Six confirmed on Reformation Sunday 2010

Six young people were confirmed at our mission on Oct. 31, 2010. Here is the list of their names and confirmation verses:

• Jeison Manuel Arellano Farías, Philippians 4:7
• Jimmy Orlando Pérez Chinchilla, Joshua 1:9
• Angie Yoximar Pérez Chinchilla, John 10:27-28
• Yhonny Alexander Torres Ortega, Philippians 4:13
• Pedro José Santana Reimi, Psalm 50:15
• Karelis Santana Reimi, Psalm 51:10

This is the message that I had for them:

Today, Reformation Sunday, is a day of confession in two ways.

First, the confession of our sins. Every Sunday we begin the Divine Servie with the general confession of sins and receive absolution before the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. This is the day of first communion for six of you.

These six have been instructed according to the Small Catechism of Martin Luther, so they understand the importance of confession and repentance of all immorality and false belief before receiving the true body and true blood of Jesus Christ in, with, and under the bread and wine. Because he does not believe the words “given for you” or “shed for you for the forgiveness of sins,” or doubts them, is not worthy, nor is ready to receive Christ's body and blood. As St. Paul says, “Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself” (1 Corinthians 11:28-29).

By confession, we also mean public confession of the faith. In today's text (John 8:31-36), our Lord tells us, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” The freedom Christ speaks of is freedom from sin. The truth of Christ, that is to say, His sacrifice on the cross, frees us from slavery to sin and Satan. Christ paid the price for the sins of the whole world on the cross, and so we are justified by faith in Him, and not by our own works. However, to remain true disciples of Christ, we must abide in His Word.

In holy baptism we received the complete assurance of eternal life in Christ and began the life of faith, we were born again of the Holy Spirit. Baptism was our first confession of faith by the work of the Holy Spirit. As it says in Mark 16:16, “He who believes and is baptized, will be saved; but he does not believe, will be condemned.” In baptism we receive the gift of saving faith.

But, it is possible to lose the benefits of baptism, if we do not abide in the Word of God. We have this Word in the Holy Scriptures, the source and rule of our faith. The Scriptures, written by the apostles and the prophets, and inspired by the Holy Spirit, tell us all that we need to know for our salvation. In the Bible, God speaks to every one of us.

But abiding in the Word is not just a matter of listening, reading and reflecting inwardly. The Word at times demands a verbal response.

For it also is the work of the Holy Spirit when we say “I believe” in the Word of God. As St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12:3, “No one can say Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit.”

Also, when Simon Peter said, “You are the Christ, the son of the living God,” our Lord replied, “Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah; for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father, Who is in heaven” (Matthew 16:17).

On the day of their wedding, a bride and groom promise each other to love and live together until death. But, for them to fulfill this commitment, it will be necessary, at times, to reaffirm these vows in the years to come, in times of joy or grief. What do you think, should it be sufficient for a man and wife to say to each other, “I love you” on their wedding day and never again? For a man to kiss his wife on the wedding day and never again? Of course not!

In the same way, the promise of salvation and faith that we receive in baptism is for always. But a times we must reaffirm our trust in the Word of God, not just to reinforce our own faith, but to testify of Christ's truth to the world.

That is why on October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany, calling the church back to the basic truths of the Holy Scriptures: justification by faith alone, salvation by grace alone and the Scriptures as the only infallible rule of faith. Later, Luther, a simple German monk, stood before Charles V, in his day emperor of all Europe and as King of Spain, ruler of the Spanish colonies in the New World, including Venezuela, and representatives of the Roman church and the empire and confessed this faith.

Karelis, Pedro, Jeison, Yhonny, Angie, Jimmy.

They said to him, “Recant the teachings of justification by faith alone, salvation by grace alone and the Scriptures as the only rule of faith under pain of death.” And Luther replied, "Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason - I do not accept the authority of the popes and councils, for they have contradicteyd each other - my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen."

In your confirmation today, six of you will publicly confess the faith in which you were baptized. Let us thank God that we live in a country where there is freedom of conscience, so that you do not confess under pain of death at this very moment. However, as you have abided in the Word of God until this moment, you must testify to its truth with your lips. Also, today we remember Luther and others who risked their lives for the pure doctrine of the Bible and express our solidarity with believers in countries where Christians are persecuted.

