Out of Egypt have I called my Son

We talked about the birth of Jesus and sang Christmas carols with the preschool children during the Advent season. The national holiday break lasts from December 15 to January 6. While all the families were invited to celebrate Christmas Eve, Christmas and Epiphany with us in our chapel, for those who did not, we presented the story of the Magi in the week following January 6. And the week after that we dealt with the flight to Egypt, which on the historic church calendar is remembered on December 28.

There are reasons why the historic church calendar does not follow all of the events surrounding the Nativity in strictly chronological order, but I will not go into all that right now. It makes a certain amount of sense to follow the story of the Magi (Matthew 2:1-12) with the flight to Egypt (Matthew 2:13-23), although the topic is rather difficult to present to young children. Rather than dwell on the massacre of the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem, I explained that there was a bad king named Herod who wanted to kill the baby Jesus. But God looked after Joseph, Mary and Jesus, even during their stay in a foreign land.

The other reason that this of interest to the children is because so many of their relatives have fled Venezuela for neighboring countries and even other corners of the world. The United Nations refugee agency estimates that the number of refugees and migrants from Venezuela has surpassed 7 million globally, according to data from governments receiving them. People continue to leave Venezuela to escape violence, insecurity and threats as well as lack of food, medicine and essential services.See the Global Lutheran Outreach (GLO) Web site for details on the GLO campaign to send medicine to Venezuela.

We also took up this theme and how God can use evil for good with older children in our Sunday afternoon Bible class. The reading was from 2 Kings, chapter 5, the story of the prophet Elisha and Naaman the leper. There is a lot to talk about in that story, but for our your the important point was Naaman, a general in the king of Syria’s army and an otherwise successful man, learned of Elisha and the power of the God of Israel from a young Israelite who had not forgotten her faith, even though captured by the Syrians and made a slave in Naaman’s household. So the Lord not only watches over those who trust in Him, even if they are separated from family and homeland, but turn even the worst circumstances into opportunities to testify of His power and mercy in Jesus Christ.

Praise be to God that we have been able to resume classes in the preschool, because other educational institutions have remain closed as teachers’unions demand a new collective bargaining contract that restores social benefits and adjusts salaries to current living costs. The government has not adjusted the salaries of public-sector employees since March of last year, part of efforts to reduce spending and increase taxes which allowed Venezuela to emerge from hyper-inflation. But in the second half of last year demand for foreign currency outstripped the weekly supply of dollars made available by the central bank and the bolivar depreciated further. Meanwhile, our enrollment stands at 22 students, three have special needs. One is autistic, one is hearing impaired and one is partially paralyzed. Luz Maria’s daughter, Sarai, has her teaching degree in special education, but these children need constant attention, which is difficult for one teacher to provide, even with two teacher’s aides. So, again thanks be to God, we have gained an additional teacher, Maria Perez.

New cycle of deaconess training

Luz Maria once again will serve as mentor to women in another three-year round of deaconess formation. The program is offered by our national church’s Juan de Frias Theological Institute in partnership with Concordia El Reformador Seminary in the Dominican Republic. The training consists of both online study, in-person seminars and fieldwork assignments.

The office of deaconess is an auxiliary office of the church in which women may dedicate themselves to the material and spiritual needs of others in support of the pastoral office preaching and administration of the sacraments. The origin of the diaconal ministry can be traced to Acts 6:1-7, where the apostle delegate the distribution food to widows to “seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom” that they might dedicate themselves to “prayer and the ministry of the word”. This was originally a lay ministry and there is evidence in the New Testament that it was open to women as well as men. Several women are mentioned as holding prominent and responsible positions within the early church, such as Dorcas, Lydia and Priscilla. St. Paul refers to Phoebe of Cenchrea as a deacon (διάκονον) of the church in Romans 16:1. There is some debate as to whether “women” in 1 Timothy 3:11 refers to deaconesses or the wives of male deacons. The word is γυναῖκας (gynaikas), which may mean a woman of any age, whether a virgin, or married, or a widow. In favor of the interpretation that it refers to deaconesses is the fact that 1 Timothy 3:1-7 lists requisites for the pastoral office, but does not mention any duties of pastor’s wives.

In any event, the proceedings of the Council of Nicea in 325 AD deal with deaconesses as a specific office within the church. With the development of a more complex hierarchy within the church, male deacons came to be considered part of the ordained clergy and deaconess as a distinct office had disappeared by the 12 Century. But the work of deaconesses was taken over by nuns. One of the most moving legacies of this post-apostolic period in church history is the correspondence between John Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople at the turn of the fourth and fifth centuries, and Olympias, his chief deaconess. His letters from exile (long story) would begin in this fashion: “To my lady, the most reverend and divinely favored deaconess Olympias, I John, Bishop, send greeting in the Lord.”

The restoration of the office of deaconess within the Lutheran church was begun in the early 19th Century by pastors Theodor Fliedner and Johann Konrad Wilhelm Loehe, who both established schools for deaconesses in Germany, and continues to this day.

Here is a translation of a prayer for deaconesses from our 1964 Spanish Lutheran hymnal, “Culto Cristiano”.

Oh God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in times past called consecrated women to serve you in your church: Bless all women who dedicate themselves to Christian service as deaconesses. Increase their knowledge of the Gospel, give them a sincere, true purpose, diligence in their work, and the beauty of life that Christ offers, so that through their work many souls may be blessed, and your name may be glorified. Through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and with the Holy Spirit, always one God, forever and ever. Amen.

