Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Hallelujah!
On April 2, 2023, we marched through the streets of La Caramuca in our first Palm Sunday procession since April 14, 2019. A number of our sister congregations in the Lutheran Church of Venezuela did the same.
“Hosanna! Blessed is the King of Israel, who comes in the name of the Lord!" (John 12:12-18) is the second part of the Sanctus in the liturgy we use today. Both the hosanna acclamation and the words, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” come from Psalm 118:25-26. Psalm 118 is a processional psalm celebrating God's repeated deliverance of his people through the centuries. The faithful would enter through the gates of the Temple in Jerusalem with palms to receive the priestly blessing of verse 26. These words of the psalm also were understood in a messianic sense, like the Old Testament lesson for Palm Sunday, Zechariah 9:9-12.
On Wednesday of Holy Week, members of Corpus Christi Lutheran Church, our neighboring congregation in Barinas, presented a dramatization by their youth of what they had learned about the institution of the Lord’s Supper. Our young people were invited to participate as well. The abbreviated Passion play included Jesus washing His disciples’ feet as recorded in John 13:1-17. Following that were the words of institution, recorded in Matthew 26:17-29; Mark 14:12-25; Luke 22:7-23; and 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, also were included. We are grateful to Pastor Raimundo Brito, and his wife and deaconess, Sandra, for arranging this event. Their daughter, Sara, brought Easter eggs.
I should explain that this was not the service of the Eucharist dressed up as a modern Jewish Passover seder. This is an important point for us, because surrounding our Lutheran mission are neo-pentecostal sects that teach true Christians should not celebrate Christmas or Easter according to “man-made traditions,” but should observe Old Testament festivals like Sukkot, the Feast of Booths. Some even say Christians should observe Hanukkah, which is not a holiday ordained in the Old Testament, but originated in the intertestamental period. Our role as Lutherans is not to collaborate in the confusion, but in the freedom of the gospel, we approach the Eucharist with all reverence and all clarity.
During the existence of the Tabernacle and later of the Temple in Jerusalem, the focus of the Passover festival was the sacrifice of the lamb, which not only recalled the deliverance from slavery in Egypt (Exodus 12:1-36; Exodus 13:1-16) but also pointed to the sacrifice of the Messiah (Isaiah 53). In our Lord's time, Passover was one of the three pilgrimages, the name given to the three festivals during which the Jewish people used to make a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem and offer offerings and sacrifices. The others were Shavuot, also called Pentecost, and Sukkot.
Each family large enough to fully consume a young lamb was to offer one for sacrifice in the Temple in Jerusalem on the evening of the 14th day of the month of Nisan, and eat it that night, which was Nisan 15. If the family was too small to finish eating the entire offering at one time, an offering was made for a group of families. There could be none of the meat left in the morning. The slaughter of the lamb took place in the atrium of the Temple of Jerusalem. The slaughter could be carried out by a layman, although the rituals related to blood and fat had to be carried out by a priest.
This all came to an end with the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 AD. Today, in the absence of the Temple, no sacrifices are offered or eaten at the seder. Rather, a set of Biblical and rabbinic passages dealing with the Passover sacrifice is recited after the evening prayer service on Nisan 14, and is celebrated with the zeroa, a symbolic food. placed on the seder plate (but not eaten), which is usually a roasted leg bone (or a chicken wing or neck).
The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was instituted in the context of the Old Testament Passover but it is not the same. Christ, our Passover Lamb (1 Corinthians 5:6-8) has been slain, once and for all. We would not and could not offer another sacrifice. We now celebrate only the Lamb's own feast as instituted and ordained by Him. For us Lutherans, the Paschal Lamb is not a memory. He lives!
We celebrated Easter Sunday with the baptism of Pedro Jesús Gael Santana Marquina. Little Pedro happens to be Luz Maria’s 14th grandchild. He was baptized with a cast on one leg because of being born with a malformed foot. Thanks be to God, he received the necessary orthopedic operation and later the sacrament of baptism.
For the Gospel lesson, I read all of the last chapter of Mark’s Gospel, which is the succinct account of the empty tomb, the post-Resurrection appearances of Jesus, the Great Commission and the Ascension. Mark 16:16 is a key passage used in the Small Catechism and in our baptimal rite.
“What benefits does Baptism give? It works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare. Which are these words and promises of God? Christ our Lord says in the last chapter of Mark: Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned” (Luther’s Small Catechism with Explanations, Concordia Publishing House, 2017).
Titus 3:5 was the special baptismal verse for Pedro Jesús. “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Spirit.” God uses baptism as a means to transmit and seal to the believer the inestimable benefits of salvation. The baptized is born anew to eternal life. As is implied in the dialogue between the Lord and Peter in John 13:6-10, but the renewing thus begun by the Holy Spirit continues throughout the life of the Christian until completion in our own resurrection.
For we have this promise in Romans 6:3-5, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with Him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His.”
News from the chicken coop
Nothing gets you moving in the morning like the cry of prairie hawks circling above the chicken coop. We did some renovation this month to improve protection against predators and make more room for our growing flock. (By “we”, I mean Luz Maria’s grandsons, Eduar and Ignacio Garrido. Eduar turned 16 on April 26). We now have 8 hens, four of which are laying, four roosters (we need to get rid of three; males are expendable), and 35 young chickens. A dozen eggs costs about $3.21, while less than a penny per kilo of chicken feed keeps our hens laying four to six eggs per day.
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