Reconciliation 'about wrestling with privilege', says Campbell
November 9, 1999
CLEVELAND—Congregations in Cleveland and nearby communities welcomed ecumenical guest preachers from across the United States and around the world, among the more than 1,000 people including many from northeastern Ohio expected to participate in the NCC’s 50th Anniversary Celebration here Nov. 9-12. Together they prayed for the future of ecumenical witness. Many churches rang their bells at noon Sunday as a symbol of their commitment to unity.
The Rev. Michael Cobbler, soloist, and Miki Kornell, cantor, offer
"The Chicago Jazz Mass" at Old Stone Church. |
The parties may not be ready for reconciliation Dr. Campbell said, but they are ready to take steps toward it. She described the upcoming service as a tremendously significant moment for both sides, who for 50 years have lived with the reality of massacre.
Reconciliation is the ecumenical task, she declared in a sermon based on the parable of the prodigal son, the self-righteous older brother, and the forgiving father. Reconciliation is about wrestling with privilege. The self-righteousness of the older son has been a lesson to teach all who claim a birthright and are unaware of the need of God’s gift of forgiveness. Equality is God’s way; it is rooted in understanding that all are worthy in God’s eyes.
Retiring after nine years as NCC General Secretary, Dr. Campbell said the story of the prodigal is as relevant today as when Jesus first told it. "It is a story about reconciliation and forgiveness," she said, a necessary element, perhaps the essential glue, in the good society."
Similarly, Dr. Campbell described the ecumenical movement as about seeing all God’s people. "The search for rapprochement takes us out of ourselves and focuses us on the gifts and graces of others. Therein lies healing and hope."
"Unity in Christ, Gift and Calling," the NCC 50th Anniversary theme, was the focus of the Rev. Dr. Gordon Sommers’ greetings to Antioch Baptist Church, Cleveland. Dr. Sommers, Bethlehem, Pa., is a leader in the Moravian Church and a NCC past president.
"Unity in Christ is a gift we already enjoy. It is also a calling to fulfill," Dr. Sommers said. "It is our responsibility to express this unity to a world that is broken, divided, alienated. How can we do that apart from unity among those who are entrusted with God’s wholeness?"
Dr. Sommers has coordinated the NCC’s 50th anniversary activities. He thanked Antioch Baptist’s pastor, Dr. Marvin McMickle, for serving on the Cleveland Site Planning Committee. "You are Cleveland," Dr. Sommers told the congregation. "Thank you for your hospitality to the NCC, 50 years ago and now. And thank you for the good weather this time around," he quipped, referring to a snowstorm that blanketed Cleveland with 20 inches of snow at the time of the Council’s constituting convention in 1950.
Preacher-playwright-composer the Rev. Al Carmines told worshippers at Pilgrim Congregational Church, "Fifty years ago the NCC came into being and has been making people laugh and cry ever since." The 90-minute service featured The Pilgrim Jazz Trio and Pastor Carmines’ preaching and singing from the piano.
Pastor Carmines said that for 63 years he has been moving from darkness into light, along the way realizing that art and faith meet along the same road. He demonstrated this concept of oneness by singing Broadway show tunes "My Funny Valentine" and "The Story of Love" along with original compositions. The service concluded with the singing of "Make Us One." Pastor Carmines is in Cleveland to participate in "Artistry as Gift and Calling," one of the anniversary celebration programs.
The Reverend Dr. Morgan W. Tann was the guest speaker for the Ecumenical Witness Sunday service at St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, where the Rev. Dr. Audie V. Simon is pastor. His subject was "Steps toward Thanksgiving." The message challenged the congregation to a conscious awareness of the presence of God, at work among people throughout the world.
Pastor Simon indicated that the St. Paul congregation has made a real effort to serve the community in this rapidly changing area of the city. Ecumenical efforts by several neighborhood churches including St. Paul are resulting in new child and elder care facilities, recreational grounds and increased social planning services. The 85-year old congregation, with more than 500 members, has the distinction of being the First Church of the Cleveland District and Dr. Simon is the Presiding Elder.