Looking to heaven

“Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” Acts 1:11

On Sunday, June 2, we will celebrate the Ascension of our Lord. This is the third great festival of the church year, although, unlike Christmas and Easter, it is largely forgotten by the world at large. The traditional date of Ascension Day is 39 days after Easter Sunday, which always is a Thursday. Some nations today recognize this date as a national holiday, including some countries that you might not expect, like Indonesia and Burkina Faso.

Venezuela is not among those countries, so we follow the custom of observing the Ascension on the next Sunday. The event is of such theological importance that the maximum number of our congregation should be in attendance.

Of course, we have been anticipating the Ascension. This week I talked to the preschool children about it.

The 40 days from Easter to Ascension are supposed to recreate the 40 days in which the risen Lord Jesus appeared to His disciples before being taken up into the clouds. Most of our appointed Gospel readings have been from the 16th chapter of John’s Gospel. Here we find a portion of a long discourse that Jesus gave to His disciples on another “Holy Thursday”, the night of the Last Supper.

In these verses, Jesus explains that He will “return to the Father”, a process of which His death, resurrection and ascension all will be a part. In His death on the cross, Jesus gained the victory over death, which made possible His exaltation in the resurrection and the ascension. The resurrection revealed to us His victory and the promise of our resurrection into eternal life. The ascension then had to happen so that He might receive all power and authority from the Father, to use that authority on our behalf as our Advocate and High Priest, and that in the exaltation of Christ in His human nature as well as His divine nature, we might share in His everlasting life.

Jesus also assured the disciples that He must return to the Father that they might receive the Holy Spirit to guide them to all truth and support them in the trials that they would face in this world until the Second Coming of Christ in glory (John 16:5-7).

Jesus warns His disciples, not only in the first century, but also today that they will face trials in life that they would not face if they were not Christians. Ridicule and ostracism, even bigotry and hatred toward Christ breaking out into violent persecution. We see pleny of evidence of that in our time, in which even the BBC reports that persecution of Christians around the world is at an all-time high.

But with the warning are words of consolation: “These things I have spoken to you that in me you may have peace. In this world, you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

The crisis continues in Venezuela

Recently, two articles about Venezuela appeared on-line in Lutheran media. "The Reporter", official newspaper of the LCMS, posted this article, "Crisis in Venezuela: Resting in God while hoping for change" with a quote from Luz Maria.

The Lutheran Heritage Foundation published "As Venezuela crumbles, God's Word brings comfort", with quotes from yours truly.

So far, we have not had a repeat of the nationwide power outage that left 90 percent of Venezuela without electricity or communications for three days. However, we have experienced localized power outages every day, lasting six or more hours. I would like to install more solar-powered lamps around the property for greater security at night. Also, we are looking into the possibility of a solar panel backup system at least to maintain the security cameras and wifi network during the blackouts.

The spring rains have arrived, so we have plenty of water in the well. We need to replace a valve to supply water to our public restrooms (we have an outbuilding with restrooms and showers for large gatherings of people). The power outages present us with a challenge to running our electric pumps, but we have our gas-powered generator. Of course, one difficulty with that is the rationing of gasoline.

The scarcity of gasoline also means we have to carefully plan our use of the car. But already the car has allowed us to make much more efficient use of our time in town. Long periods of waiting for a bus have been eliminated, and we can bring back much more than we can carry in our hands. We expect soon to receive a shipment of medicine from Global Lutheran Outreach and the Confessional Lutheran Church of Chile. The car should make it much easier to distribute the medicine to the people who need it.

 

Prayers for protection answered

On Rogate Sunday, May 27, we asked God’s protection for people in Peru. The country was rocked by a magnitude 8 earthquake early that morning. We prayed especially for Venezuelan expatriates in Peru, and especially for our Lutheran brethren who have become part of the LCMS mission in Lima. Thanks be to God, everyone that we know was unharmed.

Deaconesses to gather in the Dominican Republic

English: Dominican Republic (orthographic projection). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Next week deaconess students from Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, and Venezuela will travel to the Dominican Republic for a three-day course on the letters of St. Paul. Deaconess Ginnatriz Mendoza will teach the course. She is the wife of Ángel Eliezer Mendoza, pastor of Nueva Vida (New Life) Lutheran mission in Yaritagua, the capital of the Peña Municipality of Venezuela's state of Yaracuy. She is a native of Argentina and trained as a deaconess at Concordia Seminary, Buenos Aires, Argentina, where her husband, a Venezuelan, recently graduated. They met while he was studying at the seminary.

Luz Maria and I also will travel to the Dominican Republic. Luz Maria trained as a deaconess by taking theological courses by extension and has worked with the Lutheran Church of Venezuela to train more deaconesses. 

Some may ask, what is a deaconess? One might also ask, what is a deacon? The two words have a ong history within the church. Both are derived from the Greek work, διάκονος (diakonos), which in a broad sense means "servant" or "one who runs an errand". The apostle Paul refers to himself as a "deacon" or servant of Jesus Christ in Colossians 1:23. However, the word also is used in the New Testament in a special sense to mean trusted laity in positions of responsibility. The first example of this is found in Acts, chapter six, where the Apostle delegated the oversight of the distribution of food to the widows to seven men "of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom."

