The Three Days- Trilogy: THE VALLEY OF TEARS: Maundy Thursday

Sitting with diary--- flip through; read entries.

I came here many moons ago, 4500 BCE – long before time was recorded.  I came with the first people who decided to permanently camp here.  They came to this out cropping of rock – where Jerusalem sits today- because from here they could see for miles in every direction.  It was safe; it was a land of milk and honey, and lots of fresh water --- springs that filled and ran through the Kidron Valley below.

The valley runs north-south, between the Mount of Olives and the eastern wall of the Temple mount in the City of David.  Follow the valley far enough and it ends in a salty death; at the Dead Sea.  Some of the salt is from me.

When I first came here it was a time when tears were simple.  People cried when babies were born, and cried when people died.  Life in between was focused on surviving.

Later though times changed.  My journal is full of thousands of pages, chronicling the life of a tear.  Yes, I am a tear, a single tear, but not a single tear.  I’ve been cried a billion times from this spot on the Mount of Olives and that rock that is Jerusalem. I have slipped billion times into the Kidron Valley below; only to return and be cried again.

Scripture says: “O, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city who kills its prophets and stones God’s messengers.” For a place, whose name includes the word “peace,” “salem;” there has been anything but peace.  Entry and after entry in this journal are tears cried in times of unrest. Tears wept by the billions as Jerusalem was attacked 52 times, as it was captured and recaptured 44x, besieged 23x, and literally destroyed twice. 

Here’s an entry from around 1000 BCE.  The city is Canaanite; Jebusite people to be exact. King David and the people of Israel come along and sack the city, taking it for themselves and giving it the name Jerusalem. There is blood and there are tears. And, thus goes the story.

I remember towards the end of David’s reign, him fleeing across this valley, up here to the Mount of Olives to escape his son Absalom who was about to kill him. Tears of betrayal.

Let’s see --- year 930 BCE: Tears were shed as God’s people quarreled.  That year the Kingdom fell apart, as the people polarized, taking sides; choosing two different kings---- the people were no longer one people.

God cried that day --- how was the kingdom of God to come – a place of shalom for all, a place of right relations, when God’s people couldn’t get along?

925 --- Tears are shed as the people live in fear. They are invaded by Egyptian Pharaoh Sheshonk, followed quickly by a sacking from the Philistines, Arabs, and Ethiopians.

Around 900, God cried again ---this time with joy.  King Asa of Judah returned the land and its people to worship God, turning from pagan altars and idols.  …  And then God cried again as the kings were lured away from right relations. 

In 840, Athaliah, daughter of King Ahaz and Queen Jezebel, married King Jeroboam of Judah --- making the people once again one…. tears of joyful union?  No, tears of brokenness as she was responsible for returning people back to the worship of Ba’al.  There was wailing and gnashing of teeth as she was executed here after her evil reign in Judah was brought to a violent end.

Before the Assyrian siege of 701 the abundant water of the Kidron Valley was re-routed through a tunnel, Hezekiah’s tunnel; to give the city’s inhabitants fresh water should armies encamp below in the valley.  The waters were collected in beautiful pools around the city.  The valley dried up; tears that fell were sucked up by the dry ground.

And the ground was sad.  Creation cried.

If you gaze across the valley, you will notice that there are many tombs and graves in the Kidron.  After the valley dried, burying people here became a practice.  This was in the day of Josiah king of Northern kingdom. It was 641 BCE when he took the throne at 8 yrs of age after crying tears of grief at the assassination of his father.  For 31 years, there were few tears, for there was peace.  There was right relation as Josiah lived and ruled righteously, fearing God and loving neighbour.  He was honoured by being mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus.

In 597, Babylon raised the city and burnt the Temple, walls were destroyed and people’s eyes filled with tears brought on by smoke.

In 516, tears of joy streamed down people’s faces into the valley, as people returned to the land under Persian rule.  Tears were shed as the prophets Ezra and Nehemiah reminded people of their relationship with God and people once again turned to loving neighbour.

As a tear, I have this dream of being liberated from tears connected to war and broken human relationship.  I would love for there to be no need for me in times of confusion and fear; not because people avoid crying, but, because there is no confusion or fear to cry over.

Being a confused tear is the worst --- it bears so much emotion. It is dark, non-directional, un-healing, hopeless, relentless, desperate --- oh so desperate.

Over the years, I feel like an accumulated burden, thick and syrupy with hate and prejudice and malice.

I could go on and mention the Greeks, the Ptolemies, and the 103year peace of Hasmonean rule.

And then there were the Romans. Which sets up the story and the tears of this evening.

I suppose this is what you really want to hear, my journal entries from the time of Jesus.  I shared some of the other tears because they set the stage, and from my perspective, pale in comparison to the tears shed in this week.  For all the tears shed by Jesus, include the brokenness of centuries of his people’s history; the wars, the forgetting God and turning to idols, the lack of right relations with sisters and brothers and neighbours. Tears for a broken humanity when the dream, God’s dream, is shalom and a new creation.

At the beginning of Jesus’s ministry this is the place from where Jesus was tempted by Satan to jump and have the angels save him--- “if you are the Son of God.” He looked down over the history of the valley, centuries of dead, the layers of rubble and refuse.  A tear dropped.

A tear dropped as Jesus wept for friends.  Jesus traveled from Jerusalem to Bethany through the Kidron Valley to visit Lazarus and raise him from the dead. Jesus also rode a donkey up this Valley from here through the gates of Jerusalem.

From here tears dropped as Jesus wept over the city of Jerusalem, over his enemies and over his people.  A few days later, after the Last Supper with his disciples, Jesus crossed the Valley to pray over here in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he was later arrested. Jesus wept for what was about to transpire.

Jesus wept for that which had not yet happened:

Jewish graves, 2000 years old, are cut into the west slope of Mt of Olives, so as to be able to see the Messiah come--- the Messiah who will pass from the East over the Mount of Olives, across the Kidron Valley and arrive at the Temple mount.  Those in the grave are waiting for tears of death, tears of grief, to be made new.  Christians too have planted graves as have the Muslims who have their own account where the prophet Jesus will return, in the “end times.” Graves in the very place where Jesus’s feet trod and his tears fell.

(move to water bowl; dip hands at compassion, mercy)

I had hoped that Jesus’s heavy tears, laden with extreme compassion and mercy, would have changed everything.  That such abundant life giving water would water and grow the kingdom. It wasn’t to be.

A few decades after Jesus, Rome destroyed the Temple, not to be rebuilt even into this time.

There were the tears shed in the Middle ages as crusades ---Muslim and Christian traipsed in and out of the city.

In the 1940s, tears of division and confusion were cried as the Brits, Jews, Arabs, Palestinians were caught up in state making with Israel, Jordan; UN drawing borders.

O, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city who kills its prophets and stones God’s messengers.

Jesus tears are still present.  They continue to be cried again and again.  We tears, get heavier and heavier with each passing generation. 

Eventually something has to give --- a breaking point where human hearts break and a flood of tears from every man, woman, and child run until all relations are made right; with God, with each other, with creation.

Jesus’s tears continually run down the faces of his people, including you. Tears hold a piece of the compassion and mercy that Jesus cried.  All tears contain that because that night in the Garden our essence changed.

(dip hand, flick water,; compassion mercy, life)

I am a tear.  I carry remnants of: Compassion. Mercy. Life.

Welcome me on your faces. May I be cried from your hearts.  May your tears carry Jesus’s compassion, Jesus’s mercy, Jesus’s life --- to water a path of new creation and right relations.