Thirst

April 3, 2026

From Pastor Joseph Wamack

Hello Church Family!

Today is what is traditionally called “Good Friday.” It is a day to remember the death of Jesus on the cross. Certainly not a “good” day in a traditional understanding of something “good.” Not “good” like a satisfying meal, not “good” like a lovely song sung or “good” like a relaxing vacation, but “good” for us in the redeeming value and revelation of the goodness of God. Good for us-not good for Him.

Our Jesus suffered on the cross that Good Friday. He also suffered during the previous 24 hours. In the Garden of Gethsemane, the night before, He said to His disciples, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death.” (Matt. 26:38). Then He went just a few feet farther, fell on His face and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me, nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” (Matt. 26:39). His humanity longed to be relieved of the horror of the upcoming pain, while His divinity drew back from the strange weight of our sins upon Him.

While on the cross, Jesus said seven different things. The seven sayings are gathered from all four of the Gospel accounts. In Matthew and Mark, Jesus cries out to God. In Luke He forgives His killers, gives reassurances to the penitent thief and commends His spirit to the Father. In John, He speaks to His mother, says He is thirsty and declares “It is finished.”

I want to focus on the phrase “I am thirsty.” (John 19:28). Only John records this saying, but all four Gospels relate that Jesus, while on the cross, was offered a drink of sour wine, but refused it. There is so much deep love revealed here, Church Family.

Jesus is the one who claimed to give “living water” (John 7:37-38). He also claimed in this same passage, “Come unto Me and drink.” He is also the One who offered the Samaritan woman (John 4) water from which she would never thirst again. How is it possible that this Giver of Living Water could now say about Himself, “I thirst.”?

Jesus, the One incarnated and born in a manger, now on that Good Friday, cries the cry of humanity and says, “I thirst.” Jesus, the Creator of life, is now subject to the rules of creation and the creature's basic needs. Yes, Jesus the Son of God, actually needed water.

Without sleep the night before, without food or drink, He had been tortured and tried before a tribunal and then sentenced to death. For six hours He hung from a cruel cross on a hill called The Skull, while the sun went dark for six hours. He was bleeding and losing vital body fluids. His lips were parched. His tongue swollen as He managed to cry out in His identification with human thirst and all our needs, drives, hopes and sufferings.

Jesus' physical thirst only symbolizes the deeper thirst each of us has, the thirst for companionship, the thirst for acceptance, the thirst for meaning to life, and most important, the thirst for relationship with God.

The thirst for God is a thirst to end all thirsts, a thirst no water, no wine, no concoction could ever quench. And for once Jesus knew that desire of ages Himself. Jesus who took on the sins and sorrows of the world, knew the separation from God that earthly cares and sin can create.

Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And because He knows the human condition and because He understands thirst, He also offers us the solution to our thirst: to drink of the living water that only He, the Resurrected Christ, can offer .

The grave could not hold Him and on that Sunday morning, He burst forth from the tomb, giving evidence of the fact that He is “the resurrection and the Life,” while reminding us of the invitation, “Come unto Me, all who are thirsty and receive Living Water.”

May this Resurrection weekend - Good Friday, the Silent Sabbath and Resurrection Sunday - remind you of the free gift of living water and hope there is in Jesus. And may you thirst no more, except for the Living Water.