Unlike the pastoral office of public preaching, teaching and administration of the sacraments, the office of "deacon" was not created by God's command. The apostles did not receive a divine order in a vision or a dream, but used their own judgement. This is similar to what happened in Exodus 18 when Moses, exhausted after trying to deal with all of the Israelites' problems himself, took the advice of his father-in-law and appointed "able men from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy and hate a bribe" as his helpers.

Because the responsibilities of the "diaconate" or auxiliary offices are not fixed by divine mandate, they can change according to the needs of the local church. There is evidence within the New Testament that women as well as men were able to serve in auxiliary offices within the early church. The primary passage is Romans 16:1-2, in which St. Paul refers to a woman named Phoebe as a  "servant of the church at Cenchreae" The word translated "servant" is διάκονον, the feminine form of  διάκονος. 

Other women in the New Testament, while not specifically named as deaconesses, are described as devoting themselves to the service of the church. Outstanding examples are Lydia, a woman who who housed many Christians in her home; Priscilla, who with her husband, Aquila, helped Apollos to teach more accurately the way of God; and Dorcas who made clothes for the needy.

Some interpreters argue that the mention of "women" in 1 Timothy 3:8-13 means the wives of deacons. However, in verses 1-7, Paul speaks of the requirements to be a bishop (pastor) without mentioning their wives, ( only that a bishop must be the husband of only one wife). On the other hand, Paul makes a parallel list of requirements for deacons and "women". The word, γυναῖκας, "gunaikas" could mean a woman of any age or marital status, and thus could mean deaconesses. This was the interpretation of John Chrysostom (347-407), a great theologian of the early church.

An early reference to deaconesses outside the Holy Scriptures is found in a letter written to the Emperor Trajan by the Roman magistrate, Pliny the Younger, in the second century A.D.He mentions torturing two deaconesses to find out more about what Christians really believed.

The office of deaconess was formally recognized at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD, and the Apostolic Constitutions, a Christian work of the fourth century mentions deaconess as an official position in the church. The work of the deaconess work in the post-apostolic church was to help the poor and sick; instruct catechumens; help in the baptism of women; and attend to the needs of woman in circumstances where a male deacon did not have access or could not be sent.

After the fifth century A.D., however, the office of deaconess was discontinued. As the church as an institution became more powerful within late Roman and early medieval society, it became more hierarchical in structure. The word "deacon" came to mean a rank within the clergy, not a lay office. Thus, deacons could not have female counterparts. The work performed by deaconesses did not disappear, but was taken over by orders of nuns. 

The modern revival of the office of deaconess began when Theodor Fliedner, a Lutheran pastor, and his wife, Friedericke Munster, opened the first modern Lutheran deaconess mother house in Kaiserwerth on the Rhine. Germany, in 1836. Fliedner saw a pressing need, demand for nurses with religious formation to attend the wounded as the Napoleonic Wars had created devastation and great misery.  By 1864, year of his death, some 1,600 women had received training as deaconesses in Kaiserswerth. One of them was Florence Nightingale, the famous nurse of the Crimean War.

In the village of Neuendettelsau, Bavaria, Wilhelm Loehe (1808-1872) also became interested in the restoration of the office of deaconess. He established a school for deaconesses in 1849, where women trained to care for the sick, teach school, and work in other fields of service to the church.

Rosie Adle with Luz Maria and Elsy Valladares
de Machado in 2007.

The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod began training deaconesses in 1919 and today both Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri, and Concordia Theological Seminary, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, provide deaconess training program. 

Deaconess Rosie Adle, an instructor at the Fort Wayne seminary, worked in Venezuela to recruit and train deaconesses in 2007. She explained the role of the deaconess in a recent Issues Etc. interview.

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More adventure than we need

Officers of SOLUDAVE 2016-2017: Luz Maria Henriquez de Ernst, president; Yuraima Gonzalez, vice president; Norma Vallenilla, treasurer; Aikel Rodriquez, secretary; Elías Lozano, pastoral counselor.

During the last week of August, Luz Maria attended the national convention of Sociedad Luterana de Damas Luteranas (SOLUDAVE), the Venezuelan Lutheran women's organization. She has served as president of SOLUDAVE for the last two years, and she was re-elected to serve another term from 2016-2017. This means she will take an active part in organizing the Lutheran Church of Venezuela's celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. She also was recognized by the women's assembly for leading them in a Bible study based on the principle, "Sola Scriptura."

The women of SOLUDAVE gathered in the city of Maturin, capital of the state of Monagas, Venezuela. I arrived in Venezuela in 2003 to serve as a volunteer for a mission project to revitalize rural Lutheran congregations in Monagas. After we were married, Luz Maria lived with me in Monagas for a time, and served as a deaconess with the mission project.

La Caramuca is on the other side of the country from Maturin. If everything were to proceed according to best-laid plans, the bus ride from La Caramuca to Maturin would last 14 to 15 hours. But few things proceed according to plan in Venezuela these days. Of course, it would have taken less time to travel to Maturin by air, but that is almost entirely out of the question. Airline tickets are hard to come by, certainly for international flights and also for in-country travel. Even if you can get plane tickets, there is no guarantee now that you will be able to make your connections.

