Reaffirmation of faith and fidelity

Depending on how you look at it, we closed the old year or began the new year with a reaffirmation of wedding vows. Luz Maria's daughter, Wuendy, and her husband, Jesus Mogollon, renewed their marital commitment at our New Year's Eve service, December 31, 2010.

Although they have been married since 2007, Wuendy and Jesus sought our prayers and God's blessing as they take another big step in their life together. They will move to Quebec, Canada, in March. Jesus is a software engineer who got in on the ground floor of a startup company that since has become quite successful. The entire company, all of its employees and their families, will move from Caracas to Montreal to take advantage of business opportunities up north.

One might wonder, what do Venezuela and Canada have in common? For one thing, petroleum production in both countries. Jesus' company specializes in the development of automated processing software, the programs which control the petroleum refining and other highly automated industrial processes.

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Wuendy and Jesus have been diligently learning French as a prerequisite for moving to Quebec. Luz Maria and I hope this will prove useful in finding a Lutheran congregation in Quebec, We don't know about any Latino outreach in Quebec by the Lutheran Church - Canada (Eglise Lutherienne du Canada), although we know the LCC has devoted a great deal of its resources to international mission work in Nicaragua. Also at least two Lutheran missionaries to Venezuela have been Canadian: Edmund Mielke, who is now pastor of Grace Lutheran Church, Brandon, Manitoba, and Ontario native Ted Krey, who is now Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod regional director of missions for Latin America and the Caribbean. Pastors Mielke and Krey both spent a lot of time in Barinas, which is why the cross we have above our altar at La Caramuca Lutheran Mission is modeled after the official symbol of the Lutheran Church - Canada.
However, there are a number of French-speaking congregations in Quebec affiliated with the LCC. Lutheranism is not new to the province, according to David Somers, an LCC pastor in Montreal who was instrumental in the development of the new hymnal. Many early immigrants from France were Lutheran, escaping the Wars of Religion that pitted Protestants against Roman Catholics.

In November 2009, the LCC published Liturgies et cantiques lutheriens, the first complete French Lutheran hymnal in 35 years. Liturgies et cantiques luthériens includes 434 hymns, including never-before-published material from the Alsace-Lorraine region of France, three settings of the Divine Service, Matins, Vespers, and Compline, Holy Baptism, marriage, and funeral services among many other liturgical resources.

More than 2,500 copies of the French hymnal are now in circulation and are used in Africa, Europe and Haiti, as well as Canada. There are growing numbers of Lutherans in French-speaking Africa, especially in Madagascar.

We can only hope that one day we will have a Spanish hymnal that surpasses Culto Cristiano, first published in 1964. Culto Cristiano contains 476 hymns, all the propers based on the historic one-year lectionary, orders of public and private confession, the Divine Service, Matins, Vespers, the Psalms, prayers for various occasions, the Small Catechism, and special orders of service for weddings, funerals and other events. However, it does not contain orders for some of the liturgical practices that have been revived in the last 45 years, such as imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday and the Good Friday tenebrae service, and some practices that are typical here in Venezuela, such as the blessing of a new house. Of course, we do have a supplement, Ritual Cristiano, that covers the blessing of a new house, and even such things at the dedication of a cemetery or a baptismal font, but it would be nice to have all these things in one volume. Culto Cristiano also does not contain a number of excellent songs that we have found useful in teaching children and young people, such as "Alabare, alabare", "Padre Nuestro" (a metrical version of the Lord's Prayer), "Creo en Dios el Padre Eterno" (the Apostle's Creed set to music), "Dios es nuestro amparo" and others.

The reaffirmation and blessing of the marriage of Wuendy and Jesus was an opportunity to just what marriage is in God's eyes. What it is not: A private contract between two individuals for their personal pleasure, no matter how mutual the satisfaction might be. If it were, it might not matter if both partners were of the same sex, or how many partners a person might have. However, marriage is the most public institutions, instituted by God in the beginning as part of His order of creation. Because God also instituted civil government to restrain immorality, the administration of laws upholding the sanctity of marriage and family fall within the domain of secular authorities. Those who do not respect what God has ordained regarding marriage are rightly subject to punishment by the state and by God. Furthermore, a government which fails to conform the civil law to the divine law invites the judgment and wrath of God upon the entire nation.

