Historical Context: “Some
Israelites displaced by Babylonian aggression had now returned to Jerusalem under Persian
sponsorship. The Israelites who had not been displaced clashed with this
immigrating group over questions of status, social standing, and, ultimately,
political and religious authority. Contemporary readers of this material should
understand it in the context of overriding colonial power. Persia remained
the real arbiter of power. This local tension reflects the way that
colonization reconfigures group identity, not just in relation to the external
colonizing power, but also in relation to each other,” Dr. Corrine Carvalho, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3485.
Isaiah
64.1–9, Pg. 694
If
only you would tear open the heavens and come down!
Mountains
would quake before you
like
fire igniting brushwood or making water boil.
If
you would make your name known to your enemies,
the
nations would tremble in your presence.
When
you accomplished wonders beyond all our expectations;
when
you came down, mountains quaked before you.
From
ancient times,
no
one has heard,
no
ear has perceived,
no
eye has seen any god but you
who
acts on behalf of those who wait for God!
You
look after those who gladly do right;
they
will praise you for your ways.
But
you were angry when we sinned;
you
hid yourself when we did wrong.
We
have all become like the unclean;
all
our righteous deeds are like a fithy rag.
All
of us wither like a leaf;
our
sins, like the wind, carry us away.
No
one calls on your name;
no
one bothers to hold on to you,
for
you have hidden yourself from us,
and
have handed us over to our sin.
But
now, Lord, you are our father.
We
are the clay, and you are our potter.
All
of us are the work of your hand.
Don’t
rage so fiercely, Lord;
don’t
hold our sins against us forever,
but
gaze now on your people, all of us:
SERMON
The
evening before, riding back from a bike-tour around Bogota,
Uncle Andy told me to watch my camera, that we were in a historically dangerous
section of Columbia, South
America, called La Candelaria. What it looked like to me was old
and beautiful, with narrow cobblestone streets, cornered in by small colonial
houses, under red tiled roofs, fronting charming colorful painted murals. What
it looked like to me was exactly an area I wanted to photograph and one that
didn’t feel very dangerous. That evening, people were out, young students and
hosteling tourists mingled, drinking, talking, and smoking, the smell of
marijuana only sporadic, discreet enough not to bother, but open enough to
remind of it’s more recent legality in Columbia, and it’s equally as recent
unrest due to the American greed for marijuana and other drugs. Yet, also
through the air, music played, and a mime juggled in front of a white church,
where watchers gathered as if hearing a sermon outside. If anything the scene
reminded me of Montmartre in Paris,
a perfect monastery overlook, where unlike Uncle Andy’s admonition, general
awareness evaded crime, rather than overt avoidance of the area. Obliging him,
only because the light was fading, I tucked my camera in my shirt for the
duration.
In
the morning, waking early, before anyone else, I left a note for the Irvine family, that I was
going on a walk to take pictures. Before entering the street, I checked and
memorized my map, ‘Go all down Carrera 4 (Quatro) skirting the highway on your left,
then turn left on Calle 12.1/2 (dulce y medio). That will bring me right back
to the murals on old colonials and oldest street in Bogota. Walking out the gate, the quiet city
was alive with morning’s smells, arepas and empanadas fried in oil, last night’s
indigent urine stained the concrete, and tito, cheap brewed coffee steamed from
thermoses. I was met with the long steps of students and workers with places to
go surpassing my memorized yet gazing pace. Intersections filled and the sound
grew, cars and taxis screeched, chortled, and honked. Short friendly greetings
of neighbors and regular vendors to customers clapped of the language their
familiar routine, while I, white and clearly misplaced and unfamiliar,
navigated alongside it, as the streets became more narrow, less commercial and
increasingly colorful. Calle 12.1/2 (dulce y medio), left.
