On Good Friday, On "I Thirst"...

I've been going to that nice little church on W77th & West End that I told you about, my little sweetheart. They have a really lovely Taize candlelight service on Wednesday evenings that consists of short Evensong hymns that are almost like chants, readings from both sacred and secular (poetry mostly) texts, a prolonged silent meditation in near darkness at its center and an opportunity just before to come forward, light a candle and say a silent prayer - which I always do for you, for us, my love. Last week the Associate Pastor, a very nice young woman named Jes, who I quite like and told all about you, asked if I would write something and deliver it as part of the Good Friday service. That service is centered around the final words or utterances of Christ. The idea being to write a "reflection" upon them. There are seven of them. I had the fifth - "I thirst". So, I wrote and spoke what follows here this morning, my darling, my heart so full of your memory and beautiful ever-present presence. At the very end, we all left the sanctuary and stood on the steps just outside the church to hear the bells toll exactly 33 times. It was raining slightly and someone, a woman I've seen on Wednesdays, came over and shared her umbrella with me. It was all very lovely and moving and a bit somber. Afterward, we all began to depart silently, but Jes came up to me in her robes and hugged me. "I adore you," she said. "That was beautiful. And I'm so glad you're coming here". It really was very nice, my sweetheart and I too am glad I'm going. Every time I do, it's a wonderful opportunity just to be mindful and quiet and to listen for and find you. I love you, Summer. With all my heart and soul. Forever and ever I do.

FIFTH WORD           John 19:28     

After this Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the scripture), “I thirst.”

Jesus’s fifth utterance “I thirst” is, at first thought, perhaps the most prosaic. A simple declarative. But upon reflection I find it terribly resonant. I find it important and one of the things I most need to remember: that He came to the world as flesh and blood. Not some distant deity but as a human being to walk the earth so He could feel the longings and pain, the grief and the sadness, the desperate loneliness that we are heir to. I think possibly “I thirst” is meant to remind us of that. Not only does God understand how achingly we thirst – for love, for understanding, for justice, for compassion, for the precious presence of those who have touched our hearts only to be torn from us by death. How we thirst, so broken, to return to them. God more than understands. God feels. God grieves with us. Weeps with us. Mourns with us. Hears our plaintive whispered prayers. Because He walks with us, God knows. God shares our pain. God shares our thirst. And as Revelation says, that day is nigh “When He will wipe away every tear from our eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”

Michael Louis Serafin-Wells

April 3, 2015

New York City