Some Place Like Bolivia (Isaiah 64:1-9)

For a 37 year old person, I probably think about Butch Cassady and the Sundance Kid far more than strict reason permits. Often, in meetings, I compare focusing on the wrong thing to that time, where Butch and Sundance find themselves cornered, and Butch suggests that they should jump into a river far below. Sundance baulks because he can’t swim, to which Butch laughs at him and states, that the fall will probably kill him. I also think a lot about Bolivia. The refrain of going to Bolivia, as an existential hope of a better life weaves itself throughout the film. To spoil an over 50 year old film, they get to Bolivia and still die violently. It doesn’t quite work out the way that they’d hoped.

Butch and Sundance stand in good company. The same thing happens to Dorthy when she reaches the Emerald City and meets the wizard. To pull from this century’s cinema, Judy Hops ends up less than impressed with her goal of reaching Zootopia, and Moana finds out that Maui may not have been worth seeking alone through treacherous waters. Sometimes, we hold up these places (actual or metaphorical) and believe that all will be right when we finally reach there.

God’s people had their own Bolivia – going home from exile. From what we can tell looking at the prophets and Biblical scholars, a lot of work went into holding the community together during the exile. One of the common character tropes across the Old Testament is the faithful God follower in a foreign land. Jospeh rises to power in Egypt, by being faithful. Esther saves her people from the Babylonians by being faithful. Daniel survives a Lion’s Den, while his three friends with unique names survive a fiery furnace, all by being faithful. Part of how the canon of the Old Testament became a canon was to convey these stories to an exiled audience, to preach faithfulness, and to hold on until they could get back to their home.

Our melancholy text from Isaiah 64 doesn’t come from a time of warning about exile or from a time of exile. It comes from after they got back. They returned to the promised land. They got to their own Bolivia. At this point, things should be great. The hopes and prayers of multiple generations and all of that work holding the community together paid off, with a little help from Darius I of Persia. Still, it feels like God hides God’s face from them. The home that they returned to isn’t what it was. It didn’t all click back into place.

There is no one who calls on your name,
   or attempts to take hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us,
   and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.
Yet, O Lord, you are our Father;
   we are the clay, and you are our potter;
   we are all the work of your hand.
Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord,
   and do not remember iniquity for ever.
   Now consider, we are all your people.

(Isaiah 64:7-9 NRSV)

Isaiah, as a text, covers a lot of history, giving us an almost real time picture of the entire exilic journey. Chapters 1-39 cover time before the exile with a sense of the gathering storm that will eventually carry the people away. Chapters 40-55 come from the exile, so we can hear some of that work to hold the community together. Chapters 56-66 show us what it felt like to return to a destroyed Jerusalem. This lament from Isaiah 64 tells that story – a freezeframe of a time before they knew how the story ended. This isn’t a retrospective. It’s a live, man on the street interview. “How does it feel to be back after a couple of generations?” “It still feels like God has turned God’s back.” “It feels like we left our US based problems just to die in a hail of Bolivian gunfire instead.”

We don’t have to live in that freezeframe. We know what happens next. Nehemiah and Ezra eventually show up and get everyone deeply invested in the restoration business. Jerusalem gets rebuilt. The Temple comes back. The people rededicate themselves. All isn’t perfect. No earthly king from David’s line ever rules again. They get pasted from empire to empire. Still, history tells us that this prayer, in Isaiah 64, gets answered.

Things seldom appear clear from the midpoint of the story. Will it be Bolivia? Or, will it eventually become what we were promised it would be? In actually living it, you don’t have the privilege of flipping to the back of the book to see if your Nehemiah shows up or not. In these places, prayer and faith can mix together. We can pray the fear, the disappointment, the low moments, the hopelessness to God. These prayers may not represent a high water mark of faith, but they aren’t faithless either. Standing in your own desolate Jerusalem may not evoke a hymn of praise. Carrying all of that turmoil to God opens up the opportunity for that praise to come….in time.

So, we start every Christian year with Advent. We remind ourselves of promises fulfilled and remind ourselves of how to prepare, so we can maybe make it through to the end – to the fulfillment of all of God’s promises.