WE MIGHT REMEMBER THE LINE from Joan Baez' song: "All My Trials, Lord," ~ The River of Jordan is muddy and cold, it chills the body but not the soul. Here's a picture of the River Jordan. The lush green bank and the river's turn makes the photo attractive, but the river itself (more like a stream) is disappointing.
The Jordan is a shallow river, 156 miles long. It only reaches any real height during the months of January to March. Climatologists and even the locals acknowledge that it shrinking due to climate change and that so much of the water is drawn off along its route for irrigation purposes. For a very long time, perhaps the better part of its history, sad to say, the river has been polluted by raw human sewage. Still wondrously, it remains home to over 500 species of birds. That last bit was God's wonderfully bright idea!
Today most of the river is off limits to the public, the rest is open only to the military in that bloodied part of the world torn up by terrible conflict, tension, violence and death. Not a good advertisement for religion, I'm afraid.
The Jordan of Jesus' Baptism becomes an earth-symbol then. It's into such a world as this the Christmas carol says that God has entered in Christ. Even the muddy water becomes symbolic. Christ didn't step down into Vitamin Water, filtered water, softened, chlorinated, ionized, treated, infused, flavored, glacier-melt water - but the muddy water of the twisted Jordan.
Hearing the news coming out of the New Jersey Governor's office gives us a window into how muddy and twisted the world can be. Or the murky church-world of locked drawers and confidential files that allowed so much sex abuse to continue, or the dark underworld of selling girls for sex at the football games our country adores. Or the organized crime-world Pope Francis knows about and wants the Church to stay clear of. God has come into that world.
God comes into the created world to reclaim it for God and begins by stepping down into and reclaiming the water - and we're made of water! God is reclaiming us.
Ribboned in the waters of the twisted Jordan,
Take us by the hand now,
Hearing the news coming out of the New Jersey Governor's office gives us a window into how muddy and twisted the world can be. Or the murky church-world of locked drawers and confidential files that allowed so much sex abuse to continue, or the dark underworld of selling girls for sex at the football games our country adores. Or the organized crime-world Pope Francis knows about and wants the Church to stay clear of. God has come into that world.
God comes into the created world to reclaim it for God and begins by stepping down into and reclaiming the water - and we're made of water! God is reclaiming us.
