In the name of †Jesus.

The text for the meditation tonight comes from the Gospel according to St. John, the nine-
teenth chapter, beginning to read at the twenty-eighth verse:

After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfil 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.

Let us pray:

Holy Father, sanctify us in the truth. Your word is truth. Amen.

“Water, water everywhere

And all the boards did shrink,
Water, water everywhere
Nor any drop to drink.”

These haunting lines, from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, form
one the most famous descriptions of the agony of thirst. Of all our bodily needs, the need for
adequate drink is the most urgent, the most pressing. Left without food, a healthy adult may
survive for up to two months. Deprived of drink, we will be fortunate to last four days.
Thirst can come upon us in different ways. Perhaps we fail to take in adequate water. Or
perhaps salt or other toxins will enter our body and upset the balance of fluids. Whichever the
cause of thirst, left unsatisfied it is not only agonising, it is lethal.
Little surprise, then, that the Israelites in our first reading were feeling more than a little
anxious when they found themselves camped in the wilderness without drinking water, facing
an uncertain future. It is not unnatural if our sympathies should lie with the Israelites.
In the desert, without water, Israel had run into one of the great temptations that the people
of God has to face time again: the conflict between promise and reality. God himself had
promised to lead his people out of slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land; yet here they were,
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in the middle of the arid wilderness, facing death through thirst. Where was God’s promise
now?
Predictably, the people lost faith, despaired, and turned against God and His servant Moses.
But instead of pouring out His righteous wrath, God performed one of the great reversals in
human history. The agonised complaint of the faithless Israelites became an occasion for an
overflow of God’s grace. In the middle of the wilderness, God gave his people drink out of a
dry rock.
The people of Israel had failed to recognise the power of God’s promise. They had mistaken
their want for their need. They thought their real problem was their thirst for water, whereas,
in fact, their real thirst was for faith in God and His word. It was the thirst of sin.

And this is where the story of Israel meets our story. In their original created state, our
forebears had not known the thirst of sin. But when sin entered the world, humanity was beset
by a permanent thirst. The life-giving Spirit of God was drained from the veins of our souls.
Instead, they are filled with the salt of sin, which leaves us gagging for refreshment. Yet when
we seek for water to flush out our sin, all we find is the false drink of idolatry, of the worship of
things other than the God who created us for fellowship with Him. Like the waters surrounding
the Mariner’s stricken ship, such water may look promising but it will only make our suffering
greater. Left to our own devices, we too are lost in a wilderness with no water to drink. . . . And
so we thirst.
How different it was for Jesus. Here was the Son of God, the agent of creation Himself.
Free from sin, he had no need of drink. Here was the one who had offered the Samaritan
woman at the well of Sychar living water. Here was the one who promised, “Whoever drinks
of the water that I will give him will never thirst again.” Here was the one who declared at the
Feast of Booths, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as
the Scripture has said, ’Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”’ And, as St. Paul tells
us, here was the one who was the spiritual Rock out of which the people of Israel drank in the
wilderness. Here was no arid wilderness, no thirst of sin, but the oasis itself.

How ironic, then, that the spring of life-giving, living water is now bleeding, dying and
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thirsting. As in the wilderness, we behold on the cross a great reversal. But now the tables have
turned. At Rephidim, the dry rock issued water. At Golgotha, the bottomless spring of water
turned into a waterless wilderness. And yet, both places were places of God’s immeasurable
grace.

For Jesus’ thirst was the thirst of sin—your sin. It was the salt of your transgressions that
poisoned His sinless soul. And so He was cut off from the Father, placed under the curse of
sin. Separated from God, He was cut off from the source of life-giving drink. He who issued
water out of a rock for His people, he who had turned water into wine at the wedding in Cana,
had nothing to drink but that which sinful men had to offer Him: sour wine.
But this bitter, desolate scene is the sweetest Gospel for each one of us, for you and for me.
Jesus thirsted, but he thirsted so that we might drink the water of life. When He was poisoned
by the salt of sin, it was your sin that was killing Him. And in return, He offers you His pure,
untainted blood in a miraculous transfusion. After Jesus died and His side was pierced by a
soldier’s spear, it was water and blood that flowed out of His side. And the water and the
blood still flow in great rivers of mercy to repentant sinners. In the waters of baptism, we are
washed clean of the poison of sin. According to Jesus’ promise, the Spirit of God dwells in His
children, like a spring of living water, flowing from the heart. The life of faith is one continuous
drinking of the water of eternal life. Moreover, not content to give us mere water, in the cup
of wine at the Lord’s Supper He gives us His own blood to drink, to nourish us and to gladden
us. And so in the place of our sin-infested blood our veins are filled—quite literally—with His
holy, unblemished, life-giving blood.
And so, with the salt of sin washed away and the thirsting soul having been brought back
to the spring of living water, we are brought back into Eden, into fellowship with God.

And yet, how often we seem to find ourselves back in the wilderness, thirsting for God,
thirsting for life. How often it is that we, like the faithless Israelites, find ourselves suspended
between promise and reality, between want and need. It is all too easy to identify with the
Psalmists’ cries of despair:

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 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?
my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,
and by night, but I find no rest.
Or simply:
Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD!

Where is God when we enter those dark nights of the soul? Where is He, when our loved
ones die; when our relationships fail; when our life seems to lose its direction? Where is He
when our needs are not being satisfied?
And where is God when we find ourselves empty and dry, withering in a wilderness of
temptation and sin, when the oasis of life with God seems but a mirage. Where is that water
He promised, the drink that would never leave us thirsty?

It is into such wildernesses that tonight’s Gospel speaks. Christ has already thirsted your
thirst, has Himself taken the poison that would have killed you. When He gave you the water
of baptism, He did not offer you just a one-off washing. Instead, He has given us a pool
of cleansing for daily, constant refreshment in repentance and faith. With His word as your
compass, you will be led through the wilderness of this life safe into Promised Land. With His
body and blood as food, you will not faint on the way.
Yet, while we are on the way, the poison of sin still clings to us. We are tempted, we are
tried, and we will often go the way of the wandering Israelites, failing to recognise the power
of God’s promise, mistaking our wants for our needs. As soon as we contemplate our life
apart from the God’s promises in Christ, consider our situation apart from His grace, we too
will despair. God allows us to run into these dead-ends in order to remind us that His grace is
sufficient. In the darkest depths of despair, He assures us,

The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but
the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he
who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes
for the saints in accordance with God’s will. And we know that in all things God
works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his
purpose.

The promise is the reality. On the cross, the Rock was struck. The waters are flowing, and
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they flow for you. Yes, He leads us away from the fleshpots of Egypt, along the narrow way.
But it is the way to the Promised Land, to the land flowing with milk and honey, led by our
Lord, who has promised, “I will never leave you, nor forsake you.”

Amen.

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds in
Christ Jesus.