Knowing it by heart

Every day we open the preschool with the raising of the Venezuelan flag and the singing of the national anthem, followed by a Scripture reading, the Lord's Prayer and a couple of songs. One song goes like this:

El amor de Dios es maravilloso,

El amor de Dios es maravilloso,

El amor de Dios es maravilloso,

¡Cuan grande es el amor de Dios!

Es tan alto que no puedo ir arriba de él,

Tan profundo que no puedo ir abajo de él,

Tan ancho que no puedo ir afuera de él,

¡Cuan grande es el amor de Dios!

This is based, more or less, on Romans 8:39, “Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” There are movements to accompany the words of the song. For example, when you sing, “It's so high that I cannot rise above it,” you lift your hands up as high as you can. You lower your hands as far as you can for “It's so deep that I cannot sink beneath it,” and spread them as far as you can for “It{ s so wide that I cannot go outside of it.”

Luz Maria sang this song to her one-year-old granddaughter, Anyi, when Anyi was lying in a hospital bed with dengue fever. Despite the fact that dengue fever causes severe pain in the joints, Anyi began raising and lowering her hands in response to the song!

Rote learning may have a bad name in certain circles, but incidents like this illustrate its value. I am glad that a times of stress in my own life that I have not had to struggle to remember the creeds, the Lord's Prayer, key Bible verses and hymns. This I credit to the liturgical form of worship that we followed as a church (which was found in the 1941 Lutheran Hymnal for the first 20 years of my life).

For Sunday morning worship in La Caramuca, we follow the liturgy in Culto Cristiano, a Spanish-language hymnal first published by Concordia Publishing House in 1964. There has been no complete Spanish-language Lutheran hymnal published since then. Actually, many in the congregation, both children and adults, either cannot read at all or are semi-literate. However, the structure of the liturgy has enabled them to memorize the creeds, the Lord's Prayer, various hymns and the numerous Bible verses that are used in the liturgy.

Our place of worship is only a roofed patio (we hope that soon we might build a real chapel). Our altar is only a white plastic lawn table. Nevertheless we decorate the altar in the appropriate liturgical colors, which also are reflected in the altar candles and my vestments. The liturgical colors are a visual aid to help everyone recall important events memorialized in the church calendar and to remind them that we are, in fact, marking time. We are counting down the days until the Lord's return.

A gentleman named J.A.O. Stubb once wrote of his early experiences in a Swedish-American Lutheran church: “As grandfather turned to the Altar and intoned the Lord’s Prayer and the words of consecration, with the elevation of the host and the chalice, I felt as if God was near. The congregation standing reverentially about those kneeling before the Altar, made me think of Him who, though unseen, was in our midst. I forgot the old, cold church with its bare walls, its home-made pews and its plain glass windows. I early came to know some words of that service, such as: “This is the true body, the true blood of Christ”; “Forgiveness of sins”; “Eternal life.” I venture that all who, like me, early received such impressions of the Lord’s Supper, will approach the Altar or the Communion with a reverence that time will but slowly efface.” (J.A.O. Stubb, D.D., “Vestments andLiturgies”, 1920).

Of course, the Lutheran liturgy is not the invention of Swedish-Americans, nor of German-Americans, nor of any national/ethnic group, but rather is derived from pre-Tridentine versions of the Latin Mass (when people today speak of “the traditional Latin Mass”, usually they are thinking of the Tridentine Mass. This was developed at the Council of Trent (1545-1563) and adopted as the standard order of worship by the Roman Catholic Church in 1570 (it would later be replaced as the norm by the post-Vatican II Novo Ordo in 1969).The Tridentine Mass was developed some time after the first specifically Lutheran form of the Latin Mass in 1523. As the Lutheran order of worship retained all the elements of the Mass except those that directly contradicted the principles of “Scripture alone, faith alone and grace alone,” the Tridentine Mass by design reflected the Council of Trent s rejection of those principles.