Through the NCC and Church World Service, congregations work directly with people in need, said the Rev. Dr. Rodney I. Page, New York, deputy general secretary for Church World Service and Witness.
Dr. Page preached the "Ecumenical Witness Sunday" sermon at St. Mark Presbyterian Church in northeast Cleveland. Church World Service assists people by responding to disasters, resettling refugees and providing resources to aid people in need throughout the world.
Through Church World Service, the people of St. Mark’s share their resources in many ways, Dr. Page told the 150 worshipers. In Vietnam, "you have dug hundreds of water wells," he said. "In China, you have supplied teachers of English through the Amity Foundation." Dr. Page also credited St. Mark’s for helping supply blankets in Iraq, food in North Korea and homes in Honduras. The congregation helps resettle refugees "in all areas of the world," and its gifts helped rebuild some 100 churches in the United States destroyed by fire, he added.
"Your church is a partner with 34 other denominations to work and pray and serve together," he said. "We are people with hope and compassion. That hope and compassion is shown every time we reach out to others." St. Mark’s interim minister, the Rev. Rosalind Powell, said, "It’s in relationships we actually come together and experience unity. We indeed are in ministry with our brothers and sisters throughout the world."
The Rev. Eric C. Shafer, Chicago, preached at Christ Episcopal Church in Shaker Heights, Ohio. He also led an adult education session on the "full communion" relationship proposed between the Episcopal Church USA and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Shafer is director of the ELCA’s Department for Communication and chair of the NCC’s Communication Commission.
In his sermon, based on the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids, Pastor Shafer likened the NCC to a marriage, since the marriage image is often used in Christianity to describe the relationship between Christ and the church. But, he added, "perhaps the marriage image is not a good one for the NCC. The image of `family’ would be a better one—not a sanitized or traditional family, but one as dysfunctional as many our own families."
Pastor Shafer added that, since the Council's work is so public, "our dysfunction becomes very publicly known, but, whatever we do and whenever we agree or disagree, we are united in Christ's love for Christ's church. And our common goal of unity in Christ's love for humankind."
He described three areas of NCC ministry, Church World Service and Witness, Bible translation, and the Burned Churches Fund. He concluded by saying that the gospel lesson "tells us to be ready, that Christ is coming again but that it may not be soon. While we are waiting, we band together in organizations like the NCC to do the work of Christ here in the USA and around the world, so that we can make a common witness to our faith in Jesus Christ and Christ's love for the people of this world."
At Covenant Community Church in Akron, Ohio, Barbara George, New York, told worshippers, "Promoting Christian unity is not an add-on to the church’s usual list of activities. Ecumenism is an integral part of the life and work of the church and must be central to all the church is and does." Ms. George serves as director NCC of Ecumenical Networks.
She said, "The ministry of ecumenism is an immense task which we must not refuse and which we cannot carry out alone. The call to unity is the most profound invitation from our God to be holy and make real the wholeness of our God for all."
One of the first anniversary arts offerings was the "Chicago Jazz Mass," offered Sunday evening at the Old Stone Church, Cleveland. The series "Artistry as Gift and Calling" is being offered as a complementary salutation to the educational spirit of the NCC’s 50th Anniversary Celebration, and includes liturgy, drama, instrumental and vocal performances, storytelling, poetry, art, lectures and more (Nov. 7-12).
Tuesday morning, Nov. 9, the NCC 50th Anniversary’s first official act was worship, focused on the NCC’s Bible-related work.
For the first time, churchgoers have a translation of the Bible that can be used by all three main Christian traditions, New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) translation leader the Rev. Dr. Bruce Metzger told worshipers today as the 50th anniversary celebration of the National Council of Churches kicked off.
"We now have a translation that can be used by Protestants, Roman Catholics and our Orthodox brothers and sisters," Dr. Metzger said of the NRSV, published in 1990.
"We believe we have fulfilled the mandates with which we were charged," he added, "to improve accuracy, clarity and euphony—how the text sounds when spoken aloud—and to make the language more inclusive in its references to gender."
