The spear
Jesus had died on the cross. To be sure of it, a soldier drove a spear into his side:
"But one of the soldiers opened his side with a spear, and immediately there came out blood and water."
John 19:34
Blood, anyone would expect. But water?
John swore to it
John was standing there. And straight after this verse, he stops the story to vouch for what he saw:
"And he that saw it, gave testimony; and his testimony is true. And he knoweth that he saith true, that you also may believe."
John 19:35
He didn't explain it. He couldn't have. He just made sure it was written down.
What medicine knows now
Nineteen centuries later, doctors could explain it.
A man who has been scourged and then crucified goes into shock. As his body fails, clear, watery fluid builds up in the sac around the heart and around the lungs.
A spear driven into the right side of the chest passes through that fluid first, then into the heart. Out comes water, and blood.
In 1986, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study of the death of Jesus. Its conclusion: the water "probably represented serous pleural and pericardial fluid," the fluid around the lungs and heart.
Nobody in the first century knew that fluid existed. John wrote down a medical fact 1,900 years before medicine could explain it.
Pierced, and a fountain opened
Around 520 BC, Zechariah saw it:
"And they shall look upon me, whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him as one mourneth for an only son."
Zacharias (Zechariah) 12:10
And in the very next verse:
"In that day there shall be a fountain open to the house of David, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem: for the washing of the sinner."
Zacharias (Zechariah) 13:1
Pierced, then a fountain opened for washing. John quotes Zechariah himself, right after the spear: "They shall look on him whom they pierced" (John 19:37).
Water from the right side of the temple
Ezekiel had a vision of the Temple, with water flowing out of it:
"Behold waters issued out from under the threshold of the house toward the east... but the waters came down to the right side of the temple."
Ezechiel (Ezekiel) 47:1
And wherever that water went, it brought life: "every living creature... whithersoever the torrent shall come, shall live" (Ezechiel 47:9).
Now remember what Jesus called his own body:
"Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up... But he spoke of the temple of his body."
John 2:19 and 21
The temple of his body. Pierced in the side. And water flowed out.
Water and blood
Jesus had promised it: "He that believeth in me... out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water" (John 7:38).
Years later, John came back to that moment at the cross in his first letter:
"This is he that came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not in water only, but in water and blood."
1 John 5:6
Water and blood. The water of baptism. The blood of the Eucharist. Both poured out from the side of Christ.
The soldier
The Gospels don't name the soldier with the spear. Tradition does. It calls him Longinus, and says some of the blood and water touched his failing eyes, and his sight was healed.
Tradition also makes him the centurion at the foot of the cross who, when he saw how Jesus died, said: "Indeed this man was the son of God" (Mark 15:39). He is honoured as Saint Longinus.
The man who pierced him was among the first to believe.
Why this is a big deal
John wasn't making a theological point. He was a witness, swearing to a detail he couldn't explain, so that "you also may believe."
The prophets had seen a man pierced and a fountain opened. Medicine has shown why water came out. And John was right about every drop.