If I said Jesus has cancer. Or diabetes. Or asthma. No one will give a fuss.
I have, in the past, argued that Jesus might have been gay, a woman, a Palestinian, and an African.
But most of us have problems when we hear that Jesus has AIDS. Because we have been socialized to identify AIDS with promiscuity, with illicit drug use, with divine punishment, with sin. And the Jesus many of us worship cannot be promiscuous, will not touch or even be in the same room with weed, and, of course, is a perpetual virgin, and sinless.
What is the international symbol for HIV AIDS prevention?
When you turn the red symbol on its side, what does the symbol represent?
My dear friends, the world has AIDS. Close to 40 million of our sisters and brothers are living with HIV.
About 1% of all our sisters and brothers, aged 15 to 49, are living with HIV.
Since the beginning of the epidemic, over 35 million of our sisters and brothers, each one created in God's image, have died. One million last year.
"For God so loved the world with AIDS that God sent God's son..."
Do we have problems with that interpretation?
Or we only think that the world that God loves in our favorite Bible verse is that part without AIDS?
And what did God's Son say, the One God sent to a world with AIDS?
For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.
I have AIDS and you, like the priest and the Levite, do not stop to help me and pass on the other side of the road.
I have AIDS and you abandon me to die, on the street, alone, full of sores, like Lazarus.
Jesus has AIDS.
He is the two-year old orphan whose parents died from the disease. He is the young prostituted woman victimized by human trafficking. He is in San Lazaro, in RITM, at the Lung Center waiting for a blood transfusion.
He is the one wrapped in your embrace this very moment.
He is the one whose face you see in the mirror.
Jesus is a person living with HIV and AIDS and he is one of us.
And he is here with us right now.
Amen.
#WorldAIDSDay
#PreventionNotCondemnation