Our New Year's Eve service also provided the opportunity to reaffirm the importance of placing all your plans in God's hands. Because of Christ's atoning suffering and death, those who believe are restored to a right relationship with God. Thus we may pray to Him with confidence, trusting that He intends for us "a future and a hope" (Jeremiah 29:11) and that "all things work for the good of them that love God, for those who are called according to His purpose" (Romans 8:28). Above all else, we have the promise in baptism that, no matter what happens to us in life, we are assured of eternal happiness with Christ in the life to come. Amen.

Goodbye, Grandma, God bless you

She was born Clara Helen Viola Kurth, January 16, 1917, in Haakon County, South Dakota. Years later she would tell me that, as the last of seven children, her parents gave her all the names of female relatives for whom they had yet to name a girl.

She died November 27, 2010, having outlived her parents, all of her siblings, two husbands and two of her five children. She was my last surviving grandparent and one of the greatest of the great cloud of witnesses that have surrounded me all my life.

Grandma grew up on the Kurth homestead southeast of Philip, SD. As a teenager, she would cook for the men that her father hired for his threshing crew. One of the young men was my grandfather, Anthony Hollis Hemmingson. They were married on September 29, 1935, and stayed together until Grandpa´s death on November 11, 1979.

The Kurth homestead still stands.

During the late 1930s Grandma and Grandpa lived on a farm south of Belvidere, SD.They moved to the town of Kadoka, SD, in 1942. Grandma continued to develop her talent for cooking. She worked as a cook at the H&H Restaurant, the Kadoka hospital and nursing home, and the Kadoka high school and grade school. For a time, she and Grandpa managed their own restaurant on Main Street.

Anthony Hollis Hemmingson

In 1969 Grandma and Grandpa moved to Lovington, New Mexico, as the South Dakota winters were becoming hard on my grandfather's arthritis. Grandpa passed away in New Mexico, as did my Uncle Tony (Anthony Richard) Hemmingson in 1996, her second husband, Orville "Tim" Long in 1997, and my Uncle Loren Hemmingson in 1998. Nevertheless, she continued to live in New Mexico until 2004.

Grandma's faith was a never-failing source of consolation to her during those years of loss. She and Grandpa were both baptized and confirmed as Lutherans and received Word and sacrament regularly, first at Zion Lutheran Church in Kadoka and later at Our Savior Lutheran Church in Lovington, NM. I consider this shared faith their best legacy to me.

I last saw Grandma in 2006 when Luz Maria and I visited her at my Uncle Arnie's house in Spearfish, SD. We both knew it probably would be our last meeting in this life, and she was moved to tell me how glad she was that I had found Luz Maria.

Grandma's body will be buried next to that of my grandfather in the Lovington, NM, cemetery. Their common epitaph, “For by grace are you saved through faith” (Ephesians 2:8). This also is the basis of the hymn, “By Grace I'm Saved, Grace Free and Boundless,” by Christian Scheidt, 1709-1761.

By grace I'm saved, grace free and boundless;
My soul, believe and doubt it not.
Why stagger at this word of promise?
Hath Scripture ever falsehood taught?
Nay; then this word must true remain;
By grace thou, too, shalt heav'n obtain.

By grace! None dare lay claim to merit;
Our works and conduct have no worth.
God in His love sent our Redeemer,
Christ Jesus, to this sinful earth;
His death did for our sins atone,
And we are saved by grace alone.

By grace! Oh, mark this word of promise
When thou art by thy sins opprest,
When Satan plagues thy troubled conscience,
And when thy heart is seeking rest.
What reason cannot comprehend
God by His grace to thee doth send.

By grace God's Son, our only Savior,
Came down to earth to bear our sin.
Was it because of thine own merit
That Jesus died thy soul to win?
Nay, it was grace, and grace alone,
That brought Him from His heavenly throne.

