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GA06052
Music and a message highlight ecumenical worship service by Mike Ferguson
BIRMINGHAM, June 17 * Buoyed by and boogying to music from around the world, Presbyterians at the 217th General Assembly worshiped on Saturday evening, led by the president of the World Council of Churches (WCC).
The evening's preacher was the Rev. Bernice Powell Jackson, WCC president and ordained clergy with the United Church of Christ. She reminded worshipers that "God looks on the inside" today just as God did in choosing David * whom she called "a smelly shepherd boy" * as king.
Jackson said the way God sees what is inside us reminded her of children's coats designed to be reversible. No matter what way the child puts on her jacket, it looks good. There is no inside-out.
"It's just as usable and beautiful one way as the other," she said. "Instead of the rough seams you'd expect, you find beautiful finished seams. Instead of a baby in a manger, you find the Savior of all time. Instead of Good Friday, you find Easter Sunday."
While looking inside young David's heart when it came time to select a new king, Jackson said, God saw three qualities: courage, youth and love.
God detected enough courage in David to take on Saul and Goliath "and any other obstacle in his way, knowing God was on his side," she said. That same courage, she noted, was present in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez.
Plenty of young people have demonstrated the same courage as David, including high school students who participated in the Soweto uprising in South Africa 30 years ago and American college students who rode freedom buses during the civil rights movement.
David developed a love for God simply by hanging out in God's creation with the flock of sheep he minded, she said, gazing up each night at "the enormity of creation" when he viewed the stars and planets.
"If we loved God like that," she asked, "would we allow the desecration of the Earth?"
God is not done with making unexpected choices, she said. What young person, right here and now, is God choosing to use? Jackson wondered.
The offering taken went to a project important to the WCC president * an internship program that trains young people about the importance of ecumenism.
Before and during worship, Jorge Lockward and Vanessa Davila-Luciana blended their talents to teach worshipers songs from Korea, Sweden, Paraguay, Nigeria, Brazil and South Africa.
At one point Lockward, the worship team leader for the 9th Assembly of the World Council of Churches held this spring in Brazil, urged the crowd to sing a verse written in Spanish with as much gusto as they had just sung a verse in English. When the crowd did as he asked, he smiled and said, "There, you see? Nothing broke inside."
In all, leaders from 12 denominations or church organizations played roles in the colorful, musical, ecumenical worship service.
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