Romans 15.4-13, Matthew 3.1-12
The Second Sunday of Advent, 4 December 2022, Eldroth, Clapham
When he was Mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat liked to tell visitors that once a week, two thirds of the planet wakes up thinking about that city. [1]
He’s alluding to how important Jerusalem is to all the followers of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. To each of us that city is a focus of devotion, a great symbol of the faith. It is where historic actions have taken place which have shaped us; it is where prayers are said each day in temple, church and mosque, which define us.
And just to the east of Jerusalem runs another great symbol of The Holy Land: the River Jordan. This morning we’ve sung ‘On Jordan’s banks the Baptist’s cry announces that the Lord is nigh’. One of the great Jordan hymns, it draws our eyes towards that riverbank where John announces the coming of the longed-for saviour, and entreats the watching people to prepare themselves for the Lord’s coming, to make his paths straight by repenting and bearing good fruit worthy of that repentance. They signified their surrender to this change of direction by wading into the swirling river to be baptised by the Prophet, just as Jesus himself did, when his time came.
The Jordan has great meaning for Jewish people, for crossing it was the final stage of the Israelites’ epic journey from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land. And because it represents freedom and release for captive people the River Jordan features in many songs of the African-American slaves, like ‘Old Man River’ where you can hear Paul Robeson sing,
Let me go away from the Mississippi
Let me go away from the white man boss;
Show me that stream called the river Jordan
That’s the old stream that I long to cross. [2]
And in some spirituals crossing the Jordan represents that final crossing over, from earth to heaven, as in ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’:
I looked over Jordan, and what did I see
Coming for to carry me home?
A band of angels coming after me,
Coming for to carry me home. [3]
Because of the baptism of Jesus, royal couples use water from the Jordan to baptise their children: as William and Catherine, Prince and Princess of Wales, did their eldest, Prince George.[4]
So the River Jordan is a symbolic dividing line, a crossing place between slavery and freedom, earth and heaven, apostasy and faith.
Today, the River Jordan lends its name to two of the great territories in the area: Jordan, of course, and the West Bank of the Palestinian Territories; and it forms a dividing line between them - as it also separates Israel from Jordon, and Israel from Syria, further north.
In that conflicted region, the Jordan itself has become a victim of the people’s hostilities. In 1964 Israel completed its largest water project, the National Water Carrier. Diverting water from Lake Tiberias to Israel's coastal plains and southern desert, it has caused the flow of the Jordan River to be reduced to just 2% of its historic flow, from 1.3 billion cubic metres per year to only 20 or 30 million cubic metres per year as of 2010. [5] At Bethabara, the place where Jesus is said to have been baptised by John, the River Jordan now runs low, a muddy brown. [6]
Water quality has also deteriorated sharply, with high levels of salinity and pollution from agricultural fertiliser and untreated wastewater upstream in Israel and the West Bank. [7]
Israel’s diversion of water provokes tensions between Israel, Syria and Jordan. It was a key cause of the Six-Day War in 1967. And water is one of the most crucial battlegrounds in today’s Israeli-Palestinian conflict where almost 80 percent of the region’s mountain aquifer is located under the West Bank. Although this aquifer is the sole water source for West Bank residents, Israel takes 83 per cent of it to benefit Israeli cities and its settlements, leaving West Bank Palestinians the remaining 17 percent. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank and virtually all Palestinians in Gaza thus receive water irregularly and in limited amounts. According to the UN, some 180 Palestinian communities in rural areas in the occupied West Bank have no access to running water. [8]
When we think about the land of the Jordan River today we may be troubled by the conflict between the peoples of Israel and Palestine. In all its complexity at times it seems it will be impossible to resolve.
And yet…. A river can act as both a static boundary and a dynamic flow. If a river is a symbolic crossing place from one side to another, then it is also the unifying presence which connects each side to the other. If it is a dividing line then it also has the properties to combine opposite sides together. A river’s water has the capacity to dissolve and hold in solution all the soluble substances of the lands through which it flows. [9]
Can there, after all, be reconciliation in the land through which the Jordan flows?
You may know Robert Cohen, husband of Revd Anne Russell, until recently rector of Bentham. Reflecting on this question from his own experience he has said,
I have lived my Jewish life in the fall-out of two of the most seismic events in all of Jewish history - the Holocaust and the creation of the State of Israel. I hear in the Palestinian story echoes of my own people’s history. There will always be important differences and distinctions. But… there are enough resonances, enough notes, rhythms and phrases that my ears are alive to because they sound depressingly familiar. What does it mean to be displaced and dispersed? To be migrants and refugees? To be contained in a ghetto? To have your movement restricted? Your opportunities in life curtailed? To be told that political and social acceptance means forgetting your history and your heritage? To be denied autonomy and self-determination? To be abandoned by the world? For your suffering to count for nothing? These are the resonances I cannot help but hear when I listen to Palestinians. [10]
When a Jewish person listens to Palestinians then there is hope of reconciliation in the land of the Jordan River. Thankfully there are many such Jewish - Palestinian conversations taking place today. [11]
Remember when a Jewish person called Paul began to listen to Gentiles, he found hope that all could have the joy and peace in believing which until then only his Jewish brethren had known.
‘May God grant you to live in harmony with one another, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,’ he wrote to the fellowship in Rome.
Our Advent calling might be to pray and work for harmony in the land of the Jordan; so that more and more of its peoples may cross over from distrust to understanding, going with the flow of the River of Life set in motion by the Creator God of the Muslims, the Christians and the Jews.
Notes
[1] Bono, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story. A memoir. p.513.
[2] Wikipedia: Ol’ Man River; Genius.com: Paul Robeson, Ol’ Man River Lyrics.
[3] Wikipedia: Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.
[4] Wikipedia: Jordan River: Symbolism.
[5] Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation, p.19; Wikipedia: Jordan River; Wikipedia: National Water Carrier of Israel.
[6] Bono, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story. A memoir. p.509.
[7] Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation, p.19.
[8] Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation, p.19; Wikipedia: Jordan River; Amnesty International, The Occupation of Water. 29 November 2017.
[9] James Joyce, Ulysses, ‘What in water did Bloom… admire?’ passage.
[10] Robert Cohen, A Jewish Reflection on Palestinian Solidarity. Amos Trust, 30 November 2021.
[11] One example being the Parents Circle – Families Forum (PCFF), a joint Israeli-Palestinian organisation of over 600 bereaved Palestinians and Israeli families ‘identifying with a call to prevent bereavement , to promote dialogue, tolerance, reconciliation and peace.’
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