By Salvation's Walls Surrounded

One of my favorite hymns is "Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken" by John Newton (he also wrote "Amazing Grace"). The first verse goes like this:

Glorious things of thee are spoken,
Zion, city of our God.
He whose Word cannot be broken,
Formed thee for His own abode.
On the Rock of Ages founded,
What can shake thy sure repose?
By salvation's walls surrounded,
Thou may'st smile at all thy foes.

Of course we are by salvation's walls surrounded in La Caramuca, but now by a wall of masonry as well. It lacks only metal gates, which we expect to have installed in the next couple of weeks. The entire mission is now enclosed.

Despite a generous donation toward this project, it has strained our budget to continue. This has been due to the steadily rising costs of materials and labor in this inflationary economy. Nevertheless, we have pressed on for three reasons:

• First, the more we improve the property, the more we must
  control access to prevent petty theft and vandalism (somebody stole our
  parrot a few weeks ago!).


• Second, for the sake of the children. We have encouraged
  them to visit us and use our property as a playground. But up to now we
  have not been able to prevent them from doing so when we are absent and
  therefore unable to supervise them. To avoid accidental injuries (and
  there have been some close calls), we must establish a physical barrier.


• Third, the wall gives the mission a more "institutional"
  appearance and helps convince the community of our intention to serve
  over the long term. Just down the block stands an empty building that
  had been a Pentecostal church. It did quite a few good works in the
  community for the two years that it was in operation, but the doors
  have been closed for seven years now. Pentecostal churches, especially
  the "house churches" rise and fall like mushrooms. One of our big
  challenges is to assure everyone that our mission (God willing) will
  not be like those of the past: here today, gone tomorrow.

Wedding of Ted and Rebecca Krey


On August 30, 2008, Luz María and
I attended the wedding of Pastor Ted Krey and his wife, Rebecca, at La Fortaleza Lutheran
Church in Maracay. They had been married in Canada, but this ceremony was for all their Venezuelan friends who could not attend the first one.

The service followed the common liturgy that has been adopted by the Lutheran Church of Venezuela. I might note that the closing hymn was a Spanish version of "Joyful, joyful, we adore
Thee", a hymn set to the fourth and final movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, commonly known as the "Ode to Joy". This is a very popular piece of classical music in Venezuela. You frequently hear it on the radio and high school bands often play it.


"Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee", was written by Henry J. van Dyke, and first was published in the 1911 Presbyterian Hymnal. The first stanza in English goes like this:

Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee, God of glory, Lord of love;
Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee, opening to the sun above.
Melt the clouds of sin and sadness; drive the dark of doubt away;
Giver of immortal gladness, fill us with the light of day!

This is the Spanish version:

Jubilosos, te adoramos, Dios de gloria y Salvador.
Nuestras vidas te entregamos como se abre al sol la flor.
Ahuyenta nuestras males y tristezas, oh Jesús.
Danos bienes celestiales. Llénanos de gozo y luz.

Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve'et ha'arets

Really, it's:

בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים ואת הארץ

But your mileage may vary in regard to Hebrew fonts and Web browsers. The more familiar English translation is, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1).
We dashed to Maracay for the wedding August 30, then returned to La Caramuca that evening so that I could preach in Corpus Christi Sunday
morning and we could lead our Sunday school in the afternoon. Then Sunday night we boarded the bus for Caracas to attend a week-long intensive study of Genesis. The course was taught by Pastor Mark Braden of Zion Lutheran Church, Cleghorn, Wisconsin. We studied the text word by word in the original language, which means we did not get that far even for an overview, only to chapter 17.

Luz María and I took the course together, which was a lot fun. But I had something of an advantage in pronouncing the guttural Hebrew, since Spanish does have many sounds made deep in the throat. I cannot roll my r's the way Venezuelans do, though.

We reviewed the many foundations of the New Testament in Genesis, starting with the original Messianic prophecy (Genesis 3:15).

We also looked at Noah's Flood as a prefiguring of holy baptism (1 Peter 3:21), and Pentecost and the Great Commission as reversals of the Tower of Babel (in the Genesis episode, humanity was cursed with a confusion of tongues and dispersed to many parts of the world; at Pentecost, people gathered from the far corners of the Roman Empire heard the Gospel proclaimed in their own language, and in the final verses of Matthew, chapter 28, Jesus sends his apostles out into the
world to gather all the nations into the church).

We talked quite a bit about the mysterious figure of Melchizedek, priest of "God Most High" and king of the city that one day would be called Jerusalem. In Genesis 14, it is written that Melchizedek "brought out bread and wine" and blessed God and Abraham. Not only did Abraham accept the blessing, he offered Melchizedek a tithe of all that he had taken from the petty kings that he defeated in the process of rescuing his wayward nephew, Lot.