And
I began, I snuck out my phone camera, while stepping to the inside so students
could pass on their way, as I leaned against the wall for a window’s reflection
against a black and white doodled mural. Back in my fanny pack, hidden under my
poncho, I zipped my phone away. Then, “Bird on a wire,” I sang softly at a
colorful house with such depicted underneath an actual wire, as if the song,
and the painting, and the technology were all to blend. A security guard peeked
out a parking-lot doorway to watch and shyly greet me with a nod and I returned
it. I noticed a rusted metal community board with a dozen ripped and fading
fliers some in English selling to tourists, others in Spanish I couldn’t quite
read, and I took another picture then the light changed moving from behind a
cloud and I took another photo of the same sign with the clear morning light.
Around the corner, the white church bleached back the sun, picture, and the
beading sky blue painted parsonage wall beckoned, picture, shadows of a trees
both fake and real confetti-ed its surface, picture, picture, the plastic white
leafed maple enchanted like hoarfrost, picture, the light behind it with the
street scene picture, climbing on a bench for the roof of the parsonage wall,
picture, hopping off for the yarrow looking plant growing from between the
tiles, picture. Walking to the entrance of the narrow street, a local young
woman on her way to class texting a picture herself.
At
the nave of the street, an older lady, was washing her porch step and throwing
the suds down the road. “Buen Dia.” “Buen Dia,” I responded. “Como estas?” she asked, “Muy bien, y tu,
usted,” I shyly, using the formal I remembered from addressing my professor in
high-school. “Muy bien,” she said smiling. “Tu calle es may bonita,” I tried,
my gestures outsized like charades. And she brightened even more, understanding
my attempt at a grateful compliment. We nodded and continued on.
Again,
a thousand pictures in my eyes, murals of birds, picture, another blue wall and
a widow with bars, picture, a roof of corrugated plastic held with bamboo poles
nevertheless decorated with Christmas lights, picture, a statue of a man
jumping from roof to colorful balcony, picture, a busy mural of birds and a
tiger and a woman next to a sign for tattoos, the green, yellow and red of the
Columbia flag and a parrot, picture. And then, high up, on the other side of
the street, a red brick wall, a white window frame, blue shutters, and on the
ledge, a nativity.
Up
the sidewalk, to the high point,
and still unable to get the correct distance. I unzipped my fanny pack, pulling
out what I call my real camera, zipping away my ironically more expensive
phone, could the old film body’s magnifying lens reach? Not quite.
Then
the older woman again, dressed for the day, scarf tied under her head, cane
beside her, looked and began shaking her head at me, pointing to my camera, and
speaking more quickly. I caught the elementary, “Donde estas Tu?” The
rhetorical question confused me. I was not staying here, I was and I pointed
the director of the Airbnb, that wasn’t what she meant. Of course I knew where
I was, I had navigated all by myself, I was in South America, in Columbia, in Bogota.
I think what she meant, was, “La Candlaria,” the most historically dangerous
section of Columbia, like Uncle Andy had chided me, “Do you know where you
are?” she was asking, but I didn’t understand the words until thinking about it
later. Yet, I understood her emotion, her fear for me and exasperation with a
nice young woman tourist trying to take pictures, with what she perceived as a
fancy camera, because it was there, about a month’s wage in that city. I could
read her gestures, as reprimand. She pointed to the police officer and told him
what I expect was, “this girl is not paying enough attention, watch her.” I
both felt ashamed, and indignant. I had noticed the officer and his dog at the
end of the street, and his careful eye on me and the locals passing by on their
way to begin their day. I had been told by two Bogotanos that the police were
not corrupt here and I had seen multiple that morning in this tiny neighborhood
with hostels and tourists. I am not sure I would have uncovered my big camera
if the officer was not there. I hadn’t on other streets nearby. Besides, I had
gone out early in the morning when crime is unlikely. I had watched for the
streets to empty and I looked for anything suspicious before sliding out my
phone for each picture. I had traveled enough all over the world to recognize
when to be especially careful, but this was not it, and honestly when it came
down to it, I was willing to risk getting things stolen, or being held up, for
the dare of a picture. Comedian David Sedaris and writer Hunter S. Thompson,
had to say yes, in order to get their stories, I had to take a little risk to
do what I love in taking pictures, it was a way I see and appreciate the world.
