If you could select 24 images that represented downtown Chattanooga -- all of it, not just the rosy and promising -- what images would you choose?
Earlier this summer, the Rev. Paul Rebelo helped nail up two dozen black-and-white photographs inside his First Christian Church sanctuary. The photos were large -- like flat-screen televisions or as big as I imagine the Ten Commandments might have been -- and everywhere.
On the white walls between the 17 rows of wooden pews. At the front, near the altar that reads "Do This In Remembrance of Me." Next to the lectionaries that go empty when Rebelo -- who loves to walk and talk -- preaches. By the doors and red-light emergency exits, which lead out onto McCallie Avenue.
Some of the photographs are easy on the eyes. Riverfront condominiums, as the summer sun shines. Coolidge Park. The Incline. All places I'd want to take my family and yours.
Other photographs hurt. Seeing them made me want to turn away, like I had been witness to a crime of some sort.
In one photograph, a homeless man, his face hidden from the camera, naps on a downtown bench. He's drawn his body together -- knees up toward his chest -- as if trying to keep away something much larger. He was photographed in front of a major downtown bank in the daytime.
"Hidden in plain sight," said Rebelo.
In another photograph, yellow police tape -- "Do Not Cross" -- is stretched across the entrance to an apartment in the Chattanooga ghetto. The photo hangs next to the image of multimillion-dollar condominiums.
Another photo shows a woman stretched out on a downtown bench next to a parking meter. A blanket is crumpled on the asphalt. Her hair matted, she wears a face that is exhausted -- like she's been defeated at war -- and seems to have not smiled in years.
In the photo near the altar, a woman sits in the back seat of a parked car. She's just lost her home and her car's four doors are open, like her whole life has taken flight. A few bags and a stroller are nearby, and she's buried her hands in her face, as if the world before her is too much to bear, too much to see.
Wherever you go in the sanctuary, the photographs are there. You can't escape them.
Exactly Rebelo's point.
"Who doesn't want to hide from the ugliness of the world?" said Rebelo. "But we can't ignore it. This church wants to be a church of service, not lip service. We can't hide in these walls. We have to see the challenges, the bad stuff in our city."
Earlier this summer, Rebelo had been studying Lamentations, the 25th book of the Bible that tells the story of a people defeated, crying out for help.
"Part of what I read in Lamentations reminded me of our city," he said.
Rebelo approached Bill Rich, a portrait photographer and church member, about photographing some images that could hang in the sanctuary during Rebelo's six-week sermon series "Hope in the City."
Rich loved the idea. With his wife, Gail, Rich began photographing images of wealth and poverty in our downtown, all within five miles of the church.
"This project made me more aware. At times, I coast through my comfortable existence," said Rich. "These photographs put a hurt in my heart."
The photographs go on display Thursday from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at The Hub, the college ministry that's housed in the church annex across from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga's Patten Chapel. Baked bread, coffee and discussion are promised.
"The public is invited," said Gail Rich, who's also the church's outreach coordinator. "We really want all our city leaders to attend. So often the disadvantaged get hidden under a cloak of invisibility, and we wanted these photos to create an encounter not often there, one that is not relevant until it's personal."
The Gospels say that when Jesus Christ walked the earth, he created a wake behind him. Lepers were healed, the dead given an encore at life, tax collectors softened and crooked paths made straight.
Two thousand years later, Christians are still trying to walk the same path. There are more stories than would fill this newspaper of Chattanoogans living selfless lives because of a homeless carpenter who lived 2,000 years ago in a land far, far away.
"I want to start having conversations with people about affordable housing in our city, decent jobs, educating all equally," Rebelo said. "And those conversations lead to change. And change has to start with us. We can't wait on our good friends in Washington."
What an image that will be.
David Cook can be reached at davidcook@blumail.org.