But another theologian and NCC leader said the NRSV is still not a satisfactory translation and called for more work.
"The difficulty of the NRSV is that all the translators were white," said the Rev. Dr. Randall Bailey of the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, a member of the NCC’s Executive Board. Bailey said the failure of the translation committee to include people of color meant that biblical emphases on liberation and empowerment of the oppressed were omitted in the translation process.
Dr. Metzger, noting that the NCC program that produced the NRSV is called Bible Translation and Utilization, said the new translation helps churches and Christians "be carried through difficult times by Scripture." Utilization, he continued, means "applying yourself to the text and applying the text to yourself."
For many Christians, that is still not possible, Dr. Bailey said, because concepts such as patriarchy are still prevalent in the NRSV and understandings of Jesus as liberator are underplayed. "Those who have been silenced must be given voice and the fact that Jesus was a liberator must be understood, even if we lose sight of it now and then," he said.
Dr. Bailey said that some of the royalties from the NRSV are being used to fund consultations on how patriarchy is still overemphasized in the new translation and on how the ideological beliefs of translators slant their translations.
He said some of the royalty money is also being used to fund theological education scholarships for people of color so there will be adequate racial ethnic biblical translators to work on future translations of the Bible.
As the NCC’s 50th Anniversary Celebration continues, participants are celebrating the NCC's heritage, both past and present at Tuesday’s Anniversary Welcome Luncheon. The program includes recognition of the NCC’s 35 Protestant and Orthodox member communions; "Sketches from the Journey," a review of the NCC’s history; introduction of past presidents and general secretaries, and comments from several founders, including African Methodist Episcopal Zion Bishop J. Clinton Hoggard and United Methodist Bishop James K. Mathews. The Hon. Michael R. White, Mayor of Cleveland, is host.
South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, scheduled to deliver the keynote address at the Welcome Luncheon, had to send regrets a few days ago when he was scheduled for prostate surgery in Atlanta the same day. He sent his "heartiest congratulations" to the NCC "on "reaching such a noteworthy milestone," and said he was "heartbroken that I cannot be present with you in the flesh." Archbishop Tutu thanked the NCC, which he first encountered in 1972, especially for its "love and caring most wonderfully in the exhilarating and daunting days of the anti-apartheid struggle.Today we are free. We are democratic. We are non-racial and non-sexist."
Tuesday's program also includes a private "Inspiration in Music" concert by the Cleveland Orchestra, followed by a panel discussion including a composer, a conductor and two theologians. Their assignment: to explore sources of inspiration in music and reflect on how to listen to secular music in ways that give it a spiritual direction. The Hon. Jane L. Campbell, Vice President of the Board of County Commissioners, Cuyahoga County, and NCC General Secretary Joan B. Campbell's daughter, will bring greetings to the NCC.
Rounding out the opening day are a host of forums and special events, including "Gospel, Culture and Music: The Impact of Rock and Roll on America;" "The Churches' Commitment to Public Education at the Edge of a New Century;" "Theology and Ecumenism;" "Living Faithfully in America: A Multifaith Conversation," and an Environmental Justice Tour.
Wednesday's program will include two services of worship, Opening Worship (8:30 a.m.) and, at noon, a "Service of Reconciliation and Remembrance for Survivors and U.S. Veterans of No Gun Ri," a massacre of Korean civilians that took place during the early days of the Korean War.
"The Great Conversation" Wednesday evening will be a concentrated time of envisioning ecumenism's future and will include participants from Roman Catholic, Evangelical and Pentecostal faith streams along with leaders from the Protestant and Orthodox traditions now part of the National Council of Churches. Eight forums, the opening of the annual meeting of the NCC's General Assembly the Council's top legislative meeting, the Jubilee CROP WALK and Celebration and several caucus meetings also are scheduled for Wednesday.
Related stories / files
Ecumenical Witness Sunday offers foretaste of celebration
No Gun Ri survivors, vets to meet Nov. 10
Anniversary theme expresses renewed hope for unity
Team meets challenge of planning ecumenical worship
Artistry as Gift and Calling