Nearly all Lutheran churches throughout the world use some form of the revised “Western rite”, translated into vernacular languages. One exception being the Ukrainian Lutheran Church, which subscribes to the Book of Concord, but uses an order of worship based on Byzantine (Greek Orthodox) liturgies. All variations of the Lutheran liturgy draw on the liturgical heritage of the ancient church (and beyond, since the worship of the early church was rooted in the liturgical worship of the Temple and the synagogues) as the most appropriate manner of conducting the ministry of the Word and the sacraments.

Christmas in June

Here in La Caramuca we got some presents early, as we were visited by a delegation from our national church, the Lutheran Church of Venezuela. The delegation included Pastor Elias Lozano, the newly elected president of the ILV; Pastor Miguelangel Perez, vice president of the ILV; and Pastor Abel Garcia, director of the Juan de Frias Theological Institute. They gave us some Spanish Bibles with Luther's Small Catechism included as an appendix. We hope to present them to our next group of confirmands.

These Bibles represent part of the work of the Lutheran Heritage Foundation, an organization that has has published the catechism in more than 50 languages, and published and distributed more than 450 titles and 3 million Lutheran books to pastors, seminary students, missionaries and churches. The Bible translation used is the 1960 revision of the Reina-Valera Bible. This is our preferred translation. There are more contemporary Spanish translations, and I know the argument that contemporary translations based on earlier manuscripts should be better than the translations of the Reformation era based on the Textus Receptus (the Reina-Valera, King James Version and Luther's German Bible). Unfortunately, most contemporary translations either reflect more of the theological and political prejudices of the translators or fail to convey the meaning of the original text as powerfully as the older translations.

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God is not silent

Symbol of the Trinity in window of Roca de Eternidad Lutheran Church, Quebrada Seca, Monagas, Venezuela.

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On June 3, Trinity Sunday, we read responsively the Athanasian Creed. Normally we recite the Nicene Creed as a preparation for Holy Communion. The Apostle's Creed we confess during midweek services, memorize and study with explanations from Luther s Small Catechism in confirmation classes.

The Gospel text was Matthew 28:18-20, “Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and, lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world. Amen.”

So, as I tried to explain, how do we derive from this verse and others like it, three great creeds, all of which speak of the Holy Trinity, and its significance for the life and work of Jesus Christ, and the life and mission of the church? Why is each creed, which roughly follow each other in chronological order, longer and more complex than the last?

Because many false prophets have gone out into the world (1 John 4:1) and their purpose is to sow confusion and error at first, and, if possible, silence teachers of the pure doctrine. So important is a proper understanding of the Trinity to Christian  faith that it has never ceased to be a target for those who would undermine that faith.

It is not that the Bible is not clear on this point. A plurality of persons in one Godhead is implied in the Old Testament (“The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” (Genesis 1:2), “Let us make man in our image” (Genesis 1:26) and made explicit in the New Testament.

• “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” ((Matthew 11:27)
• “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” John 6:44
• Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)
• “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? “ (John 14:9-10)
• “No one can say  Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 12:3)

Nevertheless, false prophets always use the same strategy as the serpent did with Eve, and the Devil in his temptation of Jesus. “Has God really said....” “Is it not written....” Always a great show of Scriptural knowledge with the suggestion that the clear teaching of Scripture cannot be taken at face value.

English: Nicene Creed, P.Oxy.XVII 2067 Русский: Никейский символ, P.Oxy.XVII 2067 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So at least three times in antiquity, the church found it necessary to summarize and reaffirm what the Scriptures as a whole taught about the Trinity in a common confession of faith. In its earliest form the Apostle's Creed appeared in the late second century, the Nicene Creed in the fourth century and the Athanasian Creed in the late fifth century. As each generation of false teachers learned new word tricks, a more precise, less ambiguous restatement of the trinitarian faith was developed. But the price of precision often is a sacrifice of simplicity, so while a seven-year-old might able to memorize the Apostles Creed, probably not the Athanasian Creed. Yet the Athanasian Creed still is shorter and simpler than the many books that have been written on the subject of the Trinity.

