Only John’s Gospel records that on the cross, Jesus said, “I thirst.” 

These words were uttered by Jesus, we are told, not as a guttural physical response, but with deeper intention. And yet, we ought not think these words are manufactured or insincere either. “Knowing that all was now finished,” John clarifies, Jesus said “I thirst” in order to fulfill the Scriptures.  

John also records how, earlier in His ministry and on the last great day of the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus “stood up and cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’” (John 7:37). He had also told the woman at the well, “The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:13-14). 

And now, on the cross, the One who promised to alleviate all thirst as the endless source of living water said that He was Himself thirsty. Why are we told this? Why is the fact that Jesus thirsted important? 

All Saints Day in 1755 was a day the world changed. A ten-minute earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal was followed by a tsunami and fires. An estimated 60,000 people were killed. Many were crushed by collapsing churches where they had gathered to celebrate the Christian holy day. According to moral philosopher Susan Neiman, this incident of natural evil proved to many Western intellectuals that God could not be trusted. For example, the French philosopher Voltaire wrote: 

Are you then sure the power which would create
The universe and fix the laws of fate,
Could not have found for man a proper place,
But earthquakes must destroy the human race? 

It was partly because of Voltaire’s scathing poem that, in the modern era, trust moved from God to man. And the trade seemed to work. After all, the next several centuries were marked by amazing advances in technology, science, medicine, scholarship, life expectancy, and security. 

It was at the peak of the modern era, the twentieth century, that the trust in man was exposed as badly misplaced. Promises of utopia were fulfilled instead by the mechanized slaughter of millions in two world wars, Communism, Auschwitz, the threat of nuclear annihilation. Where do we turn if neither God nor man can be trusted? 

Only the cross directly and sufficiently addresses the moral and natural evil of this world. As the prophet Isaiah foretold, “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.” 

The cross demonstrates that God is not aloof from human suffering as Voltaire imagined, nor will human evil have the final say. Our God once thirsted, like we do. He bled, as we do. He cried out, as we do. He died, as we do. In Christ, God fully entered the world of human suffering, suffered Himself, and defeated suffering. He now has the scars to prove it. 

Nearly two centuries after Voltaire, theologian Edward Shillito, offered a poem with a different take on God and human suffering. Here are two stanzas of that poem: 

If we have never sought, we seek Thee now;
Thine eyes burn through the dark, our only stars;
We must have sight of thorn-pricks on Thy brow;
We must have Thee, O Jesus of the Scars. . . 

The other gods were strong, but Thou wast weak;
They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne;
But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak,
And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone. 

Today on Good Friday, we remember that God the Son has scars. And we remember, as the old preacher said, that Sunday is coming. To Christ be all glory and praise forever and ever. Amen.