To reach the spot on the Jordan River where archaeologists believe Jesus was probably baptized, you wind through a humid thicket of low tamarisk trees and bamboo-like reeds. Making your way to the chalky-green water, you’ll notice paw prints of small animals in the muddy banks.
Crossing into the Promised Land
The river, which now separates Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, expands and contracts as it flows south to the Dead Sea. It was most likely wider in Jesus' time, but today a good long jumper could bound over it easily. It hardly looks like a river to inspire dreams, longings or epiphanies.
Yet this modest body of water is heavy with symbolism. Researchers think that the Israelites may have crossed into the Promised Land north of this narrow point in the river, a ford not too distant from Jericho and Jerusalem. The prophets Elijah and Elisha performed miracles at the Jordan, and sick people in nearby towns crossed it to reach Jesus during His healing ministry. Ancient churches believed to commemorate Jesus' Baptism have been excavated a half mile from the water, perhaps where the river flowed before geographical changes rerouted it.
Physically, there's not much difference between the eastern and western banks of this river. Each side is a tangle of vegetation stretching to rocky desert. Going further, there are cities in both lands, just as there were Roman towns on either side of the river in Jesus' day. Many of the Bible's most important figures, including Jesus, crossed the river in both directions for practical purposes; not all their crossings were theologically weighted.
The Wilderness Beyond the Jordan
But throughout Biblical history, the spiritual pull has been to cross this river from east to west, from the temporary and inadequate into the permanent and sacred. There's deep pathos in the story of Moses, who stood on Mt. Nebo—just a few miles east—and looked over the river at the land he would not reach. Joshua led the Israelites from what is frequently described as the “wilderness beyond the Jordan”—east of the river—to cross into a place chosen by God. Joshua 22:25 has strong words on the subject: “The Lord has made the Jordan a border between us and you, you sons of Reuben and sons of Gad; you have no portion in the Lord.”
American folk songs like “On Jordan's Banks” or “Crossing Jordan” bear out this symbolism by equating the trip across the river with reaching heaven. Theologically speaking, when you've crossed the Jordan, you've “arrived”—at peace, enlightenment and a closer relationship with God. The intuitive path is to move westward from the “not quite there” into holy space. What kind of person would deliberately go the other way?
Well, Jesus, for one. Like Elijah and John the Baptist before Him, Jesus often went east of the Jordan, to an area associated with asceticism and solitude. The stark desert area immediately east of the river and its thickets was probably just as desolate in Jesus' time as it is now—low hills of crumbling dirt and pale silt, with almost nothing else in view. But both after His own Baptism and later in His ministry, Jesus voluntarily chose the outsider's wilderness as His place to pray and discern God's will.
The Jordan represented cleansing and freedom; crossing it westward symbolized journeying into new life. But Jesus and other great Biblical figures went east to find what they needed to encounter God more fully: silence and prayer. Often, they suffered—from exposure and hunger as well as spiritual attacks.
Standing near a river that many people struggled to cross once and for all, it's strange to think of the holiest people in salvation history crisscrossing it so often.
Reversing Course
Is there a message in this? Maybe it means we've never just made it to the other side. However advanced our spiritual life, however many epiphanies we've experienced at the river, we're never safely ensconced in the Promised Land. Even after we've reached what seems like spiritual rest, we may have to reverse course and spend time in the wilderness—the emptiness we don't like, the solitude we were promised would end. Though it's not a final destination, at some times in our lives it may be where we can hear God best.
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Laura Sheahen, who traveled to Jordan in December, is the religion editor of Beliefnet.com.