Benny Nalkara, CMI

“I thirst” (Jn 19:28), sounds to be the most human and emotionally poised wordsof Jesus from the cross. This statement is traditionally called “The Word of Distress.”This verse recorded only in the Gospel of John goes in tune with the theological thrust of John’s Gospel which stresses on the “living water.” With these two words Jesus is taking us to different levels of meaning. What is the reason behindthe thirst of Jesus who claimed to be the “spring of living water”?
We find in the gospels that Jesus like any other human being, undergoes the normal human experiences of thirst and hunger. We find him often trying to quench the thirst and satiate the hunger. There is no wonder in the fact that one who was scourged, crowned with thorns, fell down many times with the unbearable heaviness of the cross and finally nailed to the cross mercilessly, felt thirsty. When Jesus asserts without saying that “I am a human being in all sense,” at the time of crucifixion with these two words, “I thirst,” John the evangelist is having another motif in mind. John’s Gospel was written in the background of Gnosticism which denied humanity of Jesus. So to present Jesus as a fully human person who cries and laughs, feeling thirst and hunger was the intention of John. In his final moments on the Cross, we see Jesus submitting himself to very human, vulnerable feelings of emptiness and need both in body and spirit. He allows himself to be brought to the pit of all thirst. He feels bodily thirst as he’s pushed to his limits near death.The thirst of Jesus at the cross becomes more sensible and meaningful in this context.
We may be taken aback by the fact that the same Jesus who proclaimed “whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life,” (Jn 4:14-15) and “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink” (Jn 7:37), now troubled with thirst. John links Jesus’ statement “I thirst” to the fulfillment of Scripture. By highlighting how Old Testament Scriptures were fulfilled throughout Jesus’ crucifixion, John showed that everything was happening according to God’s plan. When Jesus said, “I thirst,” from the cross, He was alluding to a prophecy in Psalm 22:15: “My mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death.” It may be also an allusion to the Psalm 69:21: “They gave me poison for food,and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” It is the prayer of the one who is drowning in the waters of suffering and misery. Even when he is drowning in the water, he is thirsting for water! Jesus, who was on earth with a mission from the Father, thirsts and testifies that he fulfills the plan of God.
It is clear that one who successfully completed the mission entrusted by the Father and who claimed to be the source of the living water, cried not only for mere water. It is the cry of the one who is encircled with the people who are blind with cruelty, hard-heartedness and inhuman tendencies. There is the shadow of the pain of neglect, indifference and misunderstanding faced by Jesus when he tried to lead people to the wellspring of the living water when he cries out that “I am thirsty” to fulfill the scriptures.
The thirst of Jesus raises many questions in our minds. Why did God who quenched the thirst by giving water to Hagar and her son in the desert and then to the Israel and then to the prophets cause his own son to be thirsty? Is it to reveal the depth of the love that is completed through suffering and to tell the world that He is identified with the suffering humanity through the passion of his son? It is the thirst of one who is requesting for the “cup that he was going to drink” from the Father.
The thirst of the crucified continues even today. It is continued through the Mother earth and her children. When deforestation is done through the imprudent and senseless acts of human beings which results in scarcity of rain, the lakes, the land and the earth thirst. The thirst of the earth and the nations for water is also the cry of the crucified Son of Man! When we meditate this cry of the crucifies from the Cross, we should also meditate upon the cry of the earth and its inhabitants and their thirst. Jesus experienced the thirst of all humankind on the Cross. The task of the disciples of Jesus is not different from that!