New Year Message - 'Hunger for Justice Will Change the World'.

"Jesus talks about being hungry and thirsty for righteousness, for justice. And if we hear that in the way it's surely meant, we have to conclude that he means that we should feel there's something missing in us, something taken away from us, when another person, near or far away, has to face need and suffering. We get to be ourselves only when we wake up to them and their needs."

The message was filmed in Holy Trinity Church in Clapham, and the Arndale Shopping centre in Wandsworth, South London and also featured footage shot during his visit to World Food projects in Southern Sudan. The reformers, he said regarded the slave trade as making the whole of humanity less than human:

"People like William Wilberforce and Henry Thornton felt they were made less human than they should be by the appalling injustice of the slave trade. They felt a hunger for justice - a sense of being spiritually impoverished - "undernourished" because of slavery.

People, he said, may feel overwhelmed or even bored by constant appeals, but change could only come if people were moved to act:

"When we look at the familiar images of other people's suffering, do we feel a void inside ourselves, a yearning for something different and a conviction that it needn't be like this? That's where change begins. And it's one of the differences that faith can make; faith in God and in people. It's worth remembering this year those who struggled to do away with the slave trade. If we lived in a society that tolerated slavery now, wouldn't we feel soiled and diminished by it? Wouldn't we feel hungry for something different? So what are the things today that make us feel the same?"

Notes

The broadcast was first aired on New Year's Eve 2006 on BBC 2 at 20:00hrs and repeated on BBC 1 at 12:45 hrs on New Year's Day 2007.

The footage from Sudan was shot at two world food programme aid projects in southern Sudan; a church school project in Malakal feeds around 700 puils their only solid meal of the day. In nearby Obel, a food distribution point supports families seeking to re-establish themselves on their farmland, having been displaced by conflict.

The Church featured is Holy Trinity Clapham, the home of the Clapham Sect, which included reformers William Wilberforce and Henry Thornton.

The shopping centre featured is the Arndale Shopping Centre in Wandsworth, South London.