“Herod and AIDS”
A sermon by Sid Burgess for Edgewood PC, Birmingham, AL
First Sunday after Christmas, December 26, 2004
Text: Matthew 2. 13-23
Magic Johnson, that talented, tall, handsome, and most affable basketball player, announced in 1991 that he was HIV-positive. At the time, most of us reacted with a combination of sadness and horror. All of a sudden, here was the AIDS epidemic, up close and personal. Given the dire headlines and horrendous statistics at the time, most people assumed Johnson was “a dead man walking.” And if big and powerful Magic Johnson could be infected, wasn’t it possible that the rest of us were in danger, too?
Fast forward 13 years and see Magic Johnson, alive and well. He has traded in a basketball uniform for a suit and tie, and amassed a fortune as a savvy businessman. He doesn’t appear the least bit unhealthy.[1]
So, this means we can just strike AIDS off our worry list, right? I mean, with all the information available about cause and prevention, with all advances being made in treatment of this disease, with Magic Johnson beaming his brilliant smile, we need no longer worry about this once-frightening disease. Right?
Wrong. Truth be known--and we Christians are all about truth . . . . Truth be known, more than 10 million people who were infected around the same time as Johnson--or more recently--have since died. Ten million, worldwide, dead. Problem is, most of those victims were living, not just on the wrong side of the tracks; they were living on the wrong side of the globe!
Nowhere is the deep divide between the haves and have-nots in the world wider and deeper than in the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Magic Johnson, a healthy and wealthy man, had access to the latest drug therapies of the time, was well-nourished, and had the best doctors money could buy. By 1994, powerful new drugs were available to most AIDS patients in the United States. Treatment with these drugs was so effective that the "Lazarus Effect" is now used as a description of what happens to AIDS patients who receive drug therapy.
BUT IN MUCH of the world, and especially sub-Saharan Africa, the spread of HIV continues unabated, unreported, and untreated. Today, somewhere around 27 million people are living with HIV/AIDS in that region alone, most of whom were infected in the last 10 years. I know these numbers are staggering, but hold onto you your pew. Just one more. Think about our connection to the Presbyterian Children’s Home in Talladega, wonderful ministry to 50 or 60 needy children. Now consider this: In sub-Saharan Africa there are already 12 million orphaned children. Twelve million innocent victims of AIDS.
Don’t you know cruel old King Herod would be thrilled! Doing a little research on our passage from Matthew--this story about the slaughter of the boy babies in Bethlehem, I found that today historians can cite no record of such event. No matter, say the biblical scholars, for Herod was so cruel, so tyrannical that the vicious killing of babies in one small village would not have been all that remarkable! Hardly worth noting in Herod’s long reign of terror!
Herod himself could not have conceived of a more demonic plot than the AIDS pandemic--the wholesale slaughter of millions. Just think of the impact on the children. Children watching helplessly as first one parent, then, quite likely, the other dies. First one caregiver then another succumbs. Siblings are sent away. Loss piled upon loss, