As one year closes and another opens, many of us turn to the making of resolutions. Consider what might happen if all of us resolved to make 2007 the beginning of a new era in which the hungry are fed, the ill cured, the young educated and women and men treated equally. What if all had access to clean water and adequate sanitation, basic healthcare and the promise of development that does not endanger the rest of creation?

For people of all faiths and for those who claim no faith, the Millennium Development Goals provide a way in which together we can achieve greater global good by leading local lives intent upon the eradication of poverty and disease.

Set forth by the UN in 2000, the MDGs are consonant with the core beliefs of the world’s great religions. Indeed, they help Christians to bring hands and feet to the great commandment to love God and our neighbours as ourselves. The goals offer a form of deed-based evangelism that reminds people of faith that we can do little to improve a person’s spiritual health while that person contends with starvation or disease.

The MDGs offer a full complement of ready-made resolutions — for the new year and beyond — in the form of eight achievable objectives:

1 Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger;
2 Achieve universal primary education;
3 Promote gender equity and empower women;
4 Reduce child mortality;
5 Improve maternal health;
6 Combat HIV/Aids, malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases;
7 Ensure environmental sustainability;
8 Develop a global partnership for development.

These goals seek to end the deep poverty that limits human flourishing. Achieving them would exemplify the abundant life Jesus insists is the reason He became incarnate: “I came that you might have life, and have it abundantly” (John x, 10).

The goals are increasingly being advanced within the Anglican Communion by its 38 provincial churches, including the Episcopal Church and the Church of England. When bishops and deputies from the Episcopal Church’s 110 domestic and overseas dioceses gathered in June for the General Convention, we adopted a set of mission priorities, the first of which is to be the work of justice and peace, framed by the goals.

We understand this work as a visible sign of building the reign of God. A vision of that reign lies behind the ancient Hebrew concept of shalom, which means far more than simply peace. Shalom has to do with the restoration of all creation to right relationship with God, so that the hungry are fed, the grieving comforted, the ill are healed and prisoners set free. Isaiah sets forth this vision (particularly in chapters 58 and 61), and it is later echoed in Luke’s gospel.

The mission of the Church, according to our Catechism, is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ. That work of restoration and reconciliation frames all of our ministries, whether we are students, parents, legislators or farmers. We cannot be at one with our neighbours if some are starving or living in slums. The work of achieving the MDGs is intimately wrapped up in the promises we make in the baptismal covenant. At baptism in the Episcopal Church we vow to strive for justice and peace among all people, to respect the dignity of every human being, and to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbours as ourselves. Helping the world to achieve the MDGs is a concrete way to live into those promises.

We cannot speak much in the way of good news to people who are starving or dying of preventable disease. We must begin by doing good news with those who are most vulnerable. In and through both, God is glorified, and all creation can begin to experience the shalom for which we were created.

When Jesus begins His public ministry (Luke 4), His first act is to read from that vision of shalom in the prophet Isaiah. And his own rejoinder is, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke iv, 21). We seek to be able to say the same in our own day, that this vision of shalom may be fulfilled for all the world’s people. May this begin the new year of the Lord’s favour (Isaiah lvi, 2).

How will you resolve to help?

The Most Rev Katharine Jefferts Schori is Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church