Buying a bus ticket was not that easy, either. First, Luz Maria was told that she could not buy a ticket to Maturin before the day of departure. Then, on the day on which she wanted to depart, she was told, sorry, no tickets were available. So she had to go back the next day to purchase a ticket for a 9 p.m. departure. She almost did not make that bus because we had trouble finding a taxi to the terminal, even though she starting calling around 6 p.m. The bus left the terminal on time, but broke down on the highway at around 12:30 a.m. All of the passengers had to wait by the side of the road until another bus arrived at 5 a.m. Luz Maria did not arrive in Maturin until 9:30 that evening, after the convention had already started.

Then, for the return journey, she had to spend the night in the Maturin bus terminal in order to get passage back to La Caramuca. Fortunately, she was not alone in a deserted bus terminal in the wee hours, because the terminal was crowded with many other people in the same predicament. All of this is a result of the deteriorating state of the Venezuelan economy. There are fewer taxis to be found, and the buses break down because of the scarcity of automotive parts. And that's just one thing. The cost of travel is also much higher, because of hyper-inflation, and the rising level of violent crime everywhere also makes travel in Venezuela more of an adventure than most people would desire. 

Nonetheless, Luz Maria considered her journey to Maturin worth the effort. Luz Maria is one of three women recognized as deaconesses by the national church (the others are Carmen Gamboa of the Lutheran mission in Cagua, in Aragua state; and Elsy Valladares de Machado of La Paz (Peace) Lutheran Church in Petare). Luz Maria always encourages more women to become involved in the national deaconess program. She proposed at the SOLUDAVE convention that Cruz Maria Islanda de Ventura be recognized as a deaconess. Cruz Maria is the wife of Adrian Ventura, pastor of Cristo Rey (Christ the King) Lutheran Church of Maturin.

Luz Maria brought back many handmade gifts that the women of each congregation represented at the convention made for all the other ladies. There also was a special gift for our mission: A box to hold the sacramental bread made by Yudith Sanchez, a member of Cristo Rey.

I thank God that Luz Maria and all the other women have returned safely to their homes. The last time that Luz Maria just took for a getaway together was in 2010. We traveled to the state of Trujillo just because neither of us had been there before. I would like someday to once again travel to parts of Venezuela that I have not seen. I have never visited Angel Falls, the world's highest waterfall, nor the Relámpago de Catatumbo, the area of constant lightning strikes at the mouth of the Catatumbo River, and many other wondrous places. But God grant us for now the privilege of continuing our work in His name. Amen.

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Our time has come

Ascension Lutheran Church

Our mission is affiliated with the Lutheran Church of Venezuela, a national church-body with only 15 congregations scattered from one end of the country to the other, and a total of 930 baptized members in a nation of 30 million people. The national church has requested prayers for one of its largest congregations, Ascension Lutheran Church of San Felix de Guayana in eastern Venezuela.

The city of San Felix is located on one side of the Orinoco and Caroni rivers with the city of Puerto Ordaz on the other. Much like Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, the two communities form one metropolitan area, known as Ciudad Guayana, which constitutes the sixth-largest city in Venezuela.

Pastor Elias Lozano

Ascension Lutheran Church has been nestled on the same hillside property for more than 40 years. Now an agency of municipal government wants to seize all of the land and destroy all of the exisiting buidlings, including the church itself and the house where Pastor Elias Lozano and his family live.

Ostensibly, this is for the purpose of constructing a housing project.   Of course, this action demonstrates appalling disregard for a house of prayer and the fundamental rights of the people who gather for worship there. But anyone who has paid attention to international headlines can sense that this is part of a trend toward diminished priority placed on religious liberty around the world, even in the United States.

Perhaps one might ask how you can compare unjust confiscation of property with the beheading, burning and crucifixion of Christians in the Middle East and other places? Because once the basic principle of freedom of religion is undermined, it is only a matter of time before violent persecution of religious dissidents follows. As Christians, we recognize that the impulse for persecution, no matter how mild it may seem in the beginning, or how severe it may become, stems from the same spiritual source.

 “I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God.   And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor Me." John 16: 1-3 ESV

Worship at Ascension Lutheran Church.

Jesus repeatedly told His disciples that His hour would come, the time when He would suffer and die on the cross to atone for the sins of the world, before rising from the dead on the third day. In these verses from the Gospel of John, He warns them that their time will come, when they will suffer and even die for the sake of their faith. Jesus both warned His disciples of persecution and hatred, and gave them encouragement that all these things would happen in accordance with God’s counsel and will or by His permission. The hatred of the world, of the children of unbelief, would be shown in various forms or degrees. First would come ostracism by their fellow Jews and denial of the right to public worship. But bigotry and hatred against Christ and His followers would not be satisfied with such measures, but would not even shrink back from murder as a work of great merit and well pleasing to God. These words have been and are being fulfilled continually.

St. Paul repeated this warning in 2 Timothy 3: 12-13, "Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. " All who truly are eager to live a life of godliness in Christ, through the power which He imparts, all believers that give evidence of their faith in Christ in a life that accords with the will of God, must bear also the cross of Christ, whether in the form of ridicule and ostracism, or actual martyrdom.