May God bless you richly on this Reformation Day, and this day of your first communion. Amen.

Stations of the Cross

Although we have a small group of people that have been baptized and confirmed as Lutherans, our mission actually serves a somewhat wider community. Because there are so few schools with any kind of Christian orientation here, some of the people who send their children to our preschool are devout Roman Catholics or Pentecostalists. The father of one of our little girls is the pastor of a Pentecostalist church, while two of our preschool teachers are Catholic (ideally, all of our teachers would be Lutheran, but Venezuelan law dictates that the preschool have a certain number of state-certified teachers and there are not that many state-certified Lutheran teachers here).

Of course we do not demand that faithful members of other churches join ours in order to send their children to our preschool. Attendance at our Sunday services is alway be invitation. Therefore, we strive to maintain a solidly Lutheran position in doctrine and practice while respecting the beliefs of those who subscribe to other confessions.

The preschool will be closed for Holy Week, therefore we are using this week to teach the preschool children that Holy Week means something other than vacation time. One of our teachers, Yosaira, had approached me with her huge family Bible. It was a "Catholic" Bible, including the "deuterocanonical" books in its Old Testament and some beautiful color-plate illustrations of the traditional Stations of the Cross. Yosaira thought perhaps we could scan the illustrations and use them to teach the children about the events of Good Friday.

The Stations of the Cross were first mentioned in writings from the fifth and sixth centuries as a series of numbered stops for pilgrims to meditate and pray while retracing the Via Dolorosa, or Christ's path from the Garden of Gethsemane to Golgotha, in Jerusalem. Supposedly these were places where Jesus paused on His way to the Cross, except for the last four which involve Him actually being nailed to the cross, dying, and being taken down and laid in the tomb. Eventually a list of 14 "stations" became the accepted norm and every year to this day hundreds of Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem follow this pattern in following the Via Dolorosa.

Somewhat later, since relatively few people had the time or money to travel to Jerusalem, it became a devotional practice to recreate the path to the Cross with paintings or crosses along a circumscribed route in a church or elsewhere. For example, in Colonia Tovar, a German-Catholic enclave in the mountains north of Caracas, the main street of the town is marked with crosses representing the Stations of the Cross as it winds down to its end at St. Martin of Tours Church.

The imagery of the Stations of the Cross have provided inspiration for Christian art for centuries. Not only paintings and sculpture, but also Christian theater, as the European "Passion Play" tradition incorporates dramatizations of the various stations. This includes Mel Gibson's movie, "The Passion of the Christ," which is essentially a Passion Play on film (see postscript on Passion Plays).

However, there is a problem with the traditional Stations of the Cross: Not all of them are really part of any of the New Testament narratives. The traditional 14 Stations of the Cross are as follows:

1. Jesus is condemned to death
2. Jesus is given his cross
3. Jesus falls the first time
4. Jesus meets His mother
5. Simon of Cyrene carries the cross
6. St. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus
7. Jesus falls the second time
8. Jesus meets the daughters of Jerusalem
9. Jesus falls the third time
10. Jesus is stripped of His garments
11. Jesus is nailed to the cross
12. Jesus dies on the cross
13. Jesus' body is removed from the cross
14. Jesus is laid in the tomb and covered in incense

Only eight of these stations have clear Scriptural foundation. Numbers 3, 4, 6, 7 and 9 do not and the traditional representation of Jesus' body being placed in His mother's arms as it is lowered from the cross in number 13 is an embellishment of the New Testament story. The Roman Catholic Church today recognizes this and, as I pointed out to Yosaira, in 1991 Pope John Paul II approved an alternative form of the Stations of the Cross that is completely consistent with the Scriptures. This form also was approved by Benedict XVI in 2007. This is the new pattern:

1. Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane
2. Jesus is betrayed by Judas and arrested
3. Jesus is condemned by the Sanhedrin
4. Jesus is denied by Peter
5. Jesus is judged by Pilate
6. Jesus is scourged and crowned with thorns
7. Jesus takes up His cross
8. Jesus is helped by Simon to carry His cross
9. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem
10. Jesus is crucified
11. Jesus promises His kingdom to the repentant thief
12. Jesus entrusts Mary and John to each other
13. Jesus dies on the cross
14. Jesus is laid in the tomb
15. Jesus rises from the dead on the third day

I told Yosaira I would have no problem with using this form of the Stations of the Cross. We used most of the pictures from her Bible and I filled in the gaps with graphics from the Wisconsin Synod Web site.

