcoholic, I also came to have one of my greatest moments of ministry. During my pastoral visits I came across a man who had been crippled for life and lived with his mother. Mr. Halley was a gentle man and he had a true faith in God, but he was, as they say, “having to go it alone”, and in a spiritual way, having to drink alone. Mr. Halley could hardly walk, and if he did he stumbled and fell over his own feet. He felt he was too much a burden to come to church.
When I suggested that I would leave Sunday School and come to him up for worship, Mr. Halley felt it was too much trouble. Both he and his mother agreed that it was just “too much” for him to bear, besides it would not be easy for me or the church either. But I was a young preacher and I insisted and I kept insisting, until one day, Mr. Halley, the crippled man, who’d been handicapped since birth, finally came to church.
I’ll never forget the fear on his face and his resistance as together we climbed the 10 or so steps to enter the sanctuary. Mr. Halley stumbled almost every step. It was an effort for him and it was an effort for me. But when we drank the cup together and when, even the congregation drank the cup of helping him, it was amazing the drink of life we were all receiving, because as we saw the joy on his face, it brought joy, hope and inspiration to us all.
How do you drink from the cup of life? When the living water is Jesus and God’s love for us, it really doesn’t matter which cup we drink from, as long as we are drinking from the cup of life together. The very salvation and redemption we all desperately need, never comes when we drink alone, but it only comes when we take the cup of life together with Jesus and with God’s people—his body, the churches of Jesus Christ.
Jesus’ own thirst on the cross is exposed to show us, what we are most thirsty for. We are people who are thirsty for life, but it is a life that is lived for God and with others. We must take the cup together and never try to drink alone. We must be baptized with the baptism he was baptized with---in his living and dying. Because the only way Jesus could quench his own great thirst was to love and forgive us, even when it killed him. And it when it did kill him, it was then, through his sacrificial death, that he quenched his greatest thirst---his thirst God and his thirst for us. Will you drink the cup with him and quench your soul’s greatest thirst? I hope so, or you’ll compensate with a substitute and it will not satisfy nor give you eternal life. Amen.
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