Thinking of the times we've thirsted helps us understand the agony Jesus endured on the cross from being thirsty.
Jesus was fully human and fully divine. So often we focus on those stories of Jesus that highlight his divinity, such as the Miracle Stories of healing the sick, raising the dead, and stilling the storm, that we forget that Jesus, fully human, had a body. He was like us in all ways except sin, so he experienced all of life through his body, as we do. Including being thirsty. In his book "The Seven Last Words," Fr. James Martin reminds us:
"Jesus was born, he lived, and he died. The child called Yeshua - his name in Aramaic - entered the world as helpless as any newborn and just as dependent on his parents. He needed to be nursed, held, fed, burped, and changed. As a boy...Jesus would have skinned his knees on the rocky ground, bumped his head on doorways, and pricked his fingers on thorns....He went through puberty. As a human being, he would have experienced the normal sexual longings and urges. We know he was unmarried and celibate, but he would have, as a human being, felt all the normal sexual attractions and desires. Those are far from sinful, after all....
"Jesus pulled muscles, got headaches, felt sick to his stomach, came down with the flu, and maybe even sprained an ankle or two....In fact, he may have had even more severe physical problems than you or I do, since health and sanitation conditions were wretched in first century Nazareth. (Sewage, for example, would have been simply tossed into alleyways)....Everything proper to the human being, to the human body, he experienced - except sin. These bodily experiences include hunger and, here on the cross, thirst."
In John 19: 28-29, we read
"After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the Scripture), 'I am thirsty.' A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth."
Fr. Martin explains what a crucifixion was like:
"Crucifixion was one of the most agonizing ways to die....A person was nailed to the cross, usually through the wrists, and then set on a sort of small wooden seat fixed midway on the upright beam. Alternately, a small footrest was placed under the feet....to prolong the agony. Victims of crucifixion died from either loss of blood or, more likely, asphyxiation, as the weight of the body compressed their rib cage and lungs. With their painful ability to support themselves, asphyxiation took longer....
"In the blazing hot sun of Judea, Jesus would have thirsted, because he had a body."
In the Judean desert, the temperature can reach 115 degrees!
But - Jesus' thirst is not yet over. Since all of us together are the Body of Christ, we know that somewhere in this world, Jesus' Body is suffering from terrible thirst, and as a daily experience. We in the United States usually have abundant water, - to drink, to use for showering, bathing, washing clothes. The terrible experience of so many people in Flint, Michigan, who are suffering from having unsafe water, can remind us of the fact that nearly eight hundred million people in the world lack access to clean, fresh water today.
Women and children are the most affected in these situations because they are the ones who have to procure the water for their families:
"...Often they must walk miles to acquire it and carry the heavy liquid back home. It also affects them in terms of lost opportunities for education and earning a living. Finally, many women are physically or sexually assaulted while out getting water." (Martin.)
None of us were able to keep vigil with Jesus as he suffered thirst on the cross. But, if we weep because of his bodily suffering, do we weep for the ways in which his Body suffers today? Do we try to do something for those who thirst today? Then God can use our sorrow to move us to acts of mercy. After all, God is not just merciful - God IS Mercy. His merciful love for us impelled him to come to us, take on a body, live, suffer, and die just as we do.
There is another way that the members of the Body of Christ thirst today, and that is hungering and thirsting for justice. God desires us to be with those who suffer from racism and injustice by being present to them, aware of their sufferings, ready to listen to their stories. In "America's Original Sin," Jim Wallis recounts how he, as a white man, became aware of lingering racism in America and embraced Jesus' words: "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free":
"Fifty years ago I was a teenager in Detroit. I took a job as a janitor at the Detroit Edison Company to earn money for college. There I met a young man named Butch who was also on the janitorial staff. But his money was going to support his family, because his father had died. We became friends. I was a young white man, and Butch was a young black man, and the more we talked, the more we wanted to keep talking....
"Those conversations changed the way I saw Detroit, my country, and my life. Butch and I had both grown up in Detroit, but I began to realize that we had lived in two different countries - in the same city.
"When Butch invited me to come to his home one night for dinner and meet his family, I said yes without even thinking about it. In the 1960s , whites from the suburbs, like me, didn't travel at night into the city where the African Americans lived....
"A half century later, much has changed....African Americans have achieved much in every area of American society....A new generation, of all races, is more ready for a diverse American society....But much still hasn't changed. Too many African Americans have been left behind without good education, jobs, homes, and families - and these factors are all connected.
"Believing that black experience is different from white experience is the beginning of changing white attitudes and perspectives. How can we get to real justice (today) if white people don't hear, understand, and, finally, believe the real-life experience of black people? Families have to listen to other families. If white children were treated in the ways that black children are, it would not be acceptable to white parents; so the mistreatment of black children must also become unacceptable to those of us who are white dads and moms....It's time to start talking together. If we do, I believe we can change the underlying patterns of personal and social prejudice that hold up the larger structural injustices in our society."
To hunger and thirst for justice, to stand with and listen to those who hunger and thirst for justice because they experience injustice, is to stand with Jesus as he thirsts on the cross.
There's another way that a thirsting Jesus can impact our lives. If we really confront the extent of Jesus' suffering, we begin to understand how much he understands our bodily suffering. Because Jesus has a body still, for his Risen Body carries and remembers all of his human experiences, Jesus right now understands all of our physical suffering. "The Risen Jesus is the same person as the Jesus of Nazareth who walked the earth." (Martin.) Jesus went through physical suffering; he understands himself what physical suffering means, including the ways in which each of us physically suffers. He didn't have cancer or multiple sclerosis or ALS. But he did have excruciating pain. Physical, emotional, and spiritual pain. And He wants you to pray to him, to have a relationship with him, because that is why he came down to us and suffered physically for us - to come close to us to love us in every way possible. Who better to hold us to his heart than the one who was nailed to the cross? Who better to comfort us and strengthen us with his eternal love?
How are we standing, keeping company with a thirsting Jesus on the cross? Are we weeping for him, and also weeping for His Body which still thirsts? Do we find ways to alleviate the physical thirst of those who don't have access to clean, fresh water? Do we find ways to come close to and listen to those who suffer from racism in our country and thirst for social and economic justice? Do we pray to a Jesus who understands our physical suffering because he physically suffered? Jesus thirsts for us to be in a relationship with him - and with his Body. Love the One Who is Mercy and assuage his thirst for your presence by keeping vigil with him - and with His Body which still thirsts today.