Today is a day of memories for me. One of grateful memories of the special moments that link me to the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. I shall never forget them.

The first is of the 18th general council which took place in July and August 1959 in the city of São Paulo. The opening and closing services of worship were celebrated in the sanctuary of the church where I am now pastor. At that time I was in my second year at theological seminary and it was for me a privilege to participate in that historic moment. Two things in particular stand out in my mind. The first was the great procession of the delegates as they entered the central aisle of the church. There were over three hundred delegates from five continents, many in the traditional dress of their countries. The second thing that impressed me was the preaching of Dr John Mackay, then president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, in his sermon at the opening service: "Let us remember God".

The second special moment is of the 21st general council held in Ottawa, Canada, from August 17 to 27 1982. I was there as a delegate for the first time, and I will never forget the opening worship at the Dominion Chalmers Church and the privilege of hearing for the first time Dr Jürgen Moltmann as he delivered his sermon on the theme of the general council: "For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory".

The third moment is right now: the privilege of delivering the sermon at this opening service of worship of the Alliance's 23rd general council, and from this historic pulpit. What a privilege!

To the Lord of glory, let there be given all glory!

Permit me to begin my message by calling to mind a page from the Old Testament. The central figure is Jeremiah the prophet. Some refer to him as the weeping prophet because of his book of Lamentations. I think we would understand him better by starting with his name, for it is his name that speaks of his calling and work: Jeremiah, meaning "justice that saves".

As a prophet commissioned by God, one day Jeremiah received instructions that were indeed strange. He was told to purchase for himself a loincloth of the finest white linen. The prophet obeyed the divine command, but it was not long before he was told to put on the loincloth. Then came a new directive: "Take the loincloth that you bought and are wearing and go now to the Euphrates, and hide it there". So Jeremiah hid the loincloth by the River Euphrates, just as the Lord had directed him. After many days, Jeremiah received a new message that completed the strange instructions: "Go now to the Euphrates, and take from there the loincloth that I commanded you to hide there". Jeremiah did as he was told, and dug out the loincloth from the place where he had buried it. But, as could not have been otherwise, the loincloth was ruined; it was good for nothing.

Behind this strange and unusual story, there is an entire divine pedagogy. The loincloth had not been made to be buried, but to be worn. It had been fashioned to adorn and support the body. The episode dramatized the message that the prophet should deliver to the people: even as had been done with the white loincloth of fine linen, so also the people had buried the fundamental values that confer beauty and dignity upon a people - among those values, especially that of justice. This is the heart of Jeremiah's prophetic message: the God of saving justice.

Is this not, perhaps, a living parable for our own times? For we also have buried the white linen loincloth of justice. We have buried it, not at the edge but in the very currents of the rivers, in the depths of the seas, in the earth's abysses and in the extremities of outer space, we have buried justice in the cities and in the fields, in the deserts and in the forests; we have buried justice in the valleys and in the mountains. It is no wonder that our world is being changed more and more into a world without dignity, without grace and without beauty.

When the first astronauts saw the earth from above, they exclaimed in wonder: "It is blue! How beautiful it is!" But our planet is becoming less and less blue, less and less beautiful. When we look at our world through the eyes of realism and truth, we are obliged to confess that it is becoming more and more ugly and dirty.

Wherever we look, we see hunger; and hunger is ugly and dirty.
We see squalor; and squalor is ugly and dirty.
We see poverty: and poverty is ugly and dirty
We see disease; and disease is ugly and dirty
We see epidemics; and epidemics are ugly and dirty.
We see wars; and wars are ugly and dirty.
We see drugs; and drugs are ugly and dirty.
We see violence; and violence is ugly and dirty.

But modern life is not only ugly and dirty. It is becoming more and more like an unsupportable weight pressing down upon us.

Wherever we look we see people weighed down by shackles and chains that make life cruel and oppressive.
Wherever we look, we see slavery of every sort. All slavery is cruel and oppressive.
We see prejudice; all prejudice is cruel and oppressive.
We see intolerance; all intolerance is cruel and oppressive.
We see inquisitions; all inquisitions are cruel and oppressive.
We see dictatorships; all dictatorships are cruel and oppressive.
We see divisions; all divisions are cruel and oppressive.
We see exploitation of every kind, especially economic exploitation, and every kind of exploitation is cruel and oppressive.

