26 December 2003
Two hours by shiny turboprop west of crumbling Baghdad, across a desert
nightmarishly vast and empty, is the clean, modernized, Muslim Arab city of
Amman, Jordan.
Thirty minutes by hired car from Amman’s white buildings, at a slight,
non-descript bend in the Jordan River, is the spot where Jesus Christ was
baptized by his cousin John.
While most of this stretch of the Jordan Valley looks as barren as the moon,
this particular spot in Bethany is beset 50 meters inland from each bank by tall
reeds and short green trees. The river is only about 15 feet wide at this point.
The water, a murky greenish-brown, flows on past this place for a few miles down
into the fantastically strange Dead Sea, a body of water so salty that one can
actually sit up in it because of the extremely high buoyancy.
It was easy for me to imagine what this spot on the river looked like on the day
Jesus made his visit. That’s because it hadn’t been cluttered with kitsch or
marred by monuments. Only a little chapel stood nearby. The nearest improved
road was half a kilometer away.
The modest tourist information center was considerably farther beyond that,
around a bend and out of sight. Aside from the Israeli flag flying on the bluff
opposite me and the Jordanian standard 30 feet behind me, there was really
nothing to tell a sudden amnesiac what year it was at all. The absence of
humankind’s handiwork made this, the site of one of humanity’s greatest events,
seem at once new and eternal.
This spot on the Jordan is where so much began. The ancient cathedrals of
Canterbury and Notre Dame owe their raison d’etre to this spot, a spot that,
ironically, seemed so fresh and clean and alive when compared with those somber
edifices of carved stone. It was almost as if their places on the timeline had
been flipped.
Perhaps it is because those structures represent a passing style in human
aesthetics that makes them seem dated and emotionally distant for the modern
pilgrim.
This narrow spot on the Jordan, with its moving water, gentle breezes, swaying
reeds, and rustling leaves was a much more vibrant, much more moving, and,
considering the location, a much more literal connection with the living Christ.
Between the day Jesus came to this spot and my arrival, the world had witnessed
so many religious crusades and inquisitions and civil wars.
Countless missionaries carried on animal, sailing ship, and airplane have spread
the Word to people tucked away into every remote jungle and valley on the
planet. Millions of textbooks in university libraries and thousands of paintings
hanging on museum walls came about because of what began here at this gentle
bend in the Jordan.
Solitary midnight deliberations and Sunday wooden pew prayers that have occupied
so many millions of minds for generations could be traced back to this small
place where the water cools and the wind soothes and where the sun shines down
on green trees and on silent rocks that look exactly the same as they did some
720,000 days before.
That day, no dove descended from heaven and landed on my shoulder to mark this
special life event. No sweet chariot swung low to carry me home. I did take a
few photos and removed a small river rock that I put, still wet, into my pocket.
As it was early in the morning, I was the only one there. Out of courtesy, my
Muslim guide was waiting over a knoll and out of sight. I marveled at how Islam,
Judaism, and Christianity all came together at this one humble spot. The
ideological conflicts of our time all met quietly and peaceably here.
It is at a place like this that I wish I could sit forever and savor every
profound or ironic thought that occurs to me. Alas, while the tedious and
routine stretches of life can seem insufferably interminable, there is never
enough time for the truly magical moments, such as the one I enjoyed that day on
the banks of the Jordan River.