This is so important because the Trinity is not some human conception of what God is like, but is how God has revealed Himself to us. The Christian faith is not primarily a collection of timeless truths that can be expressed in a variety of ways in different cultural settings. It is based on testimony of divine intervention in human history. The true God is not a hidden or silent God, but One who has spoken and acted, and made promises to those who believe in Him. And He has told us that we must think of Him as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three distinct persons in one Godhead, for that is how we must understand how Jesus could be both true God and true man, thus winning for us salvation and eternal life.

Nor will it do, in the interest of political correctness, to substitue some formula like “Creator, Redeemer and Counselor” for “Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” These title refer to the works of God, not the distinct persons of the Trinity. Often we think of the Father as being primarily involved in the work of creation, but so were the Son and the Spirit (John 1:1-5 and Genesis 1:2). Likewise, the Father and the Spirit had their parts to play  in the work of redemption, and the Father and the Son in the work of sanctification. But, above all, if we baptize in some other name (and it is singular in the original text) than Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we are not administering the sacrament as the Lord commanded.

God is not silent – and neither are we. When we confess any one of the three great creeds, we respond to God s revelation of Himself in the words of Scripture by saying, “Yes, we understand and believe this.” We do this in the great company of all believers who have lived, are now living and will live. Amen.

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Of the Father's love begotten

 

Image via WikiPedia

Trinity Sunday and Father's Day fell on the same date this year (June 19), so there was an opportunity to talk about the person of God the Father and His relation to earthly fathers. That is, earthly fathers are mortal reflections of the our heavenly Father. As it is the divinely ordained role for earthly fathers to protect and provide for their children, God the Father provides and protects us in ways that no human father can. Thus in the prayer that our Lord Jesus taught us, we address God as "our Father" and petition Him for all our daily needs.

In the Large Catechism, Luther writes of the first article of the Apostle's Creed, "We also confess that God the Father has not only given us all that we have and see before our eyes, but daily preserves and defends us against all evil and misfortune, averts all sorts of danger and calamity; and that He does all this out of pure love and goodness, without our merit, as a benevolent Father, who cares for us that no evil befall us."

But the Father is only one of persons of the Trinity that we celebrate on Trinity Sunday, so after we recited the Athanasian Creed, I spoke of the relationship between the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit as well.

The Athanasian Creed has always been my favorite of the three great creeds, It has a poetic rhythm that the Apostle's and Nicene creeds lack, but it also is the longest and most complex of them. It is named after, and in times gone by, was attributed to Athanasius, the fourth-century bishop of Alexandria, Egypt, who was the great champion of trinitarian theology agains the heresy of Arianism. Much like the Jehovah's Witnesses of our time, Arius and his followers believed Jesus was the incarnation of a created being, superior to humans, but not equal in divinity to God the Father.

However, it is very doubtful that the creed as we know it was written by Athanasius. There are several reasons for this, but the most important is that the Athanasian Creed specifically addresses heresies that did not emerge until after Athanasius' death (although Arianism still was alive and well in the fifth century, when the creed probably was written).

The doctrine of the Trinity was attacked on several fronts by false teachers because of its importance to our understanding of the person and unique authority of Jesus Christ. We have the revelation of Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the New Testament (although there are hints of it in the Old Testament as well) so that we may understand how God could be walking around on earth incarnate as Jesus, while still maintaining order in the universe as the Creator of heaven and earth. Or how Jesus, as true God could take our place on the cross to pay for our sins, while as true man asking the Father, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken Me?" Or how God the Holy Spirit can live and act in and through each of us while the Son is no longer with us in visible form.

The Holy Trinity is not a useful hypothesis, but divine revelation. We can understand what it is not, but not completely comprehend what it is As we read in our epistle for Trinity Sunday (Romans 11:33-36, "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!"

