Good Friday's Good News by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781630873776
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Published: 2014-07-23T07:00:00+00:00

The Fifth Word

“I am thirsty.”

—John 19:28

One of the last things people who die often do is eat or drink. There is a tradition about Roman crucifixions that that is expected, and sometimes the drink is pain killing or in some strange way refreshing. Jesus was given hyssop with wine. Hyssop is a mint herb that may produce peculiar tastes when mixed with Israeli wine. It was His last physical act. It is what His body needed because one dies on the cross of asphyxiation, of total paralysis, of all the body functions coming to an end—not of a loss of blood, not of a heart attack; gradually, everything dies. Asphyxiation. And again according to Scripture, that is what the Messiah has come to do. Even the drinking was prophesied by the ancient prophets.

Jesus Himself instituted a final meal before He left for the Garden of Gethsemane. It was called the Last Supper, and later the Lord’s Supper and then the Supper of Thanksgiving, Eucharist—many names. Luther calls it the “Last Will and Testament of Jesus.” That is why we do it. But when He said, “Do this,” we do it, even if we do not always understand it. There have been many quarrels about that last meal when there should not be—about last things. One should just do it the way it was meant to be. One should teach it the way it is supposed to be done, not the way it is supposed to be understood in some odd, rational way.

There are two ways of talking about final things. One can describe them and be very clinical about it. One can be very medical, describing what happens. Twelve-year-olds and thirteen-year-olds always ask this question. When I taught confirmands as an interim pastor recently, a twelve-year-old said, “What did Jesus die of?” I said, “Well, what did you learn?” He said, “No one ever answered this question for me. I had all kinds of Sunday school teachers, but they did not give me a medical certificate. What would my father, who is a physician, write on this?” And I said, “Asphyxiation.” And he said, “Aha, that’s the answer.” He just checked me out. He had asked his father before.

That is descriptive speaking about final things—cold-blooded talk that a neurosurgeon or a physician or a funeral director might use. There is another way to talk about final things, and that is declaring something, praising something, talking out of a relationship—like saying, “I love you”—and I do not describe it. We distinguish between this declarative speech and this descriptive speech and we often get confused, because at some odd moments there are some people who want to talk about final things the way they should be described when the other partner just wants to be told what to believe. That cannot be described. You declare something. You announce something. You herald something, and it is taken for that. You describe something, write up something, and the mind might grasp it in some way.

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