There is another problem with the Roman Catholic interpretation of the Stations of the Cross and that is this form of devotion still is considered an "act of reparation" or, in essence, a meritorious work.

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Reparation

"Reparation is a theological concept closely connected with those of atonement and satisfaction, and thus belonging to some of the deepest mysteries of the Christian Faith. It is the teaching of that Faith that man is a creature who has fallen from an original state of justice in which he was created, and that through the Incarnation, Passion, and Death of the Son of God, he has been redeemed and restored again in a certain degree to the original condition. Although God might have condoned men's offences gratuitously if He had chosen to do so, yet in His Providence He did not do this; He judged it better to demand satisfaction for the injuries which man had done Him. It is better for man's education that wrong doing on his part should entail the necessity of making satisfaction. This satisfaction was made adequately to God by the Sufferings, Passion, and Death of Jesus Christ, made Man for us. By voluntary submission to His Passion and Death on the Cross, Jesus Christ atoned for our disobedience and sin. He thus made reparation to the offended majesty of God for the outrages which the Creator so constantly suffers at the hands of His creatures. We are restored to grace through the merits of Christ's Death, and that grace enables us to add our prayers, labours, and trials to those of Our Lord "and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ" (Colossians 1:24). We can thus make some sort of reparation to the justice of God for our own offences against Him, and by virtue of the Communion of the Saints, the oneness and solidarity of the mystical Body of Christ, we can also make satisfaction and reparation for the sins of others."

Certainly Colossians 1:24 read in context does not support the above assertions. Paul writes in Colossians of the redemptive work of Christ as being sufficient to atone for all the sins of all men. In verse 24, he says that he is able to endure "the sufferings of Christ", that is, the difficulties that he, as a preacher of the Word, experiences above and beyond the normal problems of life for the sake of Christ, as being something that will benefit Christ's body, the Church. If he, Paul, is able to endure these sufferings, then perhaps the Church will be spared some suffering for the sake of Christ. But as in baptism Christians share in the resurrection of Christ, they also will share some of the same sufferings as Christ (persecution and rejection by the world). In no sense, however, do our sufferings add anything, or need to add anything, to the price Christ paid for our sins on the cross.

I addressed this issue in an introductory talk to parents and children on Monday and again in my presentation of the pictures on Wednesday, saying that our worship and praise during Holy Week were not required of us to earn His love and favor, but rather were our response to what Jesus did for us on the cross. Through His suffering and death on the cross He paid the full price for our sins and that therefore we are justified before God through faith in Him, not through any of our works. Therefore, the Stations of the Cross ares simply a tool for us to remember and appreciate Christ's sacrifice for us.

No preschool next week, but our Holy Week schedule includes services on Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday.


Postscript on Passion Plays

When Luz Maria and I visited my family in South Dakota in 2006, we stopped at the Spearfish Amphitheater in Spearfish, S.D., which for nearly 70 years was the main venue for the Black Hills Passion Play. The Black Hills Passion Play was presented on a 350-foot outdoor stage with seating for 6,000 people. Performances were Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays during the summer months.

In 1932 a troupe of Passion Players from Lünen, Germany, where a Passion Play had been presented since 1242, began touring the United States. One of them was Josef Meier,
a seventh-generation Passion Player. Their script was in German, which meant their engagements were limited to theaters and churches frequented by German-speaking immigrants. Because of political and economic conditions in Germany, Meier decided to stay in the United States. He had the script translated into English, hired American actors to replace the German cast, and while touring various towns, began looking for a permanent home for his Passion Play.

Spearfish was chosen in part because of the site's excellent natural acoustics. The amphitheater was built in 1939. During its heyday, the Black Hills Passion Play company not only made special appearances throughout the United States and Canada, but in 1953 established a winter home in Lake Wales, Florida, where the play was presented until 1998.

There were no performances scheduled for the winter of 2006, but Luz Maria and I were given a personal tour of the Black Hills Passion Play Museum by Guido Della Vecchia, husband of Johanna Meier, Josef's daughter. Guido spoke Italian while Luz Maria spoke Spanish, and they were able to communicate to a limited extent.