Besides I pondered, doesn’t my taking pictures and posting them to social
media, show Columbia
has become safe? Doesn’t it help the whole cycle, where more visitors will
come, and with them legal money, and jobs, and the awareness of their culture
and history? I nodded to the officer, and the woman went on her way, but our
pleasant interaction of prior had been defeated and I was too. There is no way
to be a tourist in another country without disrupting that country. My humble
compliment in and of itself a colonization, what does it matter if I think her
street is beautiful, if it means she and the officer have to watch out for me,
if it means the officer is placed in that spot, so I and other tourists can
come with our voyeuristic cameras, and take pictures. We can come and take from
Columbia, just as Americans and others have for decades, from the Spanish
Inquisition stealing it’s gold, centuries of killing and enslaving the people,
to our trafficking of marijuana, cocaine, and methamphetamine today, all while
pretending to care by creating a War on Drugs that is a front to catch the,
‘bad guys,’ like Pablo Escobar, while ignoring our own dependence on their
underground economy. Add to that tourists who come to Columbia sporting, ‘Make
American Great Again,’ hats not knowing that people outside the Estados Unidos
consider America to be two continents, not catching the irony of building wall.
Add to that China and United State’s
disregard for the environment by illegally mining in Columbia. Add to that me, taking pictures and
with it, police who probably have better things to do, more important things to
do, than keep tourists safe.
It
is like the scripture, which laments,
“We
have all become like the unclean;
all
our righteous deeds are like a filthy rag.
All
of us wither like a leaf;
our
sins, like the wind, carry us away.”
The
exiled Israelites, like tourists, returned to Jerusalem under Prussian sponsorship, and
thus disrupted the city they loved and the people in it. They felt a claim
because once it was a part of their history. Likewise, I came, to a place my
country has helped spoil, and I will get on a plane, and leave, and probably
never come back, like a leaf, my sins on the tailwind carried away, as there
are always new places to explore. Others, perhaps even upon seeing my pictures,
will also come and go, but what lasting positive change have I, who can’t even
understand Spanish, made. I am but a disruption.
The
scripture laments again,
“No
one calls on your name;
no
one bothers to hold on to you,
for
you have hidden yourself from us,
and
have handed us over to our sin.”
There
is no way I can see to right my wrong without attempting to justify it. I am a
disruption, my mere presence changes the culture which I am attempting to
experience, understand, and capture.
Yet,
I think of that last picture, of the joy of happening upon the nativity, far
off on a white window ledge against blue shutters, and it’s tiny figurines
recognizable not on their own, but instead by their shape bending over a baby,
which I could not even see. I think of the way those figures represent Mary and
Jospeh who traveled back to their homeland for the census to be taxed, and I
think of the way the shepherds came from out in the fields with the gaze of
wonder as their guide, and the way, the Magi, of a completely different
religion and race came offering gifts, and I think of the way I too came, bent
with camera, gazing with wonder, offering the gifts of gratitude and
appreciation, and there is something there, that rises above the sin of my
transgressing and trespassing in foreign places. There is something there in
the traveling from afar to come together in praise of a creator bigger than
ourselves and a hope beyond our making.
I
think of the scripture’s hope,
“But
now, Lord, you are our father.
We
are the clay, and you are our potter.
All
of us are the work of your hand.”
Like
Mary and Jospeh, and the Shepherds, and the Magi, there is a way that traveling
from a far, makes each of us, the Bogotanos, the Americans, the Chinese, the
Spanish, and the resident Columbians all a sort of clay. Clay that is
constantly molded by a potter who is above our separate identities, yet
delights in the unique. Might travel be then to notice the work of God’s hand?
That travel praises the sculpture of a city, or a woman I called, “usted,” and
thus praise the Potter of us all?
Therefore,
I speak the scripture’s own words,
“Don’t
rage so fiercely, Lord;
don’t
hold our sins against us forever,
but
gaze now on your people, all of us:”
All
of us, who have come, even though broken, to witness the nativity you bring.
