Serving God With AIDS

By Reverend Scholtz

If we refuse to live and serve alongside those living with AIDS, then we have no claim to be serving Jesus Christ, so we must see our lord Jesus Christ in AIDS infected people.

This is a practical application of Jesus’ words: “I was sick and you took care of me … Just as you did it for one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it for me.”

Jesus’ parable is a call to people to have compassion for those that suffer hunger and thirst, those who are poor, those who are naked and sick and those who are imprisoned. Reaching out to these and caring for them should be out reasonable worship. John 4.20 puts it succinctly: “Those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, can not love God whom they have not seen.”

To worship God and serving people are not to be seen as two different things, but as one. God has arranged things so that God comes to us and we go to God through people. It is a logical reinterpretation of Jesus’ parable in the context of the HIV/ AIDS pandemic. That the compassionate service rendered and empathy shown to the infected and affected is to be seen as service rendered to Jesus Christ.

This is a challenge to all of us, as a community (including the church), to put its confession into actions of dedicated service to those who are suffering as a result of AIDS. Communities, and churches should become agents of God’s compassion, to take their worship out of their buildings and into this world of human need.

That’s why it is a great privilege to be serving God through serving our neighbours, because Jesus has added an exciting new dimension to it. When Jesus became a human person he joined himself to humanity. He took the stuff that we are made of – our common humanity – and he has forever since been joined to us. When we help those that suffer, we are serving our Lord.

It means also that we will not regard people in need as a nuisance, but as a means of loving Christ. We can not adopt a paternalistic attitude towards those who we help, since it is Christ we are helping.

We are challenged to see in our suffering fellows our way to God. We must see our lord Jesus Christ in AIDS-infected people, because as long as some members of the Christian body are infected and affected by HIV/ AIDS, all Christian believers are infected and affected by AIDS.

The community and the church must take up the challenge to identify with those who suffer, because we are all one in Christ. A theological truth that follows from this is that Jesus reminds us that our whole life as a community and church we should make a difference!

If we as a community and church have nothing to offer to the sick, the naked, the thirsty, the strangers around us, few would grieve if we disappeared.

There are many ways we can make a difference. Let’s make a start!