Nondescript places become famous for events they host. As I reread John 18 and pondered Jesus’ arrest and interrogation I was struck by Jesus crossing into the Kidron Valley. The Kidron Brook is a wadi. Most of the year it’s a dry creek bed, occasionally swollen with runoff water. Israel’s Kidron is not Italy’s Rubicon, the river over which Rome’s legions were forbidden to cross on pain of treason. But for Israel’s kings and especially kings with distinctively godly mindsets, the Kidron was a place of heartbreak and reformation.
King David crossed the Kidron after his beloved son Absalom betrayed him and staged a palace coup. Absalom’s coup fissured a kingdom that would eventually split north and south, ten tribes and two, restless kingdoms marked more often by God-loathing than God-fearing. Occasionally God raised up reform minded kings in Jerusalem. Asa led a reform, deposing the remains of idols – even the Asherah of his mother – into the Kidron. King Josiah would follow suit: the Kidron bearing away the shame of God’s people.
The reformations never endured. God’s people remained rebellious, ready to betray their true King, reluctant to hear his Word.
So God’s Son the Word finds them on arrival. Preoccupied with self-preservation their eyes were earthward, one on the Romans and another ready for threats to the status quo.
The Word preaches, pointing out the heart problem common to all and the solution presented by One. Sin remains the real enemy, judgment by God more to be feared than judgment by Rome. Good Shepherd purposes to take to himself the greater judgment so that Jew and Gentile can be reconciled to God, sons and daughters to a Father. The final King crosses the Kidron to experience betrayal by an intimate. Jew and Gentile – the world in microcosm – come across the Kidron to him. Weapons drawn and torches burning, the Light is discovered and darkness revealed. David’s betrayed descendent will go back across the Kidron, God’s holy legionnaire marching into a city accused of treason but determined to quell humanity’s insurrection. He will become the best that the Kidron embodied: a river of life, swollen to bear away the idolatries of God’s people.
~ DS
Reflections 