So I was saddened to learn that the Black Hills Passion Play gave its final performance in 2008. For me, the Passion Play was always part of the Black Hills, just like Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse monument and the Needles. I understand the museum is still open.

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Feliz Navidad 2009

A most blessed season a greetings from all of us. We celebrated our first Christmas Eve service in La Caramuca on Thursday, December 24, 2009. It was a communion service followed by a Christmas dinner for about 30 children, youth and adults.

In fact, it was our first midweek service of any kind. It is no mean feat to get people in Venezuela to gather on Sunday morning, never mind during the week. And, as I have said before, church attendance is particularly low during the Christmas and Easter holidays, as nearly everyone heads to the beach or the mountains, or stays home to party. So we thank God for the good response this year.

The Christmas dinner was traditionally Venezuelan: hallacas, pan de jamon and potato salad. Hallacas are like Mexican tamales, but instead of being wrapped in corn husks, they are wrapped and cooked in smoked banana leaves. The ingredients include at least three types of meat. It is the custom to go door to door and present bags of hallacas to your friends and family as a Christmas gift. Hallacas require a vast amount of work to prepare, which seems to be the whole point. Luz Maria and her daughters spent the two days before Christmas Eve cooking hallacas.

Venezuelans consider hallacas more essential to Christmas than anything else and are quite puzzled when you tell them the main dish for Christmas dinner in the United States might be ham, turkey, roast beef or whatever.

Pan de jamon is bread with slices of ham baked in. This you can purchase from the bakery. The potato salad is jus potato salad.



St. Nicholas visits our preschool

We closed the preschool for the three-week holiday break on December 12 with a Christmas party for the children, their teachers and parents. San Nicolas (also known as Papa Noel or even Santa Claus) made a special appearance. If you follow the church calendar, you may recall Sunday, December 6, was the day of commemoration for Nicholas of Myra, the fourth-century bishop who provided the historical template for all the variations of the gift-giving elf king.

Recently it was reported that Dr. Caroline Wilkinson of England's Manchester University, using measurements of the bishop's skull (which still exists) and modern computer technology, reconstructed the face of St. Nicholas. The result is quite similar to traditional portraits of St. Nicholas, except for one thing: He had a badly broken nose, similar that of a boxer or hockey player. This might be considered consistent with the story that Nicholas got involved in fisticuffs with the arch-heretic Arius at the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D., a fight that had to be broken up by fellow bishops.

Jesus and John the Baptist

However, since the beginning of the Advent season, we have spoken more of John the Baptist and his relation to Jesus, both at Sunday service and in the midweek Bible lesson in the preschool. The story of how Mary visited her relative, Elizabeth, after the archangel Gabriel had announced the impending birth of Jesus (Luke 1:39-45) provided the opportunity to talk about when human life begins. The passage in Luke says that in his mother's womb, John leaped for joy at the sound of Mary's voice, because even unborn John was a prophet and knew that Mary was, as both his mother, Elizabeth and the angel had said, "blessed among women" and would give birth to the promised Messiah. This passage is one of many in the Bible which asserts that human life begins in the womb and that, therefore, those who say abortion does not constitute the taking of a human life are wrong.

We also talked of how John the Baptist, with his call to repentance, was, as Luther wrote, the consummate preacher of the Law, which convicts people of sin. But Jesus, was in His Person the living Gospel itself, Who through his life, death and resurrection made possible reconciliation between a just and holy God, and sinful human beings. But the relationship between Jesus and John illustrates that Law and Gospel are inseparable. They were friends and relatives, and both were sent by God. The archangel Gabriel announced both their births and both births were miraculous; Jesus was born to a virgin and John to a woman past childbearing years. Jesus said of John, "Among those born of women, there has arisen none greater than John the Baptist" (Matthew 11:2-10) and in Matthew 17:10-13 that John fulfilled the prophecy that Elijah would return before the Messiah came. John said of Jesus that he, John, was not worthy to untie Jesus' shoelaces and "Behold, the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:27-30).

Finally we talked of the difference between John's baptism and the baptism of Jesus. The baptism of John was an exterior ritual that expressed an interior state (repentance), which is how some people think of Christian baptism today. But, as John himself said, the baptism of Christ is quite different. It is truly baptism with water and the Holy Spirit, in which we receive the forgiveness of sins, the adoption as children of God and the righteousness of Christ. The promise of baptism does not depend on our own will, understanding or state of mind, and in that we take comfort in times of doubt.

