"The blood and water from Christ’s side" Good Friday Tenebrae 2025

18. April 2025

Good Friday Tenebrae

John 19:25-42

This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.

The family gathers for the last Passover and the beginning of the New Testament. St. John, the beloved disciple and icon of all faithful Christians, is given to his new mother, St. Mary, the icon of the Holy Christian church. With them are gathered gentile soldiers and Mary, the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. And Christ, our Passover Lamb, gives us greater gifts than any of those in the old days.

They stand at the nexus between the old and the new. The Passover of old was to remember Christ’s deliverance of Israel from slavery in Egypt and bondage to Pharaoh. And so the marks of the Passover are given, with hyssop dipped in sour wine, like the hyssop dipped in the lamb’s blood. While the sponge delivered the sour wine, the hyssop was being dipped in the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, so that our thirst might be satisfied by His blood in the Sacraments. The hyssop was transferring the blood to be applied to our hearts.

Here, the true Passover Lamb was prepared by His own Father for roasting upon the spit of the cross. If there was any doubt that Jesus is the Lamb of God, John reminds us that the Passover lamb must be unblemished (Ex 12:6). “These things were done that the Scripture should be fulfilled, ‘Not one of His bones shall be broken.’” (Psalm 34:20; Jn 19:36). The Lamb of God, pure and holy, completed His work, crying out, “It is finished!” Is there anything more comforting than this word? The accusation of the law is over. The full atonement for sins was made. Everything that needed to be done for our salvation has been completed.

And then He gave up His Spirit for us. The Spirit of Truth was to be poured out upon us from the One who is the Truth. In giving up His Spirit at His death, Jesus opened the way to bestow the Spirit of life upon us in our death. Indeed, at His resurrection, He would breathe out that Spirit upon the Twelve by the Word of forgiveness and promised that the Spirit would work wherever the forgiveness of sins was proclaimed. The word of forgiveness for Jesus' sake is how the Holy Spirit delivers us from death and bestows upon us the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

The spear pierced His side so that the life-giving fluids might flow freely and serve as a sign of the power of Holy Baptism and the Lord's Supper to bestow the new life and salvation that Jesus won for us in His death. All the benefits of Jesus’ death and resurrection flow forth from His side for us in the font and at the table. John has emphasized these two fluids as essential to life throughout the Gospel. Remember the wedding at Cana with its water into wine. Remember Nicodemus and Jesus’ insistence that we must be born again by water and the Spirit. And no surprise then that Nicodemus forsakes his office and status to lay his savior to rest.

And remember the catechesis in the synagogue in Capernaum. And now they are poured forth from the side of Christ at the cross, washed upon us in the font, and given to us to eat and to drink in the Supper. Jesus said, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world […] Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him” (Jn 6:51–56).

While that language shocked His disciples and continues to scandalize those without faith today, it is as it always would be. John tells us that the blood and water from Christ’s side are necessary, good, and God’s eternal will, with a nod to Zechariah, “They will look on Him whom they pierced.” But Zechariah speaks of even more!

“And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn. In that day there shall be a great mourning in Jerusalem, like the mourning at Hadad Rimmon in the plain of Megiddo. And the land shall mourn, every family by itself […] In that day a fountain shall be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness” (Zec 12:10–13:1).

Today, we hear and rejoice again that Christ gave Himself for our sins. We are comforted knowing that from His cross, He gives His Spirit to us and joins the forgiveness He purchased and won to the water and the blood. When he said, “It is finished,” He meant it. Sin is forgiven. The prince of this world is cast down. The bars of death are broken. And as testimony, we have the Spirit and the water and the blood.

“This is He who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not only by water, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who bears witness, because the Spirit is truth. For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness on earth: the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree as one […] And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 Jn 5:6–12).

There was a garden with a new tomb where no one had been laid. The first garden had no tomb because there was no death. And on that Friday, the Last Adam was laid in the tomb in the garden. But His death was the death of death. The grave will not hold Him. And so that we will be raised from the tomb with our Lord, never to die again in the true and eternal paradise of God.

This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
St. John Ev. Lutheran Church & School - Sherman Center
Random Lake, Wisconsin