Words From the Cross: "I thirst."

“After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), ‘I thirst.’”

John 19:28

Towards the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, when he was traveling from Judea to Galilee, Jesus made a stop outside a town called Sychar in the region of Samaria. He sent his disciples into town to buy food, and he sat by himself at a well. He was waiting for someone. Someone who would have been intimidated by a group of Jewish men, especially religious ones. He sent them all away and patiently waited there in the heat of midday for his divine appointment to show up. Eventually she did.

She was an outcast in her town. She had been married five times, which may not sound like a big deal to modern readers, but let me paint a picture for you of the road this woman had walked that led her to Jesus that day. In these times, women had few to little rights. They were financially provided for by their fathers until they were married, and then they depended upon their husbands. Few women were independently wealthy or owned their own businesses. They were tied to their husbands financially, entirely dependent on someone else for their existence.

But the system was inequitable. In Jesus’ day, it was not uncommon for men to divorce their wives for any manner of reasons. Women were easily discarded, easily disposed of. In his book, Through His Eyes: God’s Perspective on Women in the Bible, Jerram Barrs points out that this unjust system left women particularly vulnerable in a male-dominated society. Either by death or divorce, this woman had lost everything five times, which means she had almost certainly suffered pervasive economic insecurity her entire adult life. 

On the day that she met Jesus, she had reached an all time low. She was considered a liability. No longer “marriage material”, she was living with a man who was willing to provide food and shelter, but not the legal covering of marriage. Shunned by her community, this woman had been rejected and discarded. She walked to the well in the middle of the day, a time when no one else would be there, because I’m sure that she was tired of facing people who treated her like the town trash. She was isolated, beaten down and desperate. Her life was a dry and barren wasteland, and she was desperately thirsty. 

The man sitting by the well that day didn’t see her the way that others did. When he looked at her, he saw the longings of her heart. Like every other human being, she longed to be seen, known, valued and protected. Everyone else focused on the string of husbands, but Jesus saw her heart. He didn’t begin his conversation with her talking about sexual sin. He looked at her and called her thirsty. Then he offered her living water that would flood the wasteland of her soul. She never had to be thirsty again. 

Jesus exposed her need, but not to shame her or to be cruel. He revealed that all these husbands and the man who was currently using her, did not satisfy the deep thirst of her soul. They hadn’t been the solution after all. All of those longings had been placed inside of her by the Creator. She longed to be seen because she was created to be in a relationship with the “God who sees me” (Gen. 16:13). She longed to be known, because she was made by the God who created us for a relationship with him. She longed to be valued because God calls us his treasure. She longed to be protected because our God is a refuge, a fortress, our strong tower of defense. All of these longings that had driven her to desperate places, had been put inside of her by the God who always intended to satisfy them with himself. 

Jesus offered her a way back to the Father. This woman had been eating the crumbs off of the floor, but her Father longed to pick her up and seat her at his table. He sent his Son to go and find her and bring her home. She was so changed by encountering this kind of love that she went back to the town that had alienated and rejected her, because she wanted everyone to come and see this man, the Christ they had been waiting for, who had offered her living water.

Only John records this story of the woman at the well, and only John records Jesus crying out, “I thirst” on the cross. When Jesus offered this woman the living water of God, he did so because he knew he would one day take her place. 

Like this woman, Jesus was shunned by his community. He was rejected and discarded. He was beaten, spit upon, mocked, and treated like the town trash. He was hung on a cross and like “one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we did not esteem him.” (Isaiah 53:3) Jesus became a man of sorrows, acquainted with her grief. Jesus himself became thirsty, cut off from the living water of the presence of God, so that he could satisfy thirsty, barren souls. Jesus paid the debt that we have incurred through all of our wanderings, so that we could finally come back home to the Father. 

Are you thirsty, dear one? Have you tried and tried to satisfy the deep longings of your soul, only to feel disappointed in the end? The more we try to get eternal longings satisfied in broken places, the more desperate we will become. I know, because I’ve tried. Nothing is quite enough, because you were made for so much more. You were made for God himself. Nothing in this world can satisfy your deepest longings. Only Jesus can quench the thirst of your soul. The call throughout scripture is this: “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters…Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near…return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on [you], and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.” (Isaiah 55:1, 6-7)

Jesus is sitting by the well, waiting for you. He longs to gather you in and bring you back to the Father, who promises to have great compassion on your thirsty soul. So come and drink. Return to the One who made you for himself and promises to fulfill every longing of your soul. Return to the One who became thirsty, so you might drink deeply and finally be satisfied.