Our Spanish hymnal, Culto Cristiano, contains a version of the Matins service with the Benedictus or Song of Zechariah (the words are based on Luke 1:68-79, the priest Zechariah's song of thanksgiving upon the birth of his son, John the Baptist). Sadly we have not had much opportunity to use the Matins service here, and I am not sure if I can recall the music well enough to sing the Spanish version of the Benedictus. But it always was, along with the Te Deum Laudamus, my favorite part of Matins.

Image via Wikipedia

Let us praise the Lord, the God of Israel,
For He has come and redeemed His people.
He has raised up a mighty Saviour for us
From the house of His servant David,
As He promised long ago
Through His holy prophets,
That He would save us from our enemies,
From the power of all who hate us.
He promised to show mercy to our ancestors,
And to remember His holy covenant,
The oath which he swore to our father Abraham,
To rescue us from the power of our enemies,
So that we might worship the Lord without fear,
Holy and righteous in His sight
All the days of our lives.
And you, my child, will be called the prophet of the Most High,
For you will go before the Lord to prepare His way,
To give the knowledge of salvation to His people
By the forgiveness .of their sins.
Through the tender mercy of our God,
The day of salvation will dawn on us from heaven,
To shine on those who live in darkness and the shadow of death,
To guide our feet into the way of peace.


Speaking of light in the darkness

Thanks to generous donations from supporters in the United States, we have purchased a gasoline-powered generator. Several weeks ago Luz Maria went out to get an estimate on the price of a generator and found a wide array of models of different sizes and prices. When we returned to the shop where she found the best deal, there were only two models left in stock. Clearly other people had the same idea that we did. We continue to experience almost daily power outages of several hours duration.

There remains one obstacle to putting the generator in place; another of our mysterious shortages of materials, this time of cement. We do not want to run the generator in our living quarters, neither do we want it stolen, so we must build an outdoor enclosure. And that will have to wait until we can get cement.

Nevertheless we thank the donors for this Christmas present.

Learning the catechism

Luz María's granddaughter, Karelis Santana, surprised me by “reading” the 10 Commandments from the Small Catechism. Actually, she is seven years old and cannot read, but she knew the commandments by heart. That was in its way even more impressive.

We also were pleasantly surprised by Leandro Zapata, a boy between 10 and 12 years of age. Every week before beginning the Sunday school lesson I lead a brief service of evening prayer. This includes an invocation, the Lord's Prayer, Apostle's Creed, a Scripture lesson and meditation, a litany, individual prayers and songs. The children take turns saying prayers, and usually they give thanks for their parents, siblings, friends, etc. However, last Sunday, without any prompting Leandro prayed for “all the children in the street who are hungry.”

We have invited the parents of four families to the prayer service and hope that soon we will have a complete worship service and Sunday school on Sunday afternoons in La Caramuca.

One lesson that I recently read to the children, John 14:15-21, seemed particularly relevant to what they are studying:

“If you love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray to the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever – the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, for it neither sees Him or knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.

“I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also. At that day you will know that I am in My Father and you in Me, and I in you. He that has My commandments, it is he that loves Me. And he that loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.”

Thus, I explained, we memorize God's commandments to keep them, not because we fear God's wrath, but because of the love God has shown us in sending Jesus to die on the cross for our sins that we may live as children of God. Furthermore, God has sent us His Holy Spirit to give us the strength to live according to God's holy will and has promised eternal life to those who love Him. But those who reject God´s mercy in Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit will one day know the wrath of the one truly righteous and incorruptible Judge.

On Mondays, the preschool week begins with the singing of the Venezuelan national anthem. Following this, I lead the children (those old enough to follow, anyway) in the Lord's Prayer and read a simple Bible verse, for example, John 3:16 or Romans 8:28.

On April 25, 2008, I had the privilege of reading several Scripture verses at the wedding of Lusveidis Pinzon and Luís Orellana at Corpus Christi Lutheran Church in Barinas. Pastor Ted Krey traveled from Caracas to perform the actual wedding rite, while my fellow vicar Eduardo Flores lead the congregational singing with his guitar. Two sisters, Angly and Zoivy Vargas, sang a duet. Rafael Flores, Eduardo's brother, and Isaac Machado, son of José and Elsy Machado, served as ushers. Both of these young men are studying for the ministry with Pastor Krey in Caracas.

Lusveidis is a longtime member of the church and there were many people at the wedding. Fortunately, the church's seating capacity has been greatly expanded. Corpus Christi has undergone a lot of physical changes in this past year. The building was once a bar, and for the first few years that the congregation occupied the site, there would be drunks wandering in on Sunday morning (!) and trying to order spirits of a different sort. Now, however, it is looking more and more like a church, especially with the front entrance consisting of double doors inlaid with stained glass. Of course, there is also the new kitchen and bathroom facilities, meeting room for Sunday school and weekday classes, and the apartment where Eduardo lives.

April 25 was also that the day that Luz María's youngest grandchild so far, Edwar José Garrida, marked his first year of life. Edwar's mother, Sarai, is carrying Edwar's sister, so soon there will be a total of seven grandchildren.

I have found that in writing sermons, many times the chosen text speaks to me as much as to anyone else. This was certainly case for Sunday, April 13, 2008. The Gospel text was John 10:1-10:

“Most assuredly I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.

“Jesus used this illustration, but they did not understand the things which He spoke to them.

“Then Jesus said again, “Most assuredly I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who ever came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out, and find pasture. The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.”

The most obvious lesson in this passage is that there is only one way to heaven – through faith in Jesus as the incarnate Son of God who died on the Cross the sins of everyone and who rose again on the third day. This passage immediately precedes the perhaps more familiar verse where Jesus identifies Himself as the Good Shepherd. Typically in Palestine, a sheepfold is a corral surrounded by a high stone wall with a single door in and out. A watchman guards the door and only opens it for those he knows as the true shepherds of the sheep. The stone wall not only keeps out wolves and other four-legged predators, but also the two-legged kind who would also rob and kill the sheep.

Anyone who teaches that there is a way to heaven other than through Christ is a spiritual predator who does not have your best interests at heart. These are the thieves and robbers. Christ Himself, of course, is the true Shepherd, the one to whom the sheep belong. Then there are the watchmen or gatekeepers, who Martin Luther in one of his sermons identified as the Old Testament prophets, the Twelve Apostles and nowadays those of us who are entrusted with the public preaching of God's Word. Our solemn duty is not to allow anyone but Christ access to His flock. When we preach, we preach in His name and if the sheep do not hear His voice – that is to say, God's Word – in our preaching, they are right to flee from us. We must also encourage the sheep to study the Word and learn to recognize His voice.

Here is another way to look at it. I gather that it is not the custom in Palestine or most of the Middle East to use sheepdogs to herd the flocks. But to my more European way of thinking, this makes sense: We are the dogs of Christ. It is up to us to guard the flock from the false prophets, the teachers of false doctrine, even, with God's help, those enemies of God's people who are more than flesh and blood.

My sermon text for March 30, 2008, the second Sunday of Easter, was John 20:19-31. This passage is understood as the institution of the office of the public ministry, for Jesus breathes on his 11 chosen disciples and tells them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” The parallel passage in Mark 16:14-18 identifies this forgiving and retaining of sins with the preaching of the Gospel: “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved, but he who does not believe will be condemned.” And likewise in Luke 24:46-47: “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.”

But of course, the most well-known parallel to this sermon text from John is Matthew 28:19-20, otherwise known as the Great Commission: “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 age.”

I have found it very helpful to think of the Great Commission in this context, as it seems there is much confusion on this point. The command to preach, administer the sacraments and make disciples of all nations is indeed given to the church as a whole, but indirectly. The command was directly given to those whom Christ had called to be his apostles, and today it is given to those who the church has called to be pastors in Christ's name. This is why Article XIV of the Augsburg Confession declares, “no one should publicly teach in the Church or administer the Sacraments unless he be regularly called.”

The missionary task of the church is the establishment of congregations where believers may gather around the preaching of the Word and the administration of the sacraments, and where unbelievers may hear both Law and Gospel proclaimed. “Friendship evangelism” (laypeople showing Christian love toward their neighbors, talking about their faith and inviting friends and relatives to attend church with them) is the fruit of Word-and-sacrament ministry, but not the basis of missionary activity. Once formed, every congregation has the right and responsibility to call a pastor, therefore it is the responsibility of the church as a whole to provide qualified men to answer these calls.