We can only know God from what He reveals to us about Himself. He has revealed something of Himself in His creation (thus, as Paul writes in Romans, none may plead complete ignorance of God and His Law), but most of what He has revealed about Himself was revealed first to the prophets of the Old Testament and later to the apostles of Christ. And the apostolic teaching is none may know the Father except through the Son and none may know the Son except through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, sent by both the Father and the Son.

There is a hymn written close to the time of Athanasius, that beautifully expresses the doctrine of the Trinity. The English version, "Of the Father's Love Begotten", is often sung at Christmastime. Unfortunately, we do not have a Spanish translation in the Spanish hymnal that we use in La Caramuca. This is quite ironic, because the author was what we would call a Spaniard today. His name was Aurelius Clemens Prudentius, and he was born in 348 A.D. in what is now northern Spain. He studied law, served as a judge and twice as governor of a province, and finally received high office in the court of the Emperor Theodosius. He retired from public life at age 57 to devote his time to writing Christian poetry.

"Of the Father's Love Begotten" is a translation of "Corde natus ex parentis", set to "Divinum Mysterium," a 12th Century plainsong (a single melodic line without harmony).

Of the Father's love begotten
Ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega,
He the Source, the Ending He,
Of the things that are, that have been,
And that future years shall see
Evermore and evermore.

Oh, that birth forever blessed
When the Virgin, full of grace,
By the Holy Ghost conceiving,
Bare the Savior of our race,
And the Babe, the world's Redeemer,
First revealed His sacred face
Evermore and evermore.

O ye heights of heaven, adore Him;
Angel hosts, His praises sing;
Powers, dominions, bow before Him
And extol our God and King.
Let no tongue on earth be silent,
Every voice in concert ring
Evermore and evermore.

This is He whom Heaven-taught singers
Sang of old with one accord;
Whom the Scriptures of the prophets
Promised in their faithful word.
Now He shines, the Long-expected;
Let creation praise its Lord
Evermore and evermore.

Christ, to Thee, with God the Father,
And, O Holy Ghost, to Thee
Hymn and chant and high thanksgiving
And unending praises be,
Honor, glory, and dominion,
And eternal victory
Evermore and evermore.

New communion set in service

My mother gave us some money to buy a chalice and platen in membory of my father, who died in 2000. I had hoped to introduce the new chalice and platen on June 19, but the logistics of delivery did not allow me to do so until the following Sunday, June 26. Thanks, Mom, and thanks to former missionary Richard Schlak for bring the set to Caracas from the United States.

We also are grateful to the Crosswalk Sunday School of St. Michael's Lutheran Church, Bloomington, Minnesota, for a donation that allowed us to buy materials for the preschool and afternoon tutoring programs, as well as school uniforms for some of our older youth.

Sandro Perez, Jeison Arellano, Pedro Santana, Oriana Montoya.

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Luz Maria receives her education degree

Luz Maria received her "licenciatura" in elementary education on June 3, 2009.

In Venezuela's educational system, there are nine grades of elementary school. Then you go to the equivalent of high school, except that in only two years you receive the title of "bachiller". This is what in English we would call a "bachelor's degree", except that it is really the equivalent of a high school diploma. You need your bachiller before you can enroll in a university. But instead of four years of undergraduate coursework, you have to take six years worth of university courses before you get the licenciatura.

As alternatives to public and private universities, there also are vocational-technical colleges that offer "technical" degrees, but these do not count toward the licenciatura. The title of licenciatura is necessary if you want to be a doctor, lawyer or some other type of professional.

After you get your licenciatura, you may, much like in the United States, earn a master's degree after two more years of postgraduate study and, two years after that, a doctorate.

