I thirst: Thursday, Holy Week Vigil

I thirst.

Eucharist, Daniel Bonnell

The Fifth Word:  I thirst.

Read

As the deer longs for the waterbrooks, so longs my soul for you, O God. My soul is athirst for God, athirst for the living God; when shall I come to appear before the presence of God?

While my bones are being broken, my enemies mock me to my face; All day long they mock me and say to me, “Where now is your God?” —Psalm 42:1-2, 10

Reproach has broken my heart, and it cannot be healed; I looked for sympathy, but there was none, for comforters but I could find no one.. They gave me gall to eat, and when I was thirsty, they gave me vinegar to drink. —Psalm 69:20-21

After this Jesus, knowing that all was now accomplished, to fulfill the scripture said, “I thirst.” —John 19:28

Pray

O Lord, we thank you for what you suffered on the cross. Thank you for lowering yourself to the weakness of something as human as the parched lips of a dying man. We don’t fully understand how it works, your submission to the Father in this cup of suffering, but we know that our entire lives depended on it. Thank you for enduring the cross.

Dear Lord, in your words, “I thirst,” we hear the cries of our own hearts. We too are thirsty, Lord. Too many times, we’ve made our needs known and have been given sour wine instead of life-giving water. We long for every soured season of our lives to be redeemed and mean something good in our lives - including our relationship with you, our good Father. We need to be refreshed by your living water. We yearn for your Spirit to fill us once again with the hope that all shall be well.

We are thirsty, Lord, for you.

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world. If we have died with him, we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him. We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world. Amen.

Listen

Listen to Last Words - a playlist for our Holy Week Vigil

Reflect

Lament Stories Archive

Featured
'I thirst' by Amy Barker Willers [Holy Week Vigil 2022]
'I thirst' by Amy Barker Willers [Holy Week Vigil 2022]

I want some satiating, magical potion to restore those years to me.

Jesus’s last words “I thirst” remind me that He - the most satiating, life-giving, Living Water - also thirsted. What did he thirst for, hanging there on the cross? In the midst of excruciating pain, I find it hard to believe those words were merely asking for a drink. Maybe He spoke those words for me so that I would remember that my Savior also felt pain and grief. And that He knows my thirst and weeps with me in the midst of mine.

I thirst: Kirstin Dowsett [Retrieve Lament]
I thirst: Kirstin Dowsett [Retrieve Lament]

I felt increasingly convicted that the Lord was asking me to commit to a fast this season and I became anxious that I would (again) be unable to keep it. As I brought this anxiety to him in prayer, I felt the Spirit asking, what has led you to break fasts in the past? What has been so frightening about allowing yourself to hunger and thirst? Why have you hurried to escape your hunger or tried to satiate it with false coping mechanisms? This time, why not remain in it and invite me into it. Tell me you thirst.

I thirst: Brett Alan Dewing [Retrieve Lament]
I thirst: Brett Alan Dewing [Retrieve Lament]

It is OK to cry out to Him in my loneliness, in my frustrated sexual being, in my uncertainty, to mourn the life He called me out of, even if I find myself desiring it once more. It is OK to weep for the loss of a broken life. We must, in fact, let go of every “if” or “might have been” to truly follow Him without reservation. Let them float away like balloons, in an array of tears, offerings to Him that set us on the good path. He knows what we gave (give) up, and He can take the tears of pain and anger as we grieve our vinegar thirsts.

Retrieve Lament: Les & Renee Aylesworth's mourning story
Retrieve Lament: Les & Renee Aylesworth's mourning story

Yes, we strive towards some kind of new normal, but that is hard to swallow too. I think it's because we rarely believe or think that the "new normal" will last very long. We tend to think it's more like going to another country where there are different customs and languages and foods and even restrictions, and everything seems different and for the duration of your stay that is your "new normal." But you know that you will eventually come home and the "new normal" will have been temporary, and you will resume your "old normal." 

Retrieve Lament: a mourning story from Brian Murphy
Retrieve Lament: a mourning story from Brian Murphy

You need good friends when you walk with people through their most tender and hard places. Trey, Dick, and I became good friends, brothers really.

Then they died.

Retrieve Lament: Les & Renee Aylesworth ( I am thirsty.)
Retrieve Lament: Les & Renee Aylesworth ( I am thirsty.)

Many of you were and some still are people we've never met - yet you have become family to us.  You have loved us.  You have personified what Jesus said in Matthew 25: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

I grew up poor, but I have never known such need as this past year: emotional, spiritual, physical.  And Jesus used many of you to meet many of those needs. 

Holy Week Lament: Nancy Gilmore Hill (I am thirsty)
Holy Week Lament: Nancy Gilmore Hill (I am thirsty)

With my leg stretched out in front of me, I watched the stain of red seeping through the fat wad of gauze around my toe. The aching pain moved up my leg, and I sobbed. I had no mother; I had no father. I felt so very alone, in a house on the edge of town, with no pictures on the walls and no curtains at the window.

Holy Week Lament: Nancy Gilmore Hill (I am thirsty)
Holy Week Lament: Nancy Gilmore Hill (I am thirsty)

I can still see her hands —dipping the cloth in the pan, wringing out the water, wiping my face, my damp forehead, my swollen eyes. Her hands—dipping the cloth in the water, wringing it out, wiping my face, my forehead, my eyes. Making soft, soothing sounds.

My sobs stopped, my body relaxed, and now it was just the murmuring of Flossie’s voice, the swishing of the water, the cool cloth on my face.

A gentle grace-filled quiet entered the room—and I slept.

Daily Lectionary for Holy Week

Read: Psalm 102; Psalm 142, 143; Jeremiah 20:7-11; 1 Corinthians 10:14-17, 11:27-32; John 17
Pray: Book of Common Prayer, The Collect for Maundy Thursday

Almighty Father, whose most dear Son, on the night before he suffered, instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Blood: Mercifully grant that we may receive it in thankful remembrance of Jesus Christ our Savior, who in these holy mysteries gives us a pledge of eternal life; and who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

*Sunday Scripture readings are taken from Year A of the Book of Common Prayer 2019 (Anglican Church of North America). Daily Scripture readings are taken from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and include both Morning and Evening Psalms (Year 1)

LentTamara Hill MurphyLent Daybook 2023, Holy Week 2023