wfn.org | WCC ASSEMBLY FEATURE: Be careful what you pray for*

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World Council of Churches - Feature
Contact: + 41 22 791 6153 +41 79 507 6363 media@wcc-coe.org
For immediate release - 14/09/2005

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU PRAY FOR*..

By Simon Oxley (*)

Free photos available, see below

''The theme of the upcoming 9th Assembly of the World Council of Churches
(WCC) is a prayer: God, in your grace, transform the world. But perhaps we
ought to ask the question 'What would we do if God actually answered that
prayer?' Or 'Dare we pray for transformation?'

Our immediate reaction might be to rejoice. The world does need to be
transformed. The monstrous evil of poverty that destroys the lives of so
many could be defeated. Everyone could enjoy clean water, sufficient food
and an education. Trade could be fair with no one's labour being exploited. Killer diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis could be eradicated. The
spread of HIV/AIDS could be halted and effective and affordable treatment
be provided for all. Political and economic corruption could be curtailed
and we could cease to rely on armed force to make others do our bidding.

All that is possible now. The transformation required is that of our
political will. But would we really rejoice?

None of that can happen without us being changed too. Some of us are very
comfortable with our style of life - our food, our clothes, our entertainment, our cars. We can even convince ourselves that we deserve these things.
We will have to let go and give back our unfair shares of resources and
power. Our attitudes and behaviour will have to be transformed, and we may
not like it.

> Praying for radical changes

The transformation of the world cannot happen painlessly through charity -
by those who have being more generous to those who do not have. It is a
matter of justice. In recent years, there has been discussion in the
ecumenical movement about 'restorative justice' - the kind of justice that
works to put right the wrong that was done.

However, the Assembly theme and biblical conceptions of justice take us
beyond this. We should think of God's justice as transformative justice.
Justice that goes further than punishing the offender and putting wrongs
right towards creating that which is completely new.

Jesus spoke of this as the kingdom of God. Each time we use the Lord's
Prayer we pray: "Your kingdom come / your will be done / on earth as it is
in heaven". We are so used to these words that we can easily forget the
radical change for which we pray.

Praying God, in your grace, transform the world means being open to
transformation for believers, churches and the ecumenical movement itself.
We may only believe in God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit in ways that are
convenient for us. We may enlist God to support our causes rather than
responding to the call of God to selfless love and service. We may try to
draw boundaries round the love of God rather than celebrate its universality. Our actions as churches and our relationships with sisters and brothers
in Christ may deny the gospel. We can be so certain that we are right and
others are wrong that we forget to be humble before the One who is beyond
all our understandings.

In the Acts of the Apostles, we can read how Peter's certainties about
faith were transformed. Peter was certain that what we now call Christianity was something contained within Judaism. It meant keeping the dietary
requirements. It meant that the good news of Jesus was for those who were
Jews.

But then some extraordinary things happened. Peter had that dream (Acts
10:9-35) where he was invited to eat 'unclean' food, and then the gift of
the Holy Spirit was given to a Roman centurion's household. This is a
significant moment in the history of Christianity. Peter's certainties
about the nature of faith were transformed, as was the church's understanding of its mission.

It is hard for us, almost two thousand years on, to appreciate the
magnitude of the earthquake of Peter's certainties. How prepared are we to
have self-serving or limited understandings of God, the church or the
ecumenical movement transformed?

The preaching of the first Christians was so effective that they were
accused of "turning the world upside down" (Acts 17:6). We recognize that
the world still needs turning upside down, but are we prepared to be
turned upside down too?

There is a saying: "Be careful what you pray for, you might just get it".
So the WCC may have done a very dangerous thing to choose God, in your
grace, transform the world as its Assembly theme. But in that lies our
hope. [753 words]

(*) Simon Oxley, a minister of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, is
programme executive for ecumenical learning at the World Council of
Churches.

Free high resolution photos are available at the WCC Assembly website:
www.wcc-assembly.info

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The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of churches, now 347, in
more than 120 countries in all continents from virtually all Christian
traditions. The Roman Catholic Church is not a member church but works
cooperatively with the WCC. The highest governing body is the assembly,
which meets approximately every seven years. The WCC was formally
inaugurated in 1948 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Its staff is headed by
general secretary Samuel Kobia from the Methodist church in Kenya.