Lent 39

5. I am thirsty.

I went to a Good Friday service this evening that was a Seven Last Words and Tenebrae Service. While the pastors read each word and the passages that went with them, I tried to stay centered and reflect on the word. When we got to this word, I kept flashing on a memory. I remember a retreat I attended when I was in high school. The theme was "Come to the Water" and during each session we sang the song "For Those Tears I Died." Come to the water, stand by side. I know you are thirsty. You won't be denied. I felt every teardrop, when in darkness you cried. And I strove to remind you, for those tears I died. (M. and R. Stevens Jesus made a simple statement from the cross. I am thirsty. What a natural human urge! Thirst! And they gave him sour wine to drink, hardly a thirst-quencher. What I remember from that retreat was a feeling of my cup being full. I remember feeling spiritually fed. I had drawn near to the living water and was not denied.

On this Good Friday, I am reminded of the thirst of Jesus Christ was so that I might never thirst again. Except that I am thirsty. I am not thirsty for sour wine but for the new wine, the new wine of the kingdom. Hearing Jesus utter words and a request so human tells me once again of the importance and wonder of the incarnation. "We need the practice of incarnation, by which God saves the lives of those whose intellectual assent has turned as dry as dust, who have run frighteningly low on the bread of life, who are dying to know more God in their bodies. Not more about God. More God" (Barbara Brown Taylor, Altar in the World). I hunger and thirst, not to know more about God, but just for more God.