Two months ago a human rights mission from the United Nations confirmed earlier findings about the massive and continuing abuse of refugees in Sudan's western Darfur region. The refugees, African-Sudanese Muslims, had already been driven from their villages by Arab militias, known as janjaweed and almost certainly backed by the Arab-dominated Sudanese government. This process of ethnic cleansing still continues. Around the same time that the human rights mission reported, Sudan was one of fourteen countries elected to serve for a three year term on the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Amongst the main themes addressed by the Commission are "the question of the violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms in any part of the world" and "indigenous issues". My intention is not to be flippant when I suggest that Sudan will not have to look far in order to bring issues to the attention of the Commission.

Amongst the great individuals that we meet in the Old Testament writings are the prophets: Elijah, whose despair about the idol worship of his fellow Israelites is turned to determination to act after his encounter with God on Mount Sinai; Amos, the shepherd, who saw that the prosperity of the few was built on injustice and religious hypocrisy that led to oppression of the poor; Micah, who contrasts the behaviour of Israel's corrupt leaders with God's coming reign of universal peace. These three, and all the prophets, had a burning vocation to remind their fellow men and women of their calling to "do what is just, show constant love and to live in humble fellowship with God." Jesus embraced and accepted this same prophetic vocation in his own life and, above all, death. He condemned the hypocrisy of those in religious authority, affirmed the status of the marginalized and the dispossessed and called his disciples to love each other as they were loved by him. It is this same vocation that we are called to embrace in our own day, speaking out in the name of Christ against all those - in Sudan and elsewhere - who disfigure the image of God in which all humans are created.