Archive: Communion on the DMZ

By Carroll Ferguson Hunt

We trooped up the barren hill squinting against sun on snow, not yet feeling the cold. Our guides, U.S. Army chaplains, warned us against gestures or loud talk, anything that could be noticed, photographed, and twisted into adverse propaganda by hostile forces stationed on three sides of Guard Post Ouellette crouching on the summit above us.

Sightseeing, we were along the demilitarized zone that sunders the Korean peninsula north from south. Seminary students and their professors peered over part of the parish for which these United Methodist ministers accept responsibility. Solemn-faced young men uniformed in khaki camouflage steered us through their hilltop workplace, but the tour didn’t take long. So much was closed to us, so many questions remained unanswered. They couldn’t even tell us the length of their tour of duty. Security risks? We?

Apparently.

One blond boy, however, who looked as if he should be studying pre-law in California, was a fountain of information compared to the others. We wondered if he was the public relations officer for the post.

“Look through here if you like,” he offered, gesturing at an impressive scope aimed at the North Korean guard house just down the slope from the glassed-in room where we clustered.

We looked and saw more khaki-clad men, North Koreans, looking back at us from just an arm’s reach away … or so it seemed when viewed through the powerful lenses. They looked better, more distant and less threatening, without the scope.

“Part of my job, should it be necessary,” our talkative guide explained, “is to call in coordinates for the artillery. Back south of here are the big guns … ”

We knew. We saw them.

What were we seeing on this snowy hilltop? A military assignment for a handful of men. What kind of men? A tumble of adjectives: brave, vulnerable, stalwart, lonely, friendly, isolated, warm and cheerful, silent and uncommunicative. All these traits were required, it appears, of the soldiers who man Guard Post Ouellette.

What, then, of the chaplains who shepherd these keepers of the line? How do they minister to men whose vigilance and daily choices mean life or death to a nation?

They looked just like any other officer out in the field, which means they don’t look much different from the ordinary soldiers. They were outfitted with khaki fatigues, helmets hung about with webbing, and warm olive-drab layers protecting them from the cold.

Can these chaplains reach through and touch the souls of the young warriors committed to their care—and having reached, touched even—can they warm and nurture those souls in the love of the Lord Jesus?

They can, and they do. We watched it and felt it, for they touched us, too.

As our tour group trooped out of the observation post where we had looked through the telescope, the rising winter wind made us eager to head down the hill toward the vehicles. But no, our chaplain hosts had a better idea. Chaplain (Lt. Col.) Joe Miller, a graduate of Asbury Theological Seminary and a member of the West Ohio Annual Conference, herded us up onto what the army calls a marksman’s nest—we would call it an observation deck. Raised, exposed, and visible, we turned our backs to the bitter wind and found ourselves facing an altar.

A tactical map of the demilitarized zone bridged a corner of railing on the marksman’s nest. On it were a small open Bible resting on a brass easel. Flanking the Bible were communion elements; wafers in a small brass container and wine in the curved metal cup that in the field dangles from a GI’s belt.

Curving round these simple items lay a chaplain’s stole; black with gold crosses embroidered near the fringed ends which fluttered in the wind. An altar, a table in the frigid wilderness.

Conversation died away as Chaplain (Captain) Steve Zinzer, another UM minister and Asbury seminary graduate, handed small cards containing a short communion ritual to the visitors and to the dozen or so men of Guard Post Ouellette who gathered with us.

The sun sank low in the sky, its red glow offering no warmth. We could see flags, South Korean, and one across the border in the north, whipping in the wind. North Korean soldiers stood outside their guard posts and watched our gathering through binoculars. What were they thinking as we grew still and bowed to pray? Did they have any idea what we were doing?

As they watched, we—visitors and soldiers together—listened to Chaplain Joe read Psalm 23.

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures … ”

Green pastures? In the midwinter snow? Can anyone dare to “lie down ” in this political hot spot?

“He leads me beside quiet waters, He restores my soul … ”

It’s true, though. The gentle imagery reminds us that green pastures and still waters sometimes have to be a condition of the soul, unrelated to and unruffled by external circumstances. And God is not limited by man’s disputed boundaries. His power to restore, to love, reaches through barbed wire, blunts blades, stills artillery.

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil … ”

For you are with me, Lord. You comfort me.

“Thou dost prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies …  ”

We stood before that table spread at the edge of hostility, danger, and death—a table He prepared using the hands and the hearts of His shepherds—and the powerful, almost palpable presence of God closed in around us like heat from a glowing fire.

Then Joe, assisted by Chaplain (Captain) Joe Fleury, a Marianist priest, served us bread and wine, symbols of the Master’s body and blood. The chaplain murmured the blessed old words to each visitor and, more important, to each GI who stood with bowed head. As he repeated “do this in remembrance of me,” he touched and warmed each pair of receiving hands, thereby saying “As He cares, I care. You are not alone.”

One of the students, bursting with joy, could not contain her awe any longer. “I want to sing,” she whispered. “I have to sing!”

Sing she did, into the face of the lowering winter sun, in an overflow of praise and gratitude to God that gave voice to what we all longed to express.

“The blood that Jesus once shed for me,

‘way back on Calvary,

the blood that sets the prisoner free,

will never lose its power.”

Time had come to move down off the mountain, to leave the men of Guard Post Ouellette to their maps, their telescopes, their weapons, and their isolation. We hugged, we wept, we fumbled for words in trying to express our encounter with God that icy afternoon. And we took a last look at the forms of the North Korean soldiers silhouetted against the snow such a few short yards away.

What did they make of our behavior in the marksman’s nest? How will they interpret their photographs, if they took any? When they report our visit to Pyengyang, what will they say about our bowed heads and our loving hugs?

Christianity was once a powerful force among the people in North Korea, even as it is now in the south. Communism claims, however, that all such superstition has been set aside, that atheism reigns. One is left assuming that the young soldiers watching our communion service know nothing of Christian worship and beliefs.

But what about old North Korean grandmothers in their seaside villages who found the Savior as young girls? Though their churches are closed and the government orders them to forget God, who knows how many of them walk along empty beaches with their grandsons teaching them with low voices about the creator God and about the love of His Savior Son, Jesus.

If so, isn’t it possible that one or two of those straight-backed, disciplined, North Korean soldiers understood our love and wept inside with joy at the sight of a fellow follower of The Way?

And if so, the American chaplains who prepared the Lord’s table, did so unaware that they fed and comforted other members of His flock that winter day.

Carroll Ferguson Hunt is a freelance writer and author of Absolutely! and From the Claws of the Dragon. She and her husband were missionaries in South Korea for 20 years with OMS International. Illustrations by staff artist Roselyn Cooper.