It seems like Jericho could have been seen as a distraction and diversion to Jesus’ disciples (Luke 18-19). Did they really need to pass through? And of course, once they do, they are delayed by a blind man who interrupts them and a tax collector, a corrupt traitor whose house Jesus decides to stop for tea at.
Jericho was of course that place which shouldn’t have existed. After its walls fell at the start of tht book of Joshua, God had said that it shouldn’t be rebuilt. The city was cursed and its rebuilding came with a heavy cost of life.
Yet, it was not a distraction for Jesus to go there. First, the route was crucial. Think about how the Israelites had been left by God, not the direct or easy route into the land but through a wilderness journey of 40 years and then around and in across the Jordan bringing Jericho into their sites. Well, in the Gospels, we see Jesus, recapitulating that history and so he is exiled in Egypt, spends time in the Wilderness, goes into the Jordan and his route to his kingdom must pass through Jericho.
Secondly, in a place of curse, Jesus deals with the consequences of The Curse, lifting its affect where it has brought illness and disability as well as where it has brought exclusion, guilt and shame.
In Jericho, the place of curse and death, he brings restoration, blessing and life. He reverses the curse.
Faithroots 