The early Christians first earned the wrath of others of Jewish background who did not believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior because He did not meet their expectations of a superhero who would overthrow the hated Roman Empire and restore Israel to its ancient glory. As the Gospel spread throughout the wider Greco-Roman world, Christians were persecuted by those who personally profited from idolatry (Acts 16: 16-24; 19: 23-41) and those who feared that exclusive worship of just one God would anger rival deities and thus bring down all kinds of misfortune on the people. In Acts 17: 16-34, St. Paul noted that ancient Athens had altars dedicated to all the known gods and goddesses of the Mediterranean world, plus one to "the unknown god", just in case there was one that they had overlooked.

Finally the early Church faced a series of systematic campaigns to "stamp out" Christianity from the highest levels of Roman government. The problem here was the refusal of Christians to participate in even token worship of the Roman emperor, for they believed such absolute devotion belonged to God alone. But the Church endured these onslaughts and by the end of the fourth century A.D., Christianity had become the majority religion of the Roman Empire.

In the centuries that followed, the militant religion of Islam became the most visible threat to the lives and liberty of Christians. Even within "Christian" lands, those who stood up for the pure Word of the Scriptures against the over-reaching authority of the institutional church and the civil goverment often became targets of violent persecution.

And so it remains to this day and until the Lord returns in glory. I was blessed by God to grow up in a country with one of the highest standards of religious liberty in the world and in history. But recent events have shown that even those of us who have enjoyed this privilege should not take it for granted.

So let us pray for the liberty of Christians in Venezuela, the United States and China, and the very lives of those in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere. Let us rejoice that the Lord is with us always, even to the close of the age. Amen.

The confirmation of Sotera del Carmen Zapata

On August 3, 2014, we received Sotera del Carmen Zapata as a communicant member by confirmation. Sotera is a widowed lady who lives a few doors down from us. She began attending our Sunday service occasionally, then more frequently, and finally expressed her desire to receive the sacrament of the Lord's Supper.

Luz Maria and I began visiting her and studying Luther's Small Catechism with her. In a short time she was ready to be confirmed. The Old Testament lesson appointed for the seventh Sunday after Trinity, Isaiah 62:6-12, provided her confirmation verse: "Behold, the LORD hath proclaimed unto the end of the world, Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh; behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him." I preached the sermon on this text. You can read the English translation here.

For her confirmation, I presented Sotera with a copy of the Bible (the Reina-Valera Spanish translation) with Luther's Small Catechism included as an appendix. We just received another package of these Bibles, published by the Lutheran Heritage Foundation of Macomb, Michigan, thanks to the efforts of Cristo Para Todas Las Naciones (CPTLN), the Venezuelan arm of Lutheran Hour Ministries. We are grateful to have received the shipment, because importing any type of merchandise into Venezuela is not easy these days.

Soon after becoming a communicant member, Sotera accompanied Luz Maria and her daughter, Yepci Santana, to a regional convention of the Venezuelan Lutheran women's organization, Sociedad Luterana de Damas Venezolanas (SOLUDAVE) in Taguay, in the state of Aragua. Thirty-two women from the Western and Central Zones of the Lutheran Church of Venezuela, three national pastors, and Alexander Pérez, director of CPTLN Venezuela, attended the gathering. Alexander Pérez presented each participant with a copy of the Reina-Valera Bible plus Small Catechism. Luz Maria distributed 15 sets of flash cards explaining the Lutheran liturgy.

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The Middle East in Venezuela

Duomo di Milano St. Bartholomew San Bartolomeo by Marco D'Agrate (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

How fitting that, after weeks of the Internet flooded with images of crucified, beheaded, imprisoned and otherwise persecuted Christians in Iraq, Syria, Nigeria and Sudan, we remembered in our worship the apostle who is said to have been skinned alive and beheaded.

August 24 is designated on the church calendar as a day of commemoration for St.Bartholomew. It is perhaps rather odd that Bartholomew should have his own day, just like Peter, Paul and the four evangelists, when he never wrote any of the New Testament books, and his friend, Philip, shares a day of commemoration with St. James (May 1).

Bartholomew is one of the most obscure of the 12 apostles. The three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) and the book of Acts list him as one of the twelve, but give us no more information about him, other than that he was a witness like the rest to the Lord's death, resurrection and ascension. The Gospel of John does not list the 12 apostles and does not mention anyone named Bartholomew, but in John 1:43-51 we find the story of someone called Nathanael being called as a disciple of Jesus. There are reasons to believe Nathanael and Bartholomew are the same person:

1. Nathanael is described as a friend of Philip. In the roster of the apostles, several of the 12 are grouped in pairs because of their strong personal ties. For example, Peter and Andrew, who were brothers. Likewise, James and John were both the sons of Zebedee. Bartholomew is paired with Philip.
2. Nathanael is a given name, while Bartholomew is a surname. In Aramaic, “bar” means “son” (as in Simon bar-Jonah) and Bartholomew is a form of “Bar-Tolmai” or “son of Tolmai”). So the apostle's full name was Nathanael bar-Tolmai.
3. John's account of the calling of Nathanael follows his account of the calling of Peter, Andrew and Philip as apostles. Later, in John 21, Nathanael is named along with the apostles Peter, James and John as witnesses of the third appearance of the risen Christ.

According to later, post-biblical histories, Bartholomew traveled on missionary journeys to Iraq, Turkey, Armenia and perhaps as far east as India. He is said to have been martyred in Armenia on the shores of the Caspian Sea. You can read my St. Bartholomew's sermon here.