Now a world that is becoming more and more ugly and dirty, cruel and oppressive, can only be an unhappy world. Modern life, in spite of our every effort to the contrary, is dominated by unhappiness. Unhappiness and tears. We smile less and less, and weep more and more. And what is worse, we weep the tears of those who have abandoned all hope. It is the weeping of the powerless heart in the presence of so much pain, so much suffering, so much poverty, so much moral corruption, so much injustice.

Without the loincloth of justice, our world is a world that is condemned to become more and more ugly, cruel and unhappy.

We can say, therefore, that the crisis of our world is, in truth, a crisis of beauty. It is a world in which there exists not only the hunger for bread, which can be satisfied. There is also the hunger for beauty, which can never be fully satisfied. In the beautiful maxim of José Carlos Mariátegui, our world needs "not only the conquest of bread but also the conquest of beauty"

Oh, that at this assembly we might all take home with us the firm conviction that justice has to do with bread, yes, but has much more to do with beauty! Because it is in this dimension that justice becomes converted into the holy and spiritual commitment we take upon ourselves to transform a world marked by ugliness and death into a world of beauty and life. How can we do this? By a double effort: the affirmation of life and the struggle against the powers of death.

In 1991, in Rio de Janeiro, the Earth Summit took place. The event was known as "ECO-Ninety-two". More than 120 heads of state gathered there, but they used it as a runway in a fashion show in which to display themselves. Nothing more. It should have been the event of the age.

Five years have gone by but what has happened as an outcome of the meeting? Who remembers it? It is noteworthy that in the central square of the place where the event was held, a symbolic tree was planted. It remained there throughout the meeting and upon its branches were hung messages sent by children from all over the world.

But it seems as though the tree of life was forgotten as soon as the Earth Summit was over, and with it the life of future generations. This is a good symbol of our time and for our time. In the Bible, the tree of life is at the centre of God's creation. There it is in the middle of the garden, and there it is in the main square of the new Jerusalem. Always the tree of life. And always at the centre. This is how it should be in the journey from the garden to the city. The tree of life was planted in the heart of history. But the great tragedy - the very sin of humankind - is the ease with which the tree of life is forgotten, and the indifference in the face of the powers of death that conspire against life.

Life, and not death, is the last word of history. It is for this reason that Paul, when speaking of Christ, says that He is God's great Yes to life. In the same manner, we too are called in Christ to say yes to life. And in so doing, we are making a radical and profound decision for the God of life. Theologians of spirituality call this loyalty and fidelity to life, whose first and most radical expression is justice.

Our theme, that is, the theme of this general council "Break the chains of injustice" is a call to justice. But what does it mean to call for justice in a world like ours, today?

1. First of all, it means a call to repentance.

On one point, we are all in accord: we are now living in times of radical crisis. It is a crisis of civilization, a crisis of the global meaning of life; of the fundamental meaning of our culture. In abstract terms it means a crisis of a guiding paradigm. In concrete terms, it is a crisis of the greatest dream and utopia that have given meaning to the modern world in the last centuries. What was this dream? It was the dream of unlimited development, of the will to power expressed in forms of domination over others, over entire peoples, and over nature.

But this dream has ended in a great nightmare: we have plundered nature, we have produced poverty and squalor, and we have degraded the human being.

We have always allowed ourselves to be carried away by the dreams of the great redemptive revolutions: the scientific revolution, the technological revolution, the capitalist revolution, the socialist revolution and the cybernetic revolution. All these revolutions exact a dear price in terms of human iniquity. Millions of human beings, values and fundamental resources have been sacrificed or lost along the way.

We must have the courage to confess that we have failed. We must have the dignity to confess our "mea culpa" and we must abandon the great illusion that we can change this state of things by ourselves or by our own capacity. Let us have the courage to be sincere and let us confess that what we need is a profound spiritual revolution, and that without it there is no hope for us nor for our world. We must have the courage to listen anew to the challenge of the Galilean: "Repent and believe in the good news". We need the courage to repent because repentance is above all a change in attitude. And change of attitude begins in the heart. For this reason, the new covenant which comes by way of justice must come first of all in our heart, because in the heart are to be found the roots of all aggressions, of all conflicts; in short, of the very sin that breaks the original harmony between all living beings. Let us begin with a revolution of the spirit. Let us begin with the heart. What does it mean to call for justice today?