By grace! This ground of faith is certain;
So long as God is true, it stands.
What saints have penned by inspiration,
What in His Word our God commands,
What our whole faith must rest upon,
Is Grace alone, grace in His Son.

By grace to timid hearts that tremble,
In tribulation's furnace tried,--
By grace, despite all fear and trouble,
The Father's heart is open wide.
Where could I help and strength secure
If grace were not my anchor sure?

A teaspoon of theodicy

More news on the Haiti front, or rather the frontier between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Last week Luz Maria and I met with Pastor Sergio Maita, who had just returned to Caracas following a week or two of volunteer service there. Sergio, a young Venezuelan man who was ordained with me in December 2009, traveled with Ted and Rebecca Krey, former missionaries to Venezuela who are now based in the Dominican Republic, to the bordertown of Jimani where they offered what assistance they could in a hospital that had become a refuge for earthquake victims. Sergio told us that he had taken a lot of pictures of trip to the Dominican Republic, but did not feel like sharing everything that he had seen in he hospital, for the suffering was very great.

On occasions like the earthquake in Haiti, there always are those try to draw grand conclusions about the misery. Some want to say that such suffering on a grand scale "proves" there is no God, or at least not a loving and merciful God. The problem for these people is that denying the existence of God does not relieve any of the pain experienced by earthquake victims or others one bit, or bring those that died back to life. Yet without an absolute point of reference, there is no basis for saying the pain and death in Haiti was "unjust" or "excessive" or anything else. The world is what it is, and apart from faith in God, there is little reason to think our efforts to change it will make any difference, that there is any hope for anything better (for even the concept of "better" has no significance) or that there is any point in helping those less fortunate than ourselves. Far from the existence of suffering on a grand scale disproving God's existence, only faith that God will one day provide recompense for those who have suffered unjustly, and judgment for the wicked who have evaded punishment by human courts and the natural consequences of their misdeeds, helps one make any sense at all of the whole business.

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On the other hand, there are those who want to see the earthquake as a sign of God's wrath directed specifically at Haiti, perhaps for the worship of voodoo gods. In the same manner, the Maundy Thursday earthquake that devastated Caracas in 1812 was said by some to be a sign of God's displeasure with the Venezuelan War of Independence from Spain. This error, unlike the first, claims belief in the Holy Scriptures, but this is not true.

According to the Bible, certain calamities were indeed signs of God's wrath against the wicked and the disobedient. Old Testament examples include the Great Flood, the Ten Plagues of Egypt. various afflictions suffered by the Israelites in the desert, the destruction of the Assyrian king Sennacherib's army (1 Kings 19:35), and many more. In the New Testament, we have the death of Herod Agrippa I (Acts 12:21-25) and the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11). But the entire book of Job and other passages of the Old Testament are devoted to refuting the idea that bad things only happen to bad people, and that the severity of the disaster reflects the level of God's wrath.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that God makes the sun to rise on both the evil and the good, and sends rain to both the just and unjust (Matthew 5:45). In Luke 21:25, He said the signs of the end-times will include "great earthquakes, and in various places, famines and pestilences," not to mention wars between nations and everywhere persecution of the faithful. These terrible events are not to be interpreted as specific judgments against the wicked, but rather as general signs that the great and final Day of Judgent is approaching.

We understand the significance of certain past events, such as the Great Flood and the Ten Plagues, based on the authority of divinely inspired Scriptures. Outside the Scriptures, there is no such authority and it is presumptuous to second-guess God. We know nothing of His nature and will outside of what He has chosen to reveal to us. The Bible contains all we need to know for our salvation, and there will be no more divine revelations until the glorious fulfillment of God's plan for the world in the second coming of Christ.

Thus we find the final word on this topic in Luke 13. Jesus was asked an event that caused a lot of stir and consternation back in that day. It was the massacre of Galileans in the Temple, ordered by Pontius Pilate (those that think the New Testament portrays Pilate as a fundamentally decent fellow, please note), such that their blood mingled with the blood of their sacrifices to God. Essentially, both questions were put to Jesus. If the Galileans had done nothing to deserve death, where was the just and merciful God during this massacre? And if they had done something especially deserving of God's judgment, what was it?