Later the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews would call Jesus Christ "high priest after the order of Melchizedek", both high priest and king forever. In Psalm 110, King David wrote, "The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at My right hand...You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek". This psalm is referenced by our Lord Himself in Matthew 22: 41-46:

"Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet? If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did
anyone dare to ask him any more questions."

In Psalm 110, David refers to One who will be a king greater than himself, that is to say, the Messiah of Israel, seated at the right hand of Jehovah. As we learned in our course on the Psalms, taught by Pastor Rudy Blank, to be seated at the right hand of a Middle Eastern king meant to be entrusted with the full confidence and authority of that king. David also prophecies that the Messiah would be both a king and high priest, like Melchizedek.

In 2 Samuel 24:25 we read that David offered up sacrifices to God in the manner of a priest. When King Saul tried this, his sacrifices were not acceptable to God, because at that point God had withdrawn His favor from the faithless and disobedient Saul and would direct Samuel to anoint David as God's chosen king. The word "Messiah" means "anointed one". Thus, to Jewish believers in the first century, to call Jesus a high priest after the order of Melchizedek meant that although he was not a descendant of Aaron, according to the priesthood of the Old Testament, as the promised king of the lineage of David, he could offer sacrifices to God as did Melchizedek, priest of God and king of Jerusalem in Abraham's day, and as did King David himself. Like His ancestor, David, Jesus was both priest and king -- and prophet. Although David's identity as a prophet is not emphasized in the Old Testament, Psalm 110 and other psalms contain Messianic prophecies.

Congress of Lutheran Educators

Luz María took the final exam for the Genesis course early and left Thursday night with Elsy de Machado for the annual Congress of Lutheran
Educators in Barquisimeto. Luz María is national coordinator for Christian education for the Lutheran Church of Venezuela. In Barquisimeto she presented a slide show on the results of this year's vacation Bible school program. The highest levels of attendance were found in La Caramuca (92 children in total) and Tierra de Gracia
Lutheran Farm in Monagas (208 children). Volunteers from St. Louis,
Missouri, and several young men in the "seminarista" program were involved in VBS on the farm.

On Friday evening I returned to La Caramuca to prepare for preaching and leading the service at Corpus Christi on Sunday, Sept. 7, 2008.

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.

Luz Maria and I are married

So Luz Maria and I were married November 29, 2003. We had planned to travel to Maturin this past Wednesday, but instead we are trapped in a bureaucratic nightmare in Caracas.

I was told that once I had married a Venezuelan, I could immediately apply for a visa transeunte and probably get it the same day. Up to now I have been living in Venezuela on a tourist visa, which is good for only three months. That means every three months I have to briefly leave the country to get the visa renewed. In early October I took a trip to the island republic of Trinidad-Tobago, which is just 16 miles off the Venezuelan coast.

The visa transeunte is the next step toward establishing permanent residency in Venezuela. The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod field office in Caracas applied for my visa transeunte last April, but it normally takes a year for the application to be processed.

But thanks to Luz Maria, I will be able to leapfrog this process - that is, if we can make it through this week. We were told that the document verifying my work as a volunteer in Venezuela was not properly notarized. Also, the documentation of good health that I brought from the United States was not sufficient; I needed a Venezuelan certificate of health.

So we have been racing around Caracas by bus and taxi, trying to get the documents in order. I had my blood sampled in one part of the city and my heart and lungs X-rayed in another. I hope to avoid another prostate exam. Despite our best efforts, however, we won't be able to leave Caracas before Monday.

As for the wedding itself, it was a simple civil ceremony. There were about 50 guests, including members of Luz Maria's family and nearly all the members of Corpus Christi. Luz Maria's mother kept repeating "Gracias a Dios" (Thanks be to God) for her new son, and Yepcey, Luz Maria's oldest daughter, half-jokingly called me "Papa."

The next day we left Barinas for the state of Merida where the highest mountains in Venezuela are found. The place has an ethereal beauty that I can only compare to Rivendell in the "Lord of the Rings" movies or Wudan Mountain in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." Except that it is real, not a computer-enhanced image. I have attached a picture of the town plaza in the tiny village of Chachopo. Like nearly every town square in Venezuela, there is a statue of Simon Bolivar, El Libertador, in the center.

Please continue to pray for us, for mission work in Venezuela and for peaceful resolution of the country's political and economic problems. Oh, and Luz Maria says hello and thank you to all the people in Minnesota who made it possible for me to be here.