John 19:31-37

Exploring the Meaning of Jesus’ Death

John 19:31-37 The Pierced Side

The Beloved Disciple continued his reflection on the meaning and impact of the saving death of Jesus.

³¹ In order that the bodies not remain on the crosses on the Sabbath,

since it was now Preparation day

and consequently that Sabbath was a solemn day,

the Jews asked Pilate that the legs be broken and they be taken away.

The Passover Sabbath was particularly solemn. Dead bodies were considered ritually impure. The Book of Deuteronomy had declared:

When someone is convicted of a crime

punishable by death

and is executed,

and you hang him on a tree,

his corpse must not remain all night upon the tree;

you shall bury him that same day

for anyone hung on a tree is under God’s curse.

You must not defile the land

that the Lord your God is giving you for possession [Deuteronomy 21.23].

The presence of the dead bodies at the entrance to the city would have offended the sensitivities of the chief priests. Their objection underlined their shallowness. Concerned about issues of ritual, they were unconcerned about treachery, injustice, murder – and the true call of God.

³² So the soldiers came and broke the legs

first of the one and then of the other crucified with him.

Breaking the legs of the crucified victims had the effect of preventing their ability to relieve the pressure of their heavy bodies on their lungs. They would have been unable to breathe, and have soon suffocated.

³³ When they came to Jesus and saw that he had already died,

they did not break his legs,

³⁴ but one of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance.

Immediately blood and water came out.

The reference is primarily theological. However, it may also have been historical; blood released by the scourging could have leaked into the pleural cavity and mixed with the clear liquid already there.

³⁵ (The one who saw this has given this testimony

and his testimony is true.

He knows that what he says is true

so that you too may believe.)

This personal intervention by the author is surprising as it is significant. He was writing for disciples who had never known the historical Christ and had never experienced his physical presence. He was concerned that they not lose the immediacy of the event – that they believe. The blood and water that poured from the pierced side of Christ referred them to their experience of Baptism and Eucharist celebrated within the believing community. There, through sacrament, they participated personally in the mystery enacted historically on Calvary.

The Paschal Lamb

Disciple was concerned that the significance of the death not be missed. He added two scriptural references.

³⁶ These things occurred so that the Scriptural word might have fuller meaning…

“No bone of his shall be crushed”.

The remark, like earlier hints already given (and commented on), referred explicitly to the paschal lamb.

…it shall be eaten in one house;

you shall not take any of the animal outside the house,

and you shall not break any of its bones [Exodus 12:46].

 There may also be an oblique reference to the suffering righteous one:

… Many are the afflictions of the righteous,

but the Lord rescues them from them all.

He keeps all their bones,

not one of them will be broken [Psalm 34:20].

The Open Fountain

³⁷ And again another Scripture says,

“The will look on the one they pierced.”

This second quotation interpreting Jesus’ death was taken from the prophet Zechariah who, some centuries earlier, had (somewhat cryptically) prophesied:

On that day ...

I will pour out a spirit of compassion and supplication

on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem,

so that, when they look on the one whom they have pierced,

they shall mourn for him,

as one mourns for an only child...[Zechariah 12:10]

The author’s scripturally attuned readers would have known how the prophet had continued:

On that day a fountain shall be opened for the house of David,

to cleanse them from sin and impurity [Zechariah 13:1].

The enlarged quotation provides the context and clarifies its relevance. There are two clear issues.

The first and more immediate point focussed on the way that Jesus had died. Jesus had just handed over his Spirit [verse 30] – a Spirit, in the words of Zechariah, of “compassion and supplication”. In gracious contemplation, guilty humanity could look at the one they pierced. Looking, they would see the innocent one who, driven by determined love, deliberately underwent rejection and brutal death. That same Spirit of compassion would enable them to become aware of their radical misunderstandings of sin and righteousness and justice [16:8]. Looking on the one they pierced they would see their sin clearly for the first time; they would see also, not their own pseudo-righteousness, but the true righteousness of Jesus reflecting the righteousness of God; and they would see the sin of the world, and, along with it, the one behind it all, the prince of this world, Satan, exposed and judged for what they truly were.

It required nothing less than the vicious murder of the innocent Jesus to shatter the profound blindness of humanity, and to open the way to life.

The second issue raised by the quotation from Zechariah connected with the comment that the Disciple had made earlier in the narrative in relation to Jesus’ invitation given during the Feast of Tabernacles. On that occasion, when pilgrims were ritually remembering how God had given water in the desert to the thirsty Israelites (by having Moses strike a rock and cause water to gush from its side), the text had commented: On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “If people are thirsty, let them come to me and drink, those who believe in me! Just as the Scriptures say, ‘Rivers of living water will flow from his breast’.” [7.37-38]

The Disciple had added by way of explanation: He was speaking about the Spirit which those who believe in him will receive. There was no Spirit at that stage, since Jesus had not yet been glorified [7:39]. Now that Jesus had been glorified by his faithful death, the Spirit had been given up, “handed over”, by Jesus, like a river of living water, to give life and refreshment to the thirsty world.

The passage reflected the Beloved Disciple’s prayerful, Spirit-guided, contemplation over many years. He had, indeed, thoughtfully looked on the one they pierced.

The Pierced Side

Some scholars see in the pierced side of Jesus, and the blood and water that flowed from it, a further reference to the Creation account of Genesis. Eve had been taken from the opened side of Adam and made like him. Together they gave birth to the rest of [unredeemed] humanity. Through his death, the still human Jesus was constituted in his risen state. Mary, through her identification of mind and heart with the crucified Christ had, as it were, effectively died with him. As the Father raised Jesus, the pierced and eventually risen Jesus gave birth to a newly-constituted Mary - the water and blood representing the afterbirth of that process. She, the "woman", became, through her union with him, the "mother "of the new redeemed humanity, symbolised in the Beloved Disciple.

Next >> John 19:38-42