2. It means a call to mercy.

There is no hope for us and for our world unless we are capable, all of us, of the most magnificent and evangelical of all gestures: the gesture of mercy. We are called to exercise mercy. Here the term "mercy" should be understood correctly. In the expression of Jon Sobrino: "We do not speak here simply of 'mercy' but of 'the hope principle'."

Consequently, mercy is not just a beautiful sentiment of compassion; neither is mercy to be confused with "good works" however praiseworthy they may be; and much less with paternalistic attitudes to alleviate individual or collective needs. The mercy principle is an act of love - one sacrificial love that descends to the very depths of pain and suffering in order to redeem the victim. It is of this principle that Jesus speaks in the parable of the Good Samaritan, when he tells about that man who acted from a heart filled with mercy.

Our world applauds, or at the most, tolerates "works of mercy", but it cannot tolerate a prophetic attitude motivated by the mercy principle. When mercy penetrates history as justice, it must confront those who are not ruled by the mercy principle. History is filled with priests and Levites who ignore mercy. And what is worse, history has been led by those who represent the anti-mercy principle. Therefore, the mission of the church can never be restricted to "works of mercy" but it must be ruled by the mercy principle. The world likes, as so it seems we also like, the church that practices "works of mercy", but we either do not like, or we have difficulty accepting the church that is motivated by the mercy principle. The first kind of church is satisfied with mere gestures of good will. But the second kind of church struggles and gives itself for the love of justice.

For this reason, our hearts and the heart of the church today must be filled with mercy. What does it mean to call for justice today?

3. It means a call to solidarity.

For many it may seem cynical to speak of solidarity in the world of today. There is, in fact, a kind of disenchantment with solidarity, a great disillusionment. Hugo Assman, the Latin American theologian of liberation, speaks of a kind of "blockage of solidarity" in the world of today. He does not refer to a kind of generic insensitivity, but to a true spirit of Cain - a "Cain-ization" that dominates the human species. To be more specific, the two-thirds or three-fourths of humanity that are not sheltered by the ruling powers of the planet, cannot find a roof over their heads anywhere. They represent a kind of excess or surplus of human mass. Is this an exaggeration? Suffice it to look at the way our world treats the "excluded", the undesirables that it considers to be such a nuisance. Contrary to Assman, however, Leonardo Boff continues to be optimistic when he speaks of solidarity. Quoting Boff literally: "Solidarity is important at every level, especially from the international perspective". He concludes in this way: "Instead of globalizing the economy and the forms of production, we must globalize solidarity".

This may seem utopian. And it is. But the utopian is also a part of reality and not a flight from reality. It is simply the discovery that we have not arrived at the close of history, that the outcome of history has not yet been decided, and that we should and can work for a more happy human conviviality and relationship. Our world truly needs solidarity. We all need each other, and we all can help one another and everyone everywhere. The history of the relations between north and south so crucial in the world of today has been a sad story. But it does not necessarily have to be this way. It can change, and by one way or another, it will change. The north can and should help the south so that a minimum of dignity and justice may be possible there; and the south can be converted into a great spiritual reserve for the north. What is important is to recuperate the idea and ideal of one human family.

I conclude with a modern legend of spiritual dimensions, which well illustrates these reflections.

Once there was an elderly and holy monk who was visited by Christ in a dream. The Lord invited the monk to walk with him in the garden. The monk accepted with enthusiasm and curiosity. After they had walked for a while in the garden, the monk asked: "Lord, when you were walking about in Palestine, you once said that you would return one day in all of your power and glory. You have delayed a long time, Lord! When are you coming?" After a moment of silence, which seemed an eternity to the monk, the Lord replied: "My brother, when my justice in the universe and in nature becomes obvious, when it gets under your skin and into your heart; when it becomes the highest meaning of all things; when it turns into the strongest possible indignation against perversities of power; when it becomes the most insatiable possible thirst for life and liberty; when the link between the hunger for God and the hunger for bread becomes the strongest possible; when my justice becomes as real as my presence here and now, and when this consciousness becomes so much a part of your body and soul that you are unconscious of it any more; when this truth pervades you so completely that you no longer need to ask in curiosity the question you just did, then, and only then, my brother, will I have returned in all my power and glory".