Bartholomew's story should remind us that, although in the first century such atrocities were not recorded and uploaded to the Internet, the more things change, the more some things remain the same. Christians in many parts of the world today are still faced with the choice of renouncing their faith or suffering a cruel death.

We may understand persecution from a biblical perspective as any manifestation of hostility from authorities, individuals or crowds that result directly from one's identification as a Christian. Persecution in the Bible manifests itself within a broad spectrum of actions ranging from ridicule, restriction of liberties, certain kinds of harassment, or discrimination on one end of the spectrum to torture, imprisonment, ostracism, or killing on the other (see Matthew 6:11-12, Luke 6:22; 2 Corinthians 11:23-29; James 1:2). “Nor is all persecution a violation of our basic rights as a human being. To be despised, hated, and ridiculed is not a violation of one's rights, as unpleasant and unjust as these things are,” said the late Glenn Penner of Voice of the Martyrs Canada.

Nevertheless, we Christians who enjoy a high degree of religious liberty should not forget those who endure more severe forms of persecution, including violations of basic human rights. We should continue to pray for them and try to help them. Here is what Lutheran Hour Ministries is doing to aid Christians in Syria and Iraq. The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod has established a Fund to Aid Christians Under Persecution, primarily in countries where the LCMS does not have an international mission presence through official missionaries and other LCMS or partner church personnel. Donations made to the fund will be bundled into one or more grants that will be disbursed through appropriate nonprofit human-care and relief agencies.

We are not isolated here from the conflicts of the Middle East. There is a small, but growing and influential Muslim influence in Venezuela. The Mosque Ibrahim Ibin Abdul Aziz Al-Ibrahim in Caracas is the second-largest mosque in Latin America after the King Fahd Islamic Cultural Center in Buenos Aires. Built in 1989, its minaret towers 113 meters high, the highest in Latin America, higher than the steeple of the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Caracas, only a few blocks away.

 The minaret and dome of Mosque Al Khulafa al Rashideen in San Felix de Guayana, Venezuela, completely overpower, in terms of physical presence, Ascension Lutheran Church, which is right next door was built years before the mosque.  The church is one of the largest congregations in the Lutheran Church of Venezuela. A building which once was a branch office of "Cristo Para Todas Las Naciones" (the Spanish Lutheran Hour) in Barquisimeto, the fourth-largest city in Venezuela, is now an Islamic center. 

On the other hand, there are Middle Eastern Christians who have fled violence in their homelands for Venezuela. San Charbel Church in Caracas is the product of an earlier era of persecution. Maronite Christians oppressed by the Ottoman Empire fled their native Lebanon for Venezuela in the latter half of the 19th Century. Maronites are said to be the descendants of ancient Phoenicians who converted to Christianity thanks to the preaching of a Syrian monk known as St. Maron in the fourth century after Christ. The Syriac Maronite Church of Antioch today is an "Eastern Catholic" church. That is to say it acknowledges the authority of the Pope, but is allowed its own liturgies and practices distinct from what western Europeans know as Roman Catholicism.

The Cathedral of St.George is a Melkite Greek Catholic church in Caracas. Once found mainly in Syria and Lebanon, Melkite Christians have become dispersed throughout the world thanks to persecution in their ancestral lands. Melkite Christians trace their history back to the ancient patriarchates of Antioch, Alexandria (Egypt) and Jerusalem. The Melkite Greek Catholic Church today also is an "Eastern Catholic" church.

So Venezuelan Jews have felt the most intense repercussions of events abroad. Venezuela once had one of the oldest and most stable Jewish populations in South America. Venezuela was the country on the South American mainland closest to the island of Curaçao where a flourishing community of Spanish-Portuguese Jews. As early as the 1600s, Jews from Curaçao traded with Venezuela, helped by their knowledge of the Spanish language, the ownership of ships, and the favorable location of Curaçao. Jews used to exchange manufactured goods for tobacco, hides, coffee, corn, powdered gold, and cocoa.

After Venezuela won independence from Spain, Simon Bolivar invited the Curaçao Jews to settle there and help the development of the newly independent state. Starting in 1821, Spanish-Portuguese Jews started to settle in various Venezuelan cities, namely, Barcelona, Caracas, Carabobo, Barquisimiento, Maracaibo, and Puerto Cabello. The main Jewish settlement was in Coro, some 35 miles (60 km) from Curaçao.

Today, however, is a rising tide of anti-Semitism, due at least indirectly to the current government's alliances with Iran and other anti-Israel factions in the Middle East. In 2007, government troops raided a Jewish school in Caracas, ostensibly searching for hidden weapons. On the night of Jan. 31, 2009, a dozen unidentified men broke into the Gran Sinagoga Tiféret Israel, the oldest standing synagogue in Caracas. The assailants bound and gagged security guards, entered the sanctuary, ripped open the ark, and splayed its silver-tinged contents out across the floor like leftovers from a bad night drinking. Then they rifled through administrative files, apparently stealing nothing, and spray-painted “DEATH NOW,” “OUT, OUT,” “ISRAEL MALDITOS,” and a horned devil with 666 in red on the walls.

Many Jews have fled the country. According to the Confederation of Jewish Associations of Venezuela (CAIV), the number of Venezuelan Jews dwindled from about 18,000 in 2000 to 9,000 in 2010.