Luz Maria earned her licienciatura by taking continuing education courses from la Universidad Nacional Experimental de los Llanos "Ezequiel Zamora". This translates roughly as "Ezequiel Zamora National Research University of the
Plains". It's a mouthful in either Spanish or English, so the university is commonly known by its acronym, UNELLEZ. It's pronounced "oo-nay-zhays", except the way people say it here it sounds like one syllable.

UNELLEZ is much like the "land-grant" universities of the United States, in that it was established as a combination of an agricultural research station and a teacher's college. In fact, the UNELLEZ motto is "La universidad que siembra" or "The university that plants". They mean this both in an agricultural sense and in the sense of teachers sowing the seeds of knowledge. It's as good a university motto as any, I suppose.

Most of Luz Maria's fellow graduates also received their degrees in education, but there was a smaller group that received licenciaturas in animal science.

UNELLEZ is located on the road from La Caramucas to Barinas. On our way into town we first pass the military base, then the prosperous suburb of Alto Barinas (where you find the big, North American-style shopping malls) and finally, on the outskirts of the city itself, the entrance to the UNELLEZ campus. This is a circle with a fountain in the center and surrounded by food stands and street vendors' kiosks.

UNELLEZ owns a large tract of land in La Caramuca, just a few blocks from us. Rumor has it that one day the university will develop this property into a branch campus. The resulting influx of jobs and people would have a great impact on the community and on our mission.

Image via Wikipedia

By the way, Ezequiel Zamora was a hero of Venezuela's Guerra Federal, a five-year-long civil war in the mid-19th Century. Zamora was born in 1817, in the midst of Venezuela's War of Independence from Spain. As a grown man, he became a champion of the Federalist cause. The Federalists envisioned Venezuela as a constitutional republic with a strong central government, similar to the United States. This plan was opposed by the powerful land-owning class that wanted to keep Venezuela a feudal aristocracy (but without having to pay taxes to the King of Spain).

On December 10, 1859, as a general in the federal army, Zamora led his troops to a sweeping victory in the Battle of Santa Ines, which took place only 36 kilometers (22 miles) southeast of the city of Barinas. This was one of three critical battles which led to a Federalist victory in 1863. However, Zamora was killed in 1860, less than year following the Battle of Santa Ines.

Trinity Sunday and the Athanasian Creed

Image via Wikipedia

June 7, 2009, was Trinity Sunday and I took advantage of the opportunity to introduce our flock to the Athanasian Creed. They know the Apostle's and Nicene creeds. I reminded the members of our new confirmation class that the Apostle's Creed, which we will study in depth, is the shortest and simplest of the three great creeds. The Nicene Creed is a little longer and more involved,
but the Athanasian Creed is undoubtedly the longest and most complex.

Despite its length, the Athanasian Creed was always a favorite of mine. Because the congregation only recited it publicly once a year, on Trinity Sunday, I was sure that made it a very special creed. Later, as an adult, I realized that nobody was clamoring to recite the Athanasian Creed more than once a year because of its length and the use of words that you never hear in everyday conversation, like "uncreated" and "co-eternal".

Nevertheless, I hope to introduce the custom of publicly reciting the Athanasian Creed on Trinity Sunday in La Caramuca. This year I just read it as part of the sermon, after a brief discussion of the sermon text, Matthew 28: 18-20, as one of the key passages that provide the foundation for the doctrine of the Trinity and of the life of Athanasius of Alexandria, the brilliant and courageous fourth-century theologian who defended the Trinitarian doctrine against the Arian heretics.

Without getting into the intricacies of the Arian controversy, I explained that in Athanasius' day, just like today, there are people who think that it should be enough to say there is one God and leave it at that. As Athanasius maintained, however, the Scriptures do teach the doctrine of the Trinity and without a proper understanding of the Trinity is essential to understanding the person and work of Jesus Christ. And apart from know Christ as He reveals Himself in the Scriptures (rather than some wish-fulfillment portrait of what you think Christ should be), there is no hope of salvation.

Which is, of course, why Jesus commanded His disciples, "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all the things that I have commanded you..."