Before his crucifixion and death, Jesus shared a last supper with the disciples.
“After supper he took the cup of wine; and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and said, “Drink this, all of you; This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me.”
Blood is essential to life. Blood carries oxygen and nutrients throughout our bodies and helps to regulate our body temperatures. Blood carries waste materials to the organs that rid the body of that waste. Blood also fights off infections. Without blood, we cannot live.
At the last supper, Jesus referred to the wine in the cup that he shared with the disciples as his own blood, the Blood of the new Covenant. The disciples are intimately related to Jesus at this point. Jesus is the true vine, and the disciples are the branches. The life giving sap of the vine flows into the branches so that the branches can bear much fruit.
“As the Father has loved me,” Jesus says, “so I have loved you; abide in my love….this is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
The lifegiving love of Jesus flows into us when we drink from the cup, and we are to let that love of Jesus pour through us out into the world.
When Jesus was arrested, Simon Peter, full of the fear that Jesus would suffer, reacted in violence and struck Malchus, the slave of the high priest, with a sword. As blood poured from the injured slave, Jesus reprimanded Peter. And Jesus said, “Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?” Jesus knew, though the disciples did not, that to transform the suffering in the world, he must take that suffering on, that his own blood must be poured out so that the life of the world could become new once more.
On the cross, when Jesus sees that all has been fulfilled, he says, “I am thirsty.”
On one level, Jesus is thirsty because of his physical suffering. Having had nothing to drink since the wine he shared with the disciples at the last supper, he must be thirsting to death.
But as Gail O’Day says in her commentary on John’s gospel, this thirst also symbolizes “the willingness of Jesus to embrace his death.”
And once he has received the sour wine he is offered, Jesus says, “It is finished.” Fully in control, he bows his head and gives up his spirit.
Now the Passover sabbath was about to take place, and the Jews didn’t want the bodies of those being crucified to be left on their crosses, so the soldiers came to break the legs of those who were still alive and struggling to breathe. But Jesus was no longer breathing.
One of the soldiers took a spear and pierced the side of Jesus, and at once, blood and water poured out.
In death, the physical life-giving blood of Jesus poured out into the world.
And the water, the spring of water gushing up to eternal life that Jesus promised, pours out of death, bringing eternal life.
What would it be like on this Good Friday to admit our thirst? To cry out,
“I am thirsty.”
Thirsty for God’s love, thirsty for freedom from suffering, thirsty for new life here and now.
What would it be like to say the words that the Samaritan woman said to Jesus, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
“I am thirsty.”
So may we worthily receive the cup new life that Jesus drank for us and then poured out for us on this day, a cup of the new life free from the sins and sufferings of this world.
Drinking freely and deeply, may we be filled with God’s grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him.