Jesus Thirsts. Mary Thirsts. We Thirst.
Mary: I’d say it’s too much to bear, but I know that is false. I can bear it. I don’t want to bear it but I can and I will.
*sigh*
Oh how I wish I couldn’t bear. If I would just die of heart break… I’d rather do that than watch my boy, this man, this teacher, this preacher, this God, suffer another moment. Mary Clopas, Mary Magdalene and John have tried to pull me away, telling me that no mother should witness this, telling me that I need to go home.
Ha.
Home. How can I ever go back home. I’ll never rest again without heartache, without, despair, without anger.
He’s thirsty. Please, please, you’ve done everything to him….stripped, flogged, spat upon, ridiculed, pierced, taunted, crucified. He’s thirsty. Give him something to drink.
He thirsts…for what? An end to this madness? Is he thirsting for relief? Or does his mission continue, even up there, humiliated, in excruciating pain? Perhaps he thirsts not for relief from his pain but from the pain of the world.
My God, My God why have you forsaken him? Me? Us?
Let him drink, for he thirsts.
He thirsts!
I thirst as well.
We all do.
It’s what started this whole thing.
Thirst.
A thirst for freedom.
A thirst for justice.
A thirst for peace.
I won’t speak for him. I couldn’t in life and I certainly won’t presume to as he nears his certain death. But I will speak.
Will you?
Thirst is quenched in many ways.
Through drink, through, speech, through thought, through action, through doing something.
They thirst.
The destitute.
The despised
The angry
The powerless
The hungry
The naked
The lonely.
They thirst.
And we, all of us, are called to quench that thirst.
By speaking out.
By speaking up.
By not looking away, but rather looking, seeing, remembering, telling.
Are you thirsty?
Are we thirsty?
If we’ve been paying any attention at all, we must be parched, thoroughly and utterly PARCHED.
This world, OUR WORLD, is a mess.
Horrors, perpetrated by our brother and sister humans, take lives indiscriminately. This makes us thirsty.
For awhile.
And then we move on, quenched. The thirst has seemingly been for naught.
Children were killed in their first grade classroom. In cold blood. 6 year olds. Sitting in school. Assassinated.
We certainly thirsted then, didn’t we?
And yet, life returned to normal. Life went on. And not much changed.
We were thirsty, parched at the horror.
And then we allowed ourselves to be quenched.
And a bit of our soul withered up and died.
Young African American men, walking across a park, or walking down a city street are detained by police officers who are overworked, under trained, terrified, angry or hate-filled and through a misguided rage, kill young men at an alarming rate.
Killed while being black.
We thirst, parched at the injustice.
And then we allow ourselves to be quenched.
And more of our soul withers up and dies.
A group of devout people gathered in community to study the Bible and pray, welcoming the stranger as Jesus commanded. When that stranger, washed in a love that just couldn’t penetrate his dark veil of evil, opened fire and shot those beloved children of God in cold blood,
we thirst, parched at the terror of it all.
And then we allow regular life to resume and our thirst is quenched.
And more of our soul withers up and dies.
Children graduating from high school illiterate and ill-prepared for life….
Women being forced to choose between healthcare for themselves and food for their children…
The elderly discarded like yesterday’s news, the wisdom of their years ignored, their perspective on the present denied, their lessons for the future, lost.
We hear the news reports, we read the statistics, we thirst for justice for all and then…
regular life resumes, our thirst is quenched and on we go.
While more of our soul withers up and dies.
We thirst. And then we don’t.
This is the difference between Jesus and us.
The difference between Mary and us.
The difference between God’s kingdom only in heaven versus reigning upon earth as well.
My friends,
We cannot stop thirsting.
We cannot be quenched until….
The hungry are fed
The naked are clothed
The hated are loved
Those who hate become those who love
The Lost become Found
The Other become us
The captives are free
We cannot stop thirsting until:
we beat our swords into ploughshares,
and our spears into pruning-hooks
until
nation shall no longer lift sword against nation,
or learn war any more. (Isaiah 2:4)
Jesus thirsts.
Mary thirsts.
I thirst
You thirst.
We thirst, we quench and our souls lose more and more of their essence.
Will this be the year?
Will this be the moment in time when our thirst will guide us, when our thirst will lead us, when our thirst will compel us to not rest, to not get distracted, to not settle, to not ignore until everyone’s thirst, everywhere, always, no exceptions, is quenched.
God thirsts.
Jesus thirsts
Mary thirsts
I thirst, you thirst.
May the waters of righteousness, the springs of hope, the fountains of mercy, pour over us as we gaze upon our Savior nailed upon that tree and may the sight of that love, that trust, that pure unadulterated thirst for us, strengthen us to do the work we have been given to do:
To thirst thoroughly, to quench epically and to live in and through grace and truth and love.
He thirsts, I thirst, you thirst.
Until that glorious and wondrous day when we, once and for all and forever, will be quenched.
Amen.
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