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Jesus responded by reminding them of an even more puzzling event (the apparently senseless deaths of 18 men in the collapse of the tower in Siloam) and answered both questions in this way:

Neither the Galileans or the 18 men in Siloam deserved death any more than anyone else. However, all humans stand equally condemned under God's law, and deserve not simply physical death, but eternal damnation. By God's grace, all who believe will receive forgiveness of sin and eternal life through the blood of Christ, but with few exceptions, no one will escape physical death (the few exceptions being Enoch, Elijah and those still living when the Lord returns). While we may have the promise of eternal life in heaven, none of us are guaranteed one year, 20 years or 80 years on this earth. So the question we must ask ourselves is not why this individual or that group of people had to die at a particular time and in a particular manner, but why we ourselves still are drawing breath. If we still are alive, God still has a purpose for us here. We may not know everything about this purpose, but He has revealed enough in His Word wor us to respond in faith. So, as Jesus said, we must not allow ourselves to be distracted by the petty pleasures of the world, but remain alert and watchful for opportunities to serve God and our fellow man.

Mirror images talking to each other

Luz Maria and I spent the last week of January in Caracas at a seminar on "the means of grace." Our instructor was Pastor German Novelli. Born in Maracaibo, Venezuela, and confirmed in the Lutheran Church of Venezuela in 1983, German Novelli some years ago left his native country and embarked on on a geographical and spiritual odyssey that led him to Mexico, Puerto Rico, Canada, and finally the Wisconsin Synod seminary in Mequon, Wisconsin. He now is the pastor of a Latino mission on Milwaukee's South Side.

Mequon, Wisconin, by the way, is also the location of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod's Concordia University, Wisconsin and Trinity Luth¡eran Church of Freistadt, the oldest Lutheran congregation in the state (and of which my great-great-grandparents were founding members).

I lived on Milwaukee's South Side from 1986 to 1995, so it was interesting to compare notes with Pastor Novelli on our impressions of Wisconsin and the Milwaukee area in particular. We were like two mirror images talking to each other: the Venezuelan serving as the pastor of a mission in Milwaukee and the former Milwaukeean serving as the pastor of a mission in Venezuela. I shared with him some of my fondest memories; the Lake Michigan shoreline in summertime, the Mitchell Park Conservatory, eating real Mexican food at the Acapulco Restaurant.

Pastor Novelli shared with me the thesis that he wrote for his masters in divinity degree on Wisconsin Synod mission work in Latin America. Active in the region since 1964, the Wisconsin Synod's missionary efforts in the past focused on Mexico, Puerto Rico and Colombia.

Today the Wisconsin Synod supports what it calls its LATTE team. LATTE stands for Latin American Traveling Theological Educators. Latin American because work is done in all of the mission fields in Latin America—Mexico, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Brazil. Traveling because visits are made to each field on a rotating basis. Theological Educators because missionaries serve as the seminary professors of the men who desire to be pastors in their national churches. The LATTE program has been functioning since 2003.

The Wisconsin Synod also has been active in Haiti earthquake relief.

Evangelical Lutheran Synod missionaries have been active in Chile and Peru for about 40 years. The ELS has established a seminary in Lima, Peru. Thirteen men have graduated and have been ordained and twelve vicars and students continue working with congregations and various groups.

Lutheran alphabet soup

The current-day ELS developed from a remnant of the old Norwegian Synod that refused to merge with other synods in an effort to form one national Lutheran church-body in the United States. The end-result of these mergers is the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The philosopher Voltaire once said of the Holy Roman Empire, "It was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire." Much the same could be said of the ELCA, except that it definitely is headquartered in America. In fact, German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg basically said as much:

"Here lies the boundary of a Christian church that knows itself to be bound by the authority of Scripture. Those who urge the church to change the norm of its teaching on this matter must know that they are promoting schism. If a church were to let itself be pushed to the point where it ceased to treat homosexual activity as a departure from the biblical norm, and recognized homosexual unions as a personal partnership of love equivalent to marriage, such a church would stand no longer on biblical ground but against the unequivocal witness of Scripture. A church that took this step would cease to be the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church."

