Christ our Friend Crucified

V

The agony of Christ's Soul is passing, and the agony of the Body reasserts itself. He has hung since morning in the blaze of sunlight, sheltered only for a while by the darkness which hid the torment of His Soul; and as the minutes have gone by, little by little, like a tide of fire, has risen that thirst of Crucifixion which, some tell us, is the extremest pain of the sharpest form of death.

I. (i) Up to the present the deepest point of Christ's Humiliation has been His cry to His Father -- that call for help by the Sacred Humanity which by His own Will was left derelict -- His confession to the world that His Soul was in darkness. Now, however, He descends a still deeper step of humiliation, and calls for help, to man.

Christ asks man to help Him!

All through His life He had offered help: He had fed hungry souls and hungry bodies He had opened blind eyes and deaf ears; and lifted up the hands that hung down, and strengthened the feeble knees. He had stood in the Temple and called to all that thirsted to come and drink. Now, in return, He asks for drink, and accepts it. So David, too, in the stress of battle had cried, "Oh that some man would give me a drink of the water out of the cistern that is in Bethlehem!"^{1} For both David and David's Son were strong enough to condescend to weakness.

(ii) In the age-long Calvary of the world's history, Jesus cries on man to help Him; and the Giver of all humiliates Himself to ask.

Truly He makes every other appeal first. To the selfish undeveloped soul He speaks in the Voice of Sinai -- "Thou shalt not." To a soul that has made a little progress He offers encouragement and promises. "Blessed is such and such a man, for he shall receive a reward." But here and there are souls that are deaf to Hell and Heaven alike, to whom the future means little or nothing -- souls that are too reckiess to fear Hell, too loveless to desire Heaven. And to those He utters His final heart-piercing appeal. "If you will not accept help from me, give at least help to me. If you will not drink from my hands, give me at least drink from yours. I thirst."

It is an amazing thought that men should have reduced Him to this; and it is a suggestive thought that men who will not respond for their own sakes, will, sometimes, respond for His.

"See," cries Jesus Christ, "you have given up the search; you have turned away from the door and will not knock. You will not take the trouble to ask. So it is I who have to do these things. Behold, it is I who go seeking the lost; it is I who stand at the door and knock. It is I who ask -- who am become a beggar. . . . Have mercy upon me, O my friends, for the Lord hath afflicted me! I no longer offer water; but I ask it; for without it I die."

II. It is good for us then, sometimes, to look at the spiritual life from another standpoint altogether. There come moments and even periods in our lives when religion becomes an intolerable burden; when the search is so long and fruitless that we sicken of it; when no door opens, however vehemently we knock; when we ask, and there is no Voice that answers. At times like this we lose heart altogether. It seems to us even that our own desires are not worth satisfying; that religion, like every instinct of our nature, reaches an end beyond which there is no going; that desire has, in fact, failed, and that we are not even ambitious of attaining heaven. The truth is that we are limited beings; and that the "divine discontent," the desire for the infinite, the endless passion for God, is as much a grace from God as the power to reach to Him and win Him. It is not only that God is our reward, and our Lord; but He must actually be our Way by which we come to Him: we cannot even long for Him without His help.

It is when we are wearied out then by desiring, when desire itself has failed, that Jesus speaks to us in this Fifth Word from the Cross.

We have spoken of the Divine Friendship throughout as if it were a mutual relationship, as if we on one side, and Christ on the other, were united in a common bond. But, as a matter of fact, it is all on one side. We cannot even desire Christ without, except by the help of Christ within. The Christ within must cry "I thirst,"^{2} before the Christ without can give us the Living Water.

This appeal, then, of Jesus must be our last and final motive, when all other impulses have failed. He is so beaten and rejected that He is come even to this. He must ask for mercy upon Himself, before He can have mercy on us. If we do not find our Heaven in Him, at least let Him find His Heaven in us. If we can no longer say, "My soul is athirst for the Living God," at least let us listen when the Living God cries, "My Soul is athirst for you." If we will not let Him minister to us, for very shame let us be content to minister to Him.

III. This then is, again, the cry that goes up ceaselessly from Christ in His Church. We live in days that are full of terror and menace. Once the Church ruled in Europe; she was acclaimed as "coming in the Name of the Lord." She went about doing good, offering the Water of Life, and giving it -- the Bread of Life, and distributing it. Now before our eyes she is going on her Way of Sorrows; she is climbing the Hill; she is hanging on the Cross. . . . The world has won, once more; -- has won exactly so far as it won on Calvary. Men no longer allow her to minister to them; more, they will not even allow her to minister to herself. They have nalled her to emblems of secular government; taken away her glory; and taunted her, that she cannot be the Saviour of others, since she cannot even save herself.

What hope then is left? How can hands bless that are nailed fast? How can fettered feet go to seek those that are lost? How can lips, bruised and parched with desolation, preach the tidings of divine liberty?

Yet she can still cry out in pain for her own sake. She can go on uttering cry after cry -- in France, for the right to quench the thirst that will be her death if it is not satisfied; in Italy and Portugal, for the bare right to exist in the midst of a society which she brought forth and nursed to maturity. . . .

And, for our own comfort, let us remember that it is Jesus Himself who so cries; and that when, once for all, He first uttered His petition, by the side of Jacob's well, and on the Cross of Calvary -- even the Samaritan woman, the alien from God's commonwealth, even the soldiers of an Empire that was at war with God's kingdom, had mercy upon Him, and gave Him to drink.

{1} II Kings xxiii: 15.

{2} John xix: 28.