Lutherans & their tea

Lutheran, The, Nov 1999 by Schmalenberger, Jerry

Sharing 'mate' in Argentina and Uruguay connects cultures

We had driven there on a soaked, red-mud road, sliding from side to side in a worn car. Now we sat around the-kitchen table of-Hugo -and DoraMuller's bungalow, situated on 20 acres of farmland in Colonia Caayari in the mountainous Misiones Province of northeastern Argentina. The nate (mah-tay) ritual was under way. The Mullers' daughter, Lilioma, passed the gourd filled with yerba mate tea leaves clockwise around the table.

The second time the gourd came around, I was passed by because I hadn't drained the silver tube-like strainer/straw with an audible dry sound that signaled I had consumed all the liquid.

Drinking mate reflects the core of Brazilian culture in Argentina and Uruguay. The elaborate liturgy is really about a sharing that overcomes the obstacles of ethnicity and class for gathered guests. We learned that Argentines consume an average of 11 pounds of mate per person a year and that Uruguayans drink twice as much.

Hugo Muller, president of the Lutheran mission church there, told me about the congregation: "It's simple and easy. We want our pastor to visit us, add a personal touch, provide worship twice a month, call on the unchurched and organize some fellowship." The ELCA continues to support the outreach ministry of Argentina's 7,000-member United Evangelical Lutheran Church-of which this mission is a part.

Later that evening we had mate at the San Martin home of Juan Nielsen, president of the Misiones Parish, which includes several preaching points and the mother church in Obera, Olaus Petri Lutheran Church. Swedish Lutherans who immigrated there through Brazil started the church in 1891. The congregation built a small cement block and brick building in San Martin that serves as a sanctuary and community center.

This wasn't my first introduction to the national drink of Argentina and Uruguay. In Buenos Aires, where one-- third of Argentina's population lives, I noticed students passing the gourd and straw around the room when I lectured at the Instituto Superior Evangelico de Estudios Teologicos. This seminary, where most of the 26 Lutheran clergy were educated, also represents seven other denominations. The 150 students work all day because of financial difficulties and take theological classes at night.

No mate for communion

I witnessed the mate also when Angel Furlan-the Argentinian church's president-shared the gourd at his table with his wife, Isabel. On the trip to northern Argentina's one-and-a-half-mile-wide Iguazu Falls, the drink seemed to be used to propel us onward in our borrowed car. Iguazu Falls is the site of the Jesuit mission ruins of the San Ignatio Mini, one of 30 established among the Guarani Indians. Raul Denuncio, a pastor, and Beatriz S. de Farre drank the hot tea while accelerating the speed of their conversation and the car in which we rode.

After preaching at Olaus Petri through my translator, de Farre, I was relieved to see Juana Corigliano, former president of the Argentinian church, serve communion with bread and wine, not mate. But after a series of evening lectures for clergy on the subjects of grief, loss and discipleship, the time again arrived for their national drink. A bus ride took us to Posadas, the county seat of

Misiones Province, the largest producer of the tea. There we did the mate ritual with Luis Alvarez, pastor of San Pedro, a 40-year-old Lutheran congregation with a strong German heritage. Alvarez came to Argentina from his native Chile after being tortured during military rule there. In this parish with logging and lumber as a major industry, people struggle to do a relevant social ministry. The congregation provides a boarding school for college students. The church also constructed a system of safe drinking water in the Don Santiago suburb and established a home for unwed mothers.

Then I went to Uruguay and had mate at the Ecumenical Institute in the heart of that country's capital, Montevideo, where half of Uruguay's 3 million people live. Located on the east bank of the Rio de la Plata across from Buenos Aires, Montevideo is where Lutheran mission work has struggled for many years.

A Lutheran congregation worships at the institute, which relocated and is now called the Lutheran Center. There the mildly stimulating tea is served following Sunday worship. I met a young woman named Rossina at worship who told me that as an inactive Roman Catholic, she had studied the Reformation in her high school history class. She came to the center to learn more. Denuncio, pastor of the congregation that worships at the center, gave Rossina a copy of Lutheran Christians and Their Beliefs. She was confirmed and now helps at a mission outpost.

Later, after we filled the mate thermos from the customary hot water dispenser beside a filling station's air hose, we drove to San Juan Mission. Denuncio, an energetic and mission-- minded leader, has baptized nearly 80 people in the mission's four-year life. These baptisms were held in a lean-to on the side of a modest home. The pastor conducts worship on Sunday mornings, and in the afternoons Rossina conducts Sunday school and youth ministry programs.