In John 19:30, after Jesus takes his final drink of watered-down wine, he said, “‘It has been completed.’ And lowering his head he delivered up his spirit.” The body of the Son of God broke down, and his breath stopped.
After this, John’s words become specific and formal, even forensic. In John 19:35, he speaks as if he’s in court: “And the one having seen this has testified, and his testimony is true, and that man knows that he is speaking truthfully, in order that you might have faith.”
The event of solemn testimony is a detail only observed from the very foot of the cross. The soldiers saw he was already dead, so instead of breaking his bones, one “jabbed at his side with a lance, and immediately blood and water came out.” (19:34 DBH)
John is taking a highlighter and emphasizing this point for us, and not just in his gospel. Near the end of his first letter, John uses the same word for “testifying” four times, and repeats “water and blood” three times, in the space of five verses (1 John 5:6-10).
Why is the blood and water flowing from Jesus’s side so incredibly important? In line with the previous details, it fulfills Psalm 22:14, “I am poured out like water.” It prefigures the poem in the middle of Paul’s letter to Philippians, saying Jesus “emptied himself” (2:7) and “reduced himself” to “death on a cross.” (2:9 DBH) This pouring out is no mere metaphor, John says. It literally happened.
And this event overflows with so much meaning that it fulfills a second scripture: “They shall gaze on him whom they pierced.” (Zechariah 12:10 quoted in John 19:37) (From the words chosen, I think John must know Hebrew and be translating that into Greek himself.)
Again there’s that odd verb “pierced,” prefiguring the many piercings of the crucifixion. But the resonances run much deeper. In Zechariah, the Lord himself is speaking, and says “They shall gaze on ME.” John says gazing on Jesus is gazing on God. Although Zechariah’s context is a battle between the nations and Jerusalem, oddly enough, it’s the inhabitants of Jerusalem who pierce the speaker. (12:10) This piercing of God is no mere metaphor, John says. It literally happened.
The people will be scattered “every family apart” (Zechariah 12:12), like the disciples were scattered. And then Zechariah 13:1 reads, “In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David” for cleansing of sins. What John saw was a fountain running with living water, flowing from the source of life.
This is why John underlines in both his gospel and his letter that he saw blood and water. The man who just said “I thirst” in fulfillment of Psalm 22 had also said “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me, and let him drink. Whoever has faith in me, just as scripture has said, ‘Out of his inner parts streams of living water will flow.’” (John 8:38) This living water is no mere metaphor, John says. It literally happened.
Since it really happened, that blood and water is still here. “The blood and the water that flowed into the world sanctified the world,” writes Fr. Sergius Bulgakov, who then makes a jaw dropping connection. “The image of the Holy Grail, in which the holy blood of Christ is kept, expresses precisely the idea that, even though the Lord ascended in his honorable flesh to heaven, the world received His holy relic in the blood and water that flowed out of His side … the whole world is the chalice of the Holy Grail.”
Here is Zechariah’s fountain for the washing of sins and the redemption of nature, and Paul’s description of how Jesus “emptied himself” for the purpose of filling us. The blood and water once held by Jesus’s earthly body have soaked into the earth and entered our material cycles. What could this mean?
If Jesus, who came down from heaven, left part of himself here, then the act recorded so carefully in John 19:34 sealed together heaven and earth with the glory of God. In Bulgakov’s vision, that blood and water still has the power to heal (like the Grail). “Human nature is healed by the Incarnation inwardly, organically, by a new creation of it, as it were, a creation that will be revealed in its power and glory beneath a ‘new heaven’ on a ‘new earth.’ The blood and water that came out of Christ’s side hold the world together.”
If you’re searching for the Holy Grail, look to a church altar, where Christ’s body and blood are given as “true food” and “true drink.” (John 6:55) Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Eucharists mix water into the wine, which in some cases is warmed. In fact, one church father (Theophylact) scolded others for giving undiluted wine! The water is sometimes heated, imparting warmth to the cup, the warmth of living things, of God’s love pushing back the cold. That same warmth radiates out from the point in time when Jesus was lifted up.
Katherine Sonderegger writes of how this action of self-giving was a spiritual as well as material emptying: “What is made known is this mixture, this shocking Humility, the Lord, mingled with the earth.” This mingling is an act of the Triune God: “Almighty God moves toward His cosmos … as Word made flesh, Divine Son to human nature; and as Spirit, Creator God and eternal Light, cascading down and into the world, buried within and inhabiting the earth.”
As Jesus was buried in the earth, so too did his water and blood enter the earth. There He remained in darkness for the Holy Saturday rest. Those were dark days, and this actual day may be the very darkest of the year. In Seattle where I’m writing this, the sun rises around 8am and sets a little after 4pm. Two-thirds of the day is night, and we long for the light, hanging little reminders of the missing sun on our trees and houses, red, yellow, green, and blue.
The dark days are reminders to yearn for the light, hidden and even buried in darkness. Michael Pastoureau writes of how the Medieval Celts and Germans (at about this same latitude of long darkness) wrote stories of quests for the Holy Grail because the grail “evoked the blood of Christ,” a source “of life and light.”
This mythic intuition of reaching for light and healing, of enduring obstacles of darkness, can lead you to the foot of the cross, where a fountain flows for the nations. This was and is a literal cascade given to the world.
There can be heard the same soft voice that said, “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” and the same commanding voice that said, “Lazarus, come forth!” This voice says, “Take and drink, in remembrance of me.” This voice is no mere metaphor. It is the ascended Christ himself.
QUOTES: Sergius Bulgakov, The Holy Grail & The Eucharist (Lindisfarne Books), p.33 and p.58.
p.133-134 The Colours of Our Memories by Michael Pastoureau
IMAGE: Stained Glass Lotus Leaf Water Fountain