When I first came to Venezuela, I had the idea of serving as some sort of support person for the national Lutheran clergy. Then I realized that what the Lutheran Church of Venezuela desperately needed was not so much support personnel as those who could be authorized to preach and teach. As I came to a clearer understanding of mission and ministry, I realized that God had led me to a place where I could do nothing else but seek ordination and a call to serve as a true missionary in La Caramuca.

What does the Bible really say?

"But what does the Bible really say?"

She blurted out this plea after we had spent some time discussing the commandment to remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy. We talked about why most Christians worship on Sunday, but she was still confused because the Seventh-Day Adventists (another group that is active in the Barinas area) insist with all sincerity that Saturday is the proper day of worship.

Our reply: The way to salvation is through faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God who became incarnate as a man to suffer and die for the sins of the whole world and be raised from the dead on the third day. The Bible testifies to this and we who call ourselves Lutherans consider the Bible to be the inspired Word of God and the final authority for all matters of faith. But we Lutherans have no new revelation from God and no secret key to the Scriptures. Understand first that Jesus died for your sins, study what the Scriptures have to say about Him and judge the teachings of all who claim to have the truth by that standard.

Understanding this woman's question and our reply requires an explanation of the spiritual situation in Venezuela.

The historical relationship between church and state in Venezuela is much different than that in the United States. One thing that fascinates Venezuelans about the U.S. is that there are so many thriving denominations, but none is the nation's official church. Luz Maria commented on this frequently during our visit to my homeland.

She also insisted specifically that I take a picture of a Baptist church. Why? To show her mother, who is a member of the Baptist church in Barinas, that Baptist churches in the U.S. have crosses prominently displayed outside their sanctuaries. Her mother's Baptist church does not have a cross displayed where passers-by can see because that would be too "Papist." That's another aspect of religion in Venezuela that I will explain in more detail.

One of the realities of the Spanish colonial period is that the Spaniards forced many native people to be baptized whether they were convinced of the truth of Christianity or not. One legacy of this period is that people here are baffled by the idea of total separation of church and state. Another legacy is widespread formal acceptance of Catholic Christianity but day-to-day practice of folk religion and witchcraft.

But over the last 100 years or so, Venezuela, much like the United States, has become a more secular society and traditional institutions, including the Catholic Church, have lost influence. Many people now live strictly for the pursuit of money, power and/or pleasure. Of course, these things, even when one is fortunate enough to have them, do not bring lasting joy in life, so there is great spiritual hunger as well. A great many things have moved in to fill this void. Islam, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, the New Age movement - they're all here and aggressively seeking converts.

But the most noteworthy trend has been the rapid rise of "evangelical" Christian churches over the last 20 to 30 years. According to Venezuelan government figures, up to 40 percent of the population in certain districts consider themselves "evangelical." This is not necessarily a positive development.

As I have mentioned before, the term "evangelical" is used as a much broader term here than in the United States. Often Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses are often lumped into the category "evangelical" even though their doctrines as far outside Christianity as Islam and Buddhism. But even "evangelical" groups that are not as readily identifiable as non-Christian cults may be just as problematic.

Often developing from disillusionment with "cultural Catholicism," the evangelical churches often reject anything that might smack of Catholicism. Unfortunately, this means some of them throw out parts of Catholic tradition that are good. Most disturbing is when, while disdaining any centralized ecclesiastical authority, these churches will give unquestioned authority to their local pastor, who may be someone without much formal training but feels he has been "anointed by the Spirit" to preach. These preachers often "micro-manage" the lives of their followers, laying down all kinds of rules that they must obey (for examples, absolutely no alcohol or dancing for anyone, and for the ladies, no makeup or skirts cut above the knee).

Some people are attracted to this kind of thing, again out of reaction to the prevailing culture in which sexual immorality and alcohol and drug abuse are common. But many are not attracted to this kind of Christianity, and the message that nearly everyone receives is not the Gospel, but that one earns God's favor by good works.

So what are we trying to accomplish? To witness to what we believe about Jesus, teach those who will listen and point all toward the truth of Scripture.