I Thirst

Water with Descent, Ron Richmond. Oil on canvas, 47 x 76 in.

“I Thirst” from the album 7 Last Words from the Cross. Composed by Sir James MacMillan. Performed by The Spiritus Chamber Choir, conducted by Timothy Shantz.

Poetry:

“A Well Runs Out of Thirst”
by Jane Hirshfield

A well runs out of thirst
the way time runs out of a week,
the way a country runs out of its alphabet
or a tree runs out of its height.
The way a brown pelican
runs out of anchovy-glitter at darkfall.

A strange collusion,
the way a year runs out of its days
but turns into another,
the way a cotton towel’s compact
with pot and plate seems to run out of dryness
but in a few minutes finds more.

A person comes into the kitchen
to dry the hands, the face,
to stand on the lip of a question.

Around the face, the hands,
behind the shoulders,
yeasts, mountains, mosses multiply answers.

There are questions that never run out of questions,
answers that don’t exhaust answer.

Take this question the person stands asking:
a gate rusting open.
Yesstands on its left,noon its right,
two big planets of unpainted silence.

I THIRST

“I thirst.” It is such a simple statement, the expression of a fundamental human need. It is the first need infants urgently demand their mothers satisfy, the first want of nascent self-awareness. When infants feel the first tingle of thirst, they experience it as a direct threat to their existence. We all experience thirst, because we are all human. But what does it mean when Jesus, the Lord of all, says “I thirst”? Christ’s words seem simple, but they are multi-facetted, encompassing both need and fulfillment.

In today’s musical selection, the choir expresses the words “I thirst” as a monastic chant, the layers of dissonant droning voices echoing the tiers of meaning in the primal statement. Likewise, Christ’s two words, “I thirst,” contain layers of meaning. First, they emphasize Christ’s humanity. When Jesus said these words, he illustrates that he is truly one of us, subject to the same basic physical needs that we all experience. He knows us intimately through his experience of the same fundamental requirements of bodily existence. But underpinning Christ’s words is an echo, one that connects Jesus with the deep past, with prophecy fulfilled, a plan come to fruition. The Gospel of John explains that Jesus said “I thirst,” while “knowing that all things were now accomplished, that Scripture might be fulfilled.” In his moment of excruciating want and discomfort, Jesus signals to us that he is the one we have waited and yearned for, that all things are now complete in him.

But what does this fulfillment and accomplishment mean? How can the expression of desire and need connect to something that is finished and complete? The words “I thirst” point to Christ as the one who seeks to fill us when we thirst. His sacrifice offers us fulfillment and completeness. It is Christ’s want that makes us whole. Today’s artwork highlights this hope by juxtaposing Christ’s wretched followers removing Him from the cross in the background with pure, life-giving water in the foreground. The words “I thirst” mean that all was fulfilled and accomplished, but Christ’s followers could not see his triumph in their moment of utter sadness. Their faces show their thirst for Christ and their inability to see beyond an arid, muted existence deprived of the only one they needed. The dark, mournful style of the old masters contrasts with the fresh, clean water. The most human moment of deprivation shared by the God-man and his disciples coincides with the most Divine moment of fulfillment. Christ’s thirst paradoxically quenches the thirst of all who long for Him.

Christ’s thirst is fathomless. It is not merely a human thirst of absence and scarcity, but a Divine thirst that yearns to offer the plentitude of His presence to believers. Today’s poem can help us meditate on the ungraspable nature of a thirst that seeks to fill. It asks us to contemplate “questions that never run out of questions, answers that don’t exhaust answers” When Jesus says, “I thirst,” He offers us Himself, an inexhaustible answer to our inexhaustible questions.

Prayer:
“Merciful God, good Lord, I wish that you would unite me to that fountain, that there I may drink of the living spring of the water of life with those others who thirst after you. There in that heavenly region may I ever dwell, delighted with abundant sweetness, and say, ‘How sweet is the fountain of living water which never fails, the water welling up to eternal life.’”
Amen
­­––––Columbanus (543-615 AD)

Anna Thompson
Adjunct Professor
Torrey Honors College
Biola University