[12/1/2006]
What a busy week at Christ Church. Our building is buzzing with preparation for the Fieldstone Fair, which is tomorrow. We’ve been putting the final touches on our stewardship materials, and I’m going on retreat next week, so Carolyn and I have been working on the worship leaflets for December 10 as well as for this Sunday. In the midst of this, the copier jams, our good printer is still at the repair shop, and the phone rings off the hook! Not dissimilar to your own busy-ness, either, I suspect. There is something about late fall and the holiday season that makes the introspection we are invited toward in Advent that much more elusive.
Important as it is, though, introspection is not always what we are called to. Today is World AIDS Day. Just thinking about the numbers is staggering: 4 million new cases worldwide every year. 25 million people killed since the first case was identified 25 years ago. An estimated 3.1 million (between 2.8 and 3.6 million) dead from the virus in 2005 of which, more than half a million (570,000) were children. AIDS is a disease that often gets talked about as something that happens to “other people”—gay men. IV drug users. Poor people. People far away. People in the inner city. Whoever it is, we reassure ourselves, it’s not us.
The trouble is, we are Christians; and as Christians, those distinctions don’t hold up so well. Jesus was serious about that “love your neighbor” business. God isn’t being born among us this Christmas as one of us—God is being born among us this Christmas as one of all of us. We are made in God’s image. So God created, and it was good. And that means that the face of God is just as present in a drug user dying of AIDS, just as manifest in someone whose sexuality is different from yours, just as manifest in a poor person, or a rich person, or an American, or an African, or in me, or in you.
And the numbers are staggering; An estimated 3.1 million (between 2.8 and 3.6 million) dead from the virus in 2005, of whom more than half a million (570,000) were children. How can we grasp such numbers? How can we see the face of God in such a vast quantity of people?
Maybe we can’t; maybe it’s impossible to imagine as many people as live in Chicago or Los Angeles dying from a single disease in a single year. The limits of our imaginations, though, should not be the limits of our prayer, nor should it be the limits of our willingness to be moved by such tragedy, however unimaginable. This is where we meet the limit of introspection; no amount of quiet thought or respectful silence can suffice. We are called to honest prayer of lamentation and hope, coupled with substantive action on behalf of and in solidarity with those who are suffering.
Many of us participated in the June Jubilee walk for AIDS relief in Africa; over 30,000 was raised for Anglican mission in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Our dollars fund programs for orphan feeding and education programs, as well as initiatives for home health care. Perhaps you would be interested in joining a mission trip to Africa to witness our support and care. Perhaps you will vote in such a way as to support the use of our tax dollars for AIDS relief abroad and sensible solutions for AIDS prevention in the United States. However you decide to take action, know that there is no grand solution, no master plan that will fix every problem; there are only individual steps, taken slowly by individual people, to cross the bridge.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has...” Margaret Mead
For more information, see http://www.worldaidscampaign.info
On eliminating extreme poverty: http://www.one.org
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