As Christians, we believe that the civil government has the authority to maintain order in a fallen world by restraining the acts of evildoers by force of arms. However, the civil government has no jurisdiction over human souls, that is to say, it cannot tell people what to believe or think about God. Therefore the right of religious liberty applies to people of all creeds. We also should realize that in modern times, persecution of Jews usually is a prelude to persecution of Christians and that all countries that persecute Christians also persecute Jews.

Lord God, revealed in Christ as the One whose foolishness is wiser than men and whose weakness is stronger than men;

Help those who suffer for the sake of the truth to find Your strength in their weakness, to see Your glory in what is despised, to feel Your presence in what is desolate.

Help them to understand that in Your gentleness there is power, that in Your grace there is strength, that in Your forgiveness there is life.

Relieve them from torture and pain, from the strain of their emotions, from temptation, danger and agony of soul.

Use their suffering for the conversion of those who torment them, for the strengthening of those who love them, for the welfare of Your people everywhere.

Keep them in Your steadfast love in Christ, our Lord, for His sake. Amen.

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Adapting to uncertainty

 How very quickly the "festival half" of 2013-2014 church year has passed for us, but especially the seasons of Lent and Easter. We observed Ash Wednesday amid political unrest that claimed  a number of lives, left many more people injured, and led to the suspension of traditional pre-Lenten festivities in many Venezuelan cities. Since then, annual inflation of Venezuela's currency has topped 60 percent, resulting in spiralling food prices. In the first quarter of 2014, inflation climbed by 10.1%, the highest jump in Venezuela's history for the first three months of the year since 1996. According to the newspaper, El Universal, spiraling inflation comes hand in hand with signals that the economy is heading towards recession, amidst a slowdown in manufacture, construction, trade, and stagnant oil production. Recession plus high inflation could mean a new increase in poverty, which in 2013 soared to 27.3%.

 Shortages of basic products, like milk, paper and medical supplies, have continued and extended into new categories. Venezuelans, who place a great deal of importance on personal grooming, have had to get used to scarcity of shampoo, cosmetics and deodorant. Coffin production has dropped between 20% and 30% this year for lack of materials, forcing funeral and burial delays. Power outages have continued as well. El Universal reported that on June 18, localities in the Venezuelan states of Anzoátegui, Sucre, Nueva Esparta, Aragua, Carabobo, Miranda, Vargas, Mérida, Zulia and Falcón all suffered power outages at the same time. Of course, these blackouts do not make national or international headlines if they are only on a local scale.

Here in La Caramuca, we experience power outages at least once or twice a week, usually lasting two to three hours. Last weekend we were without power for 12 hours. These lengthy blackouts result from the fact that workers for the state-owned electric utility receive less than 40% of the materials needed to fix generation and distribution facility breakdowns. These problems have led to continued protests, a shake-up in the federal goverment and, of course, increased uncertainty about the future for many Venezuelans.

We have adapted to this constantly changing situation as best we can, primarily by growing more and more of our own fruits and vegetables on our property. In keeping with the objectives of our mission, we have shared our produce with the neediest members of the surrounding community. We also have offered cooking classes to teach the preparation of nutritionally balanced meals in the most economical way possible.

 And we have continued to celebrate with joy the great festival days of Easter, the Ascension, Pentecost and Trinity Sunday. One Sunday we used white wine for the sacrament of the Lord's Supper because there was no red wine available.  I explained to our congregation that we would not change any aspect of the order of Holy Communion to suit our own whims, but the general scarcity of everything now included red wine and that Scripture only requires that  the visible element must be wine and not grape juice.  The color and other secondary attributes are not of the utmost importance. By God's grace, someone took my little speech to heart and through personal contacts located a place where we were able to buy a case of red wine.

Members of Corpus Christi Lutheran Church in Barinas joined us for our Easter Sunday service. The Corpus Christi congregation was planted years before our mission in La Caramuca, but has not had its own pastor for some time. We pray for them as Miguelángel Pérez, the presiding pastor of the western zone of the Lutheran Church of Venezuela, helps them in extending a call to a new pastor (in fact, Miguelángel and myself are the only ordained pastors of Lutheran Church of Venezuela in the western third of the country at this time).

 In my Ascension Sunday sermon, I emphasized that the Ascension of Christ is linked with the mission of the church, which is this: To prepare people for the second coming of Christ, when He will come in glory to judge all nations. How do we do this? By proclaiming the gospel, to call people to repentance and salvation before the second coming of Christ. We could not do this without the Ascension of Christ, because with all authority in heaven and earth, He sent the church the Holy Spirit to help proclaim the gospel everywhere. Like the angels, this same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven said, will come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven. Clouds hid Christ, and Christ in the clouds revealed. Among his Ascension in the clouds and his return in the clouds is the time to proclaim the gospel, to repent for his glory in Christ as Lord and Savior. But the apostles had a question for Christ before His Ascension. "Lord, will you restore the kingdom to Israel at this time?"

The apostles, like many people at that time thought of the Messiah, the promised Savior of Israel as a political hero, who would defeat the Romans and restore the kingdom of Israel to the glory of the days of David and Solomon. But Christ was not this type of Salvador. He was much more. He won spiritual freedom for the whole world, not just independence for one single country. So Jesus' answer was as follows: "It is not for you to know the times or seasons which the Father hath put in His own power; But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. "

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Lenten ashes amid fires of conflict

 On March 5, 2014, we observed Ash Wednesday, with a service of confession, repentance and the imposition of ashes. My sermon for Ash Wednesday, based on Matthew 6:16-21, may be found here.


On March 9, the first Sunday in Lent, we were joined by members of Corpus Christi Lutheran Church in Barinas and Pastor Miguelangel Perez of El Paraiso Lutheran Church in Barquisimeto for the Divine Service. The appointed text was Matthew 4:1-11, the story of the temptation of Jesus in the desert. I explained in the sermon that the devil tempted Jesus to be one of the various types of false messiahs that we still find in our world today. There are those who preach a "gospel of prosperity," that if only you believe hard enough, God will provide you with all of the material things that you want. There are those who preach a "theology of glory," that the true sign of God's favor can be found in signs and wonders and displays of power. Then there are those who preach a gospel of conquest, establishing the kingdom of God on earth by force of arms. The temptation of Jesus was to gain a following by become one of these false messiahs. The temptation for us is to follow one of these false messiahs, rather than follow Jesus to the cross. The text of this sermon may be found here.

On March 12, Venezuela marked a full month of protest marches in its larger cities. As a result of the conflict between the current government of Venezuela and its opposition, more than 20 people have died and hundreds have been injured. Here in La Caramuca, however, life goes on as usual, which means we quietly deal with the more mundane concerns which drive the protests. There are empty shelves in all of the stores, long lines to received rationed supplies of basic foodstuffs, the cost of a bus or taxi to Barinas has doubled in the last six months or so, and last night we were without electricity for several hours.

But for someone trying to further the mission of the church in Venezuela, it is even more difficult to deal with the religious undercurrents in the present political unrest. I do not think the pulpit should be used as a political soapbox. It is not a preacher's job to endorse political candidates, take sides in partisan political debates, and certainly not to advocate the overthrow of an exisitng regime, but rather to proclaim the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ to people living under all forms of government and economic order. At times, however, political debates escalate beyond issues of civil order into the realm of divine law (legalized abortion/euthanasia vs. the Fifth Commandment, for example, or same-sex marriage vs. the Sixth Commandment). In such cases, the church must reaffirm that certain matters are not polticially negotiable, but have been ordained by God. In the examples of abortion and same-sex marriage in the United States, Christians must deal with political movements which violate what we call in our catechism, "the second tablet of the Law" or the commandments which spell out how we are to love our fellow human beings as ourselves. In Venezuela we are dealing with infractions of the "first tablet of the Law", the commandments which may be summarized as "love the Lord, your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind." That is to say, on both sides of the conflict here, we find forms of idolatry.

On the one hand, we have what is literally a "personality cult" built around former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. The religious nature of this cult has only become more obvious since Mr. Chavez's death from a cancer a year ago. Some North American media have noted some rather odd things that the current Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has said about his predecessor. That the spirit of Hugo Chavez speaks to him by means of a small bird; that the face of Hugo Chavez appeared to workers in a Caracas subway tunnel; that Hugo Chavez died just in time to go to heaven and help God pick a new Pope; and that he (Maduro) likes to sleep in Mr. Chavez's tomb to receive inspiration and guidance. It is important to understand that statements like these are not weird quirks on the part of Mr. Maduro, hand-picked successor to Mr. Chavez, but typical of the essentially religious devotion with which "true believer" chavistas regard their former leader.

There actually is a song that is played on the radio which speaks of Hugo Chavez as "my eternal commander and my eternal friend" who "will live forever in the hearts of the people." There are chavista who consider themselves Christians despite the inconsistency between this the Christian beliefs that only God is eternal and only the Holy Spirit should live in the hearts of the faithful.

Now, you might think that those opposed to the chavista government would be the voice of sanity and reason, but here you find those who should know better quoting from Reinaldo dos Santos, "the Prophet of the Americas." Mr. dos Santos was born in Brazil, the fifth of eight children. Even as a boy he claimed to receive dreams and visions. Although he grew up in poverty, a noted Brazilian astrologer took Mr. dos Santos under his wing, underwrote his secular education and also instructed him in astrology and other occult disciplines. He continued his occult studies in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Mexico.

His followers believe Mr. dos Santos to have accurately predicted, among other things, the fall of the Twin Towers in 2001, the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, and the death of Pope John Paul II. In regard to Venezuela, he is supposed to have predicted Hugo Chavez's rise to power and his death. More recently, he has predicted the imminent downfall of the current Venezuelan government, which is why many of the opposition like to quote him. However, in doing so, they disregard the many Scriptural warnings about consulting astrologers, psychics and others who claim knowledge of the future apart from divine revelation.

We find divine revelation in the pages of the Holy Scriptures, which tell us that all we need to know about the future is that it is in God's hands, and that at the end ot time, Christ will return in glory, balance all accounts and take us and all the faithful to a much better place than what we know now. As Christians, we should know that the kingdom of God is not of this world, that all earthly governments are destined to fall, and that we should avoid "messianic" political movements of whatever origin, that promise an end to poverty, war and all manner of evil if only their leaders were in charge. For the origin of poverty, greed, injustice, war and all social ills lies in the sinful human heart which can only be changed by the light of Christ.

We continue to pray for Venezuela as a nation, that God might grant it a peaceful resolution to its conflicts, but above all that the Word of God may not be bound, but have free course and be preached to the joy and edification of all God's people, in Venezuela and the world. Amen.

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