Sermon Luke 17:11-19

Jeffrey T. Howard
Eagle Rock Presbyterian Church
Sermon Luke 17:11-19
AIDS Awareness Sunday[1]

October 14, 2007

Today is HIV/AIDS Awareness Sunday. This is the day that churches think about their response to what is arguably the most important heath issue facing the world today. Before we look at this enormously important issue will you pray with me? Lord Jesus we know that while you walked on this earth an important part of your ministry was to heal those with chronic illnesses. We are grateful for all the healing you still do around the world. And we ask this day for health for all the patients and families that have been adversely affected by HIV/AIDS. And we pray for all of the people who are doing your ministry for the sick today. In your strong name we pray, Amen

Today 40 million people are living with HIV /AIDS. Of these five million were infected within the last year. 23 million lives have already been lost. This disease has a disproportionate effect on the poorest countries of the world who find themselves less able to respond to its devastation. It is a disease that strikes the most able bodied people in a society, those responsible for providing food, money and care leaving behind the elderly, the widows and the orphans. Let’s look at some of the victims and how Christians around the world are responding.

Wayo was a seventeen year old Christian living in Thailand. Like seventeen year olds everywhere Wayo thought he was invincible. He and his friends began visiting brothels. This was considered a right of passage for young men in Thailand. Then Wayo got sick. Because Thailand is a society with a Confucian world view Wayo was more concerned with the shame he and his family would experience if his illness ever became known than with seeking treatment for the disease. So he kept silent. When applying for a job Wayo was required to have a blood test. He was HIV positive. His father was told. But to prevent shame from affecting the family his father decided to keep it a secret even from Wayo’s mother. As the disease progressed his mother found out and decided that as a Christian it was more important to care for those with the disease and to work to prevent further infections than to worry about shame. So she told her church about her son’s disease and started an HIV/AIDS support group in her home. Other families with infected children came as did an infected elder of the church. Her church realized that it was not immune to AIDS. Other churches in Thailand started their own groups and the movement spread all over the country. As a result of this activity by the Christian minority the Thai government belatedly acknowledged the problem of HIV/AIDS and began programs for prevention and care. Christians are now leading the way toward the prevention of terrible disease and the treatment of its victims.

Here is another story. PS grew up in small farming village in India. He began learning carpentry at 14 and was married at 15. Their first daughter was born the next year. Trying to earn more money to support his family PS moved to Mumbai. At first he tried to visit home often, but this became more and more difficult so he spent the last 5 years living away from his family and sending money home every week. While in Mumbai PS began visiting prostitutes and he got sick. In a society were karma and rebirth are guiding principles there is no reason to prevent illness or care for the sick. Disease is considered punishment for sin in either this or a past life. The appropriate care for chronic illness is to let the patient die so that he or she may try again in the next life. This way of thinking is unacceptable for Christians in India because God created the material world including our bodies and called it good. In our scripture today Jesus was not interested in just spiritual matters; he healed leprosy, a terrible chronic skin disease. One Christian group in India responding to this problem is the Emmanuel Hospital Association. EHA is a charitable group that has responded to the HIV/AIDS crisis in India guided by three principles. First they develop relationships with people that focus on long term behavioral change rather than spouting “safe sex” slogans. Second, the care they provide is holistic; it cares for the body and the soul and recognizes the important role of the family in providing care. And third, their goal is to bring those infected with HIV/AIDS the abundant life that is only available in Jesus Christ. Christians are leading the way toward the holistic treatment of AIDS victims that treats both their bodies and souls with God’s love.

Here is another story. Patrick Dixon was a hospice doctor in England who remembers vividly the first HIV/AIDS patient that he ever saw back in the 1980s. What was unusual for this patient was that he had no support, no family, no friends, and no visitors at all while he was dying. Dixon realized that this person had been created in the image of God and was appalled by the way Christians in his own country were dealing with those with HIV/AIDS. When the disease first appeared in the West it was found predominately in the homosexual community. Christians there began to associate AIDS with homosexual behavior which was considered a sin. Many considered AIDS to be God’s punishment on a sinful lifestyle. So in 1987 Dixon wrote the book The Truth about AIDS, and the church in Great Brittan refocused its attention away from the condemnation of sinners to the prevention of this terrible disease and care for its victims. Christians began to see the pressing need around them and looked beyond statistics to feel the pain of others. Christians began to look at AIDS from a global perspective. The gospel was seen not just as the Word of God but as their calling to love those in need.

