Thursday, April 3—Day 30
After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished, to fulfill the Scripture, said, “I am thirsty.”
John 19:28

We Gave Him Vinegar to Drink
As he speaks of his thirst, Christ is only a few breaths away from total victory. When James MacMillan set the last seven sayings of Christ, he provided a bare, tremulous setting of these two small words that, with its shuddering strings and low whisperings of reproach, speak of the cost of that victory.

And the cost here in his thirst seems so little in comparison to the stripes, the thorns, the nails, the hours of agony and abuse. The small yet daily demand of the body for water has been neglected, then amplified by the coming pangs of death. We know that Jesus is unparalleled in his suffering the condemnation of both God and man, but he is common here, in his suffering of thirst. His words speak what he holds in common with every man, and speak too of a cry for sympathy, for relief in a small way of the parched mouth and sticking tongue of a man about to die.

A little word, a little relief, a small sympathy for what is common to men. And “To fulfill the scripture,” Christ—like David, and like Job—looked around for comforters and found none:

Reproaches have broken my heart, so that I am in despair.I looked for pity, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none.They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink. (Psalm 69:20-21)

In the psalm, David has been utterly overwhelmed by the reproach of his enemies and the silence of God, even though he is being reproached because of his zeal for the Lord’s house. As with Job, the blameless sufferer whom all considered punished by God, David’s family and friends have turned against him, offering only sour comforts and barbed pity that reinforce his isolation. This is a human grief, compounded by human abandonment and divine delay.

MacMillan’s music invites us to contemplate the costs of the victory won by the human isolation of Jesus, the Word made flesh. Although the strings seem at first to set an ethereal landscape, gravelly-throated basses chant “I thirst” a tonal half step below the pitch that opened the piece, thrusting the listener into a tension that is framed, but not alleviated, by a soft emerging high note on the strings. There are only four pitches in these opening seconds, but they span nearly three octaves and are in two different keys. When the quietly unsettling sense of noise resolves into only two harmonious pitches, the sense of delicate strain continues as the middle voices sing hurriedly and asynchronously in Latin on the same pitch:

“I gave you to drink of life-giving water from the rock: and you gave me to drink of gall and vinegar”.

Harmony does not mean rest and peace here, but focuses us on the drama within the man who is isolated from both God and man. Even the single pitches that slowly pass from one to another offer points of connection that are in themselves new wellsprings of tension, building to a terrible cry of need.

God-forsaken and man-forsaken, Christ received neither water nor wine. We cannot comfort him, even in what seems so basic. I cannot sympathize with him. On the cross, he is more God-forsaken than I will ever be, and more man-forsaken than I can bear. Psalm 69 spoke of a heart broken by relentless reproach. I cannot suffer the sting of reproach like him. I cannot sympathize with a righteous sufferer who serves God for no present benefit beyond that of doing God’s will. I cannot suffer like him, not because he is divine, but because his very humanity as the suffering servant of God is beyond me.

But perhaps, after all, I could suffer thirst like him? Perhaps there, where it is so clear that God has truly taken the form of a servant, perhaps there is where I can come and meet him with something of sympathy to offer. But the murmurs susurrating within MacMillan’s piece remind me that the comfort we offered was another wound and a mock. We gave him vinegar, stinging the eyes and catching the breath, in response to his cry. Even here, I do not sympathize with him; I have no comfort for him. Even in his thirst, so common to us all, he is left alone in his perfect humanity. On the cross, we do not sympathize with him – he alone sympathizes with us in our need.

Christ’s isolation as the suffering servant was real, and the desolation marking MacMillan’s “I Thirst” invites us to consider the true humanity of the Word made flesh. When he was made man, the Son of God stooped down in order to lift up into himself what it means to be human. He did this without negating humanity with divine transcendence. And when Christ accomplished all things on the cross, he truly sympathized with us, that he might break the shackles that sin had placed on being human. In his glorious isolation, beyond our comfort, he made a way to lift us up into the humanity he renewed to hold in common with us.

Prayer
Lord God, Christ’s thirst calls us to lay aside our pretensions of having anything to offer you. Help us embrace instead the humility and faith by which we are exalted to being human like our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Diane Vincent, Associate Professor of Torrey Honors Institute