This hope to which we are called is an inclusive hope. Certainly the Church itself is called to live out an inclusive love that values all persons and welcomes their gifts. This inclusive love should embrace all those in need. It must reach out both to our victims and to our enemies, to those linked to us through the memories of wrongs done, and hurts inflicted, on one side or the other. That is an understatement.
Humanity is marked by sin, as any newspaper's woeful catalogue of social catastrophes makes clear.
The measure of our Christian hope is that it was born, and has flourished, in the face of rejection and death. In the 50th year of its foundation, the WCC will have the theme of Jubilee as an underlying motif for its Eighth Assembly. Both actions are understood as the restoration of something which, through misfortune or aggressive behaviour by others, has been lost. The Jubilee Year tradition echoes many aspects of the assembly theme. It speaks about the God to whom we turn.