My great-grandfather, Andrew John (A.J.) Hemmingson, was a member of the old Norwegian Synod, which in fact had declared full pulpit-and-altar fellow with the Missouri in 1872. Pulpit-and-altar fellowship had been established between the Missouri and Wisconsin synods in 1868. From 1872 until the late 1950s, Missouri, Wisconsin and the ELS were partners in the Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference. The Synodical Conference was a strong voice for confessional Lutheranism in the United States and has never been entirely replaced. The federation broke up when the Missouri Synod began moving toward closer relation with the more theologically liberal American Lutheran Church (ALC).

Fellowship between the Missouri Synod and the ALC lasted only until 1981, when a majority of Missouri Synod delegates to its national convention voted to dissolve the relation because of a continued drift toward the theological left by the ALC. In 1988 the ALC was absorbed into the ELCA.

May God grant that the remaining confessional Lutheran church-bodies find the basis for doctrinally sound unity and strengthened mission work at home and abroad.

Communion wafer conundrum

When I was a boy, my father would from time to time take me with him on his trips into "town". We actually lived in the town of Yale, but the population was only about 200 people. The "big town" was Huron, SD, which today has a population of a little less than 12,000. It may have been a little more back in the 1960s. The South Dakota State Fair has been held in Huron since 1905.

On these trips my Dad would make his hospital calls (I would read magazines in the waiting room or in the car during these), record his monthly sermonette at KIJV radio, and buy supplies for the church, including the communion wine and wafers. As I recall, he would buy a couple of big boxes of the communion wafers.

I never thought much about the communion wafers at the time, since I was more fascinated by the radio station and the Christian bookstore that we sometimes visited (it was there I first encountered the works of C.S. Lewis). For 40 years afterwards, I never thought much about the communion wafers, either. But lately I have been thinking a lot about the ease with which Dad was able to procure them.

Because, at least at that time, Roman Catholic and "mainline Protestant" churches all used the same mass-produced communion bread. It was always a specialized market and nowadays it seems more than 80 percent of all communion wafers used by Catholic, Episcopalian, Lutheran and Southern Baptist churches in the United States are produced by the family-owned Cavanagh Company of Rhode Island.

The situation is a little different in Venezuela. Communion wafers here are not commercially produced, but rather baked in convent kitchens. The preparation of special altar bread in convents and monasteries is a tradition that predates even the split between western and eastern Christendom in 1054 A.D. (when the churches of eastern Europe and the Middle East rejected the Pope's claim to be visible head of the Christ's church on earth).

Luz Maria's father, Antonio Rivero, died when she was eight years old, leaving behind his wife and eight children. Luz Maria was placed in a convent school, where she lived until she was 13. She remembers the nuns making communion wafers in a device similar to an electric waffle-iron.

So in Venezuela you only can obtain traditional communion bread through convents or Roman Catholic churches. For many years the Catholic institutions were happy to share (unconsecrated, of course) communion bread with Lutherans. You could just go to any Catholic church and receive a package of wafer in return for a nominal sum (a free-will offering, more or less). Unfortunately this situation has changed.

I first became aware of this when I was in Caracas with Pastor Miguelangel Perez, just before returning with him to Barquisimeto for the 15 anniversary of Cristo es Amor (Christ is Love) Lutheran Church. He needed communion wafers for Barquisimeto and I needed some for La Caramuca. He said it would be best to look in Caracas, because it was becoming difficult to obtain communion bread in Barquisimeto.

So we took a bus to the center of Caracas, then we walked down one street, took a left, walked some more, took a right, took another left, etc. Finally we wound up in front of a grated window on a backstreet. Miguelangel explained who we were to the nun who let us in a narrow door into a very nice convent lobby. She told us she only had a couple of hundred wafers to spare, but we will welcome to them for free. So we accepted the Glad bag full of communion bread.

I realized later that there was no way I could find my way back to the same hole-in-the-wall convent in Caracas on my own, so a couple of weeks ago, when we again needed more communion bread, Luz Maria decided to look in Barinas. She had to go to the main Catholic church, the Cathedral of Our Lady of Pilar (built between 1770 and 1780, it is a fine specimen of Spanish colonial architecture) and do a lot of talking before she was able to get a new supply of communion wafers.

We could order packages of communion wafers on the Internet, but in order to have them delivered to Venezuela we would have to pay the extremely high import duties placed on all food products. More likely we will begin baking our own communion bread, since we have the exact recipe for unleavened bread that is traditionally used in the sacrament. Luz Maria would like to buy a wafer mold like she remembers the nuns using in the convent, but that we have not been able to find on-line or anywhere else.

This may seem trivial, but the underlying reason for our difficulty in obtaining communion wafers is more serious. We have been told the Roman Catholic churches are becoming more reluctant to share communion bread with people who do not have proper Catholic credentials because of the growth of Santeria in Venezuela.

Santeria is a cult that originated in Cuba among African slaves. Most of the slaves brought to Cuba were from the Yoruba tribe that lived in what is now known as Nigeria.

As slaves, the Africans were forced to convert to Roman Catholicism, but continued their ancient traditions by identifying their tribal gods with the Virgin Mary and Catholic saints. Santeria literally means "the way of the saints", but the phrase has a connotation of contempt in Spanish. Among themselves, practitioners of Santeria refer to their religion as "la regla lucumi" or "la regla de ocha" (lucumi and ocha are both African words). The practice of Santeria involves persons becoming possessed by the orisha (saints/gods), animal sacrifices to gain the favor of the orisha, casting of spells and fortune-telling. Many santeros (Santeria priests) insist Santeria is all about white magic (using the power of orisha only for benevolent purposes), but there is ample evidence of black-magic Santeria (casting spells to injure or kill) as well.

This is very similar to other Caribbean and South American cults, such as voodoo in Haiti, candomble and macumba in Brazil, and, of course, Venezuela has its homegrown versions of this type of thing, such as the worship of Negro Felipe (Black Philip), an Afro-Venezuelan deity. Underlying it all is the fundamentally pagan world-view in which the Creator (although identified with the Christian God due to the historic dominance of the Catholic Church) is not interested in the everyday affairs of human beings, but there are intermediate gods and goddesses who will help or hinder one's fortunes depending on their whims.

The existence of these cults is largely the result of forced conversions and Roman Catholic teaching regarding the Virgin Mary and the saints. Catholic theologians try to draw a distinction between their veneration of Mary and the saints and polytheistic worship, but this abstract difference is impossible to maintain in practice (as well as being contrary to the plain teaching of Scripture in the first place).

In fact, the practice of Santeria is growing throughout the Caribbean Basin (and parts of the United States with high concentrations of Latin-American immigrants) precisely because the santeros have become particularly aggressive in insisting that there is no essential difference between their beliefs and practices and those of the Roman Catholic Church.

Santeria may have received something of a political push as well. Reportedly santeros were patronized by people from all levels of Cuban society before the revolution, including one Fidel Castro. When Cuba became a client state of the Soviet Union, Castro began suppression of all religion to conform to Marxist ideology. With the decline of Russian Communism, the open practice of Santeria was allowed to re-emerge and has become a tourist attraction. Today, to the extent that there is a favored religion in Cuba, it is Santeria. As Cuba has developed closer ties with Venezuela, there has been increased movement of Santeria into Venezuela.

What all of this has to do with communion wafers, I am not quite sure. Although there are some things commonly known about the practice of Santeria, the details of many Santeria rituals have been kept secret. There seems to be a reluctance to talk about just what the santeros are doing with communion wafers. But I may have found a clue in "Santeria: The Soul Possessed", a low-budget film, supposedly based on a true story, about a Mexican boy who received a "cursed" communion wafer.

The growth of Santeria in Venezuela and the scarcity of communion wafers are both real phenomena. As is usually the case with matters regarding magic and the occult, I am not sure I want to know more about the connection between the two. But I urge you to pray for us on both these accounts.