Now let’s look at Africa where the need is greatest. Almaz is a twenty-five year old Christian living in Ethiopia. Ten years ago her husband infected her with HIV/AIDS when she was only sixteen. Two years later her husband left her and her young son to fend for themselves. To make money for food Almaz went into prostitution. She has no idea how many men she infected before finding out about her own infection. When it was discovered that she was HIV positive her family threw her out of the house. She put her HIV positive son in an orphanage and went to Addis Ababa, the capital, to find work. There she found the Mekanisa New Covenant Baptist Church. This church has 250 members and 300 children. The average income of the members is $2.50 per month. They started an HIV/AIDS center for women like Almaz to treat not only their physical illness but their spiritual needs as well. So far they have enrolled 32 people in the program. Over 200 are on a waiting list for home care and counseling. To find the resources to keep the AIDS program running the pastor called together the leadership for a day of fasting and prayers. They decided to put the building repairs they had waited so long to do on the back burner to devote even more of their limited resources to provide food, housing, rent, school fees and medicine for AIDS patients. Churches all over Ethiopia have similar programs despite limited resources. Yet the infection rate of HIV/AIDS has risen to 11% of the population and is growing.

The infection rate of HIV/AIDS is growing throughout Africa. More and more people are getting sick. But there is one country in Africa where AIDS prevention is working. Let’s look at Uganda. According a survey 95 percent of Ugandans in 1988 were aware of what HIV/AIDS was and how it was transmitted. But this knowledge did not change their behavior. The infection rate continued to increase steadily in Uganda into 1991. Then things began to change. Uganda turned the corner on AIDS; infection rates began to fall. This surprised the Christian and governmental aid workers in Africa. What happened? Prior to 1991 the strategy for ending the AIDS epidemic in Africa focused on flooding the continent with condoms and a message of “safe sex”. Enormous resources were spent distributing condoms with little or no effect on infection rates. In fact infection rates continued to rise. Churches throughout Africa avoided the problem. Some wanted nothing to do with condoms. Other churches assumed that AIDS would have no effect on them because they were free from the sinful behavior that characterized the high risk AIDS groups. But these churches were soon proved wrong as their own members began to die in large numbers and they were forced to deal with the poverty and orphaned children that resulted. President Museveni of Uganda turned the corner on AIDS by emphasizing the ABCs. “A” stands for abstinence. The message of “safe sex” was replaced with the message of “no sex” because any sex outside of marriage with the kind of AIDS infection rates in Uganda was deadly. This message was targeted on the youth of his country. “B” stands for “be faithful”. The married couples in Uganda were told to be faithful to one another. Do these sound like Christian principles to you? They sure are. And “c” stood for use a condom only when “A” and “B” failed. Museveni and his wife went all over the country emphasizing A and B. The reason Museveni’s programs was so successful was that he emphasized big A and big B and little c. Hope was placed on behavioral change rather than condom distribution. And it worked. The churches in Uganda participated in Museveni’s “Why Wait?” program. An HIV/AIDS infection rate that peaked at 15% in 1991 fell to 5% within ten years. We need to pray that other African countries follow Uganda’s example. It is as easy as ABc.

Presbyterian missionary Dorothy Hansen is currently working as an AIDS consultant in Ethiopia and is concerned that western influence among the youth of that country will encourage risky behaviors. Ms. Hansen asks us to pray. “Pray that youth leaders will receive God’s direction to provide the youth with tools to show friendship without intimacy and to abstain from sex until after marriage. Pray that the youth will be selective in their activities, including their choices of videos. Pray that the women of Ethiopia will learn how to refuse excess work, abuse, violence, and unwanted sexual advances.”[2]

Today in the United States we have a variety of antiviral drugs that prolong life for HIV/AIDS patients. Until recently these drugs were prohibitively expensive for use in the third world. So prevention and care for the sick have been the Christian responses to the crisis. In recent years, however, the cost of these drugs has fallen. But many of the Christian aid organizations are still reluctant to use them because of concern for long term availability and affordability. The fear is that if a patient begins using these drugs and then stops, the virus will develop ways of resisting the antiviral medications. So there is reluctance to begin antiviral treatment until supplies are assured and behaviors are in place that guarantees continued use of these important drugs. We need to pray for ways that the cost will come down, more resources will be available and proper treatment methods will be developed for those who need them.

If you would like to make a contribution to the work the PCUSA with HIV/AIDS around the world just make a check payable to Eagle Rock Presbyterian Church and in the memo line write in “Peacemaking – AIDS”. If you would like to know more about the HIV/AIDS crisis and what the church is doing about it, pickup the “AIDS and Peacemaking” flier which you will find on the back table. And keep our missionaries and the victims of HIV/AIDS around the world in your prayers.

Lord Jesus, just as you healed those lepers long ago we ask you heal those with AIDS today. Help us to learn how to prevent and treat this awful disease. And help our church to know how to do Christ’s work among AIDS patients and families here in Los Angeles and around the world. We pray in the confidence of your strong name. Amen.

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[1] Adapted from Tetsunao Yamamori, David Dageforde and Tine Bruner, the hope factor, Engaging the Church in the HIV/AIDS Crisis, (Waynesboro GA: Authentic Media 2003).

[2] http://www.pcusa.org/missionconnections/letters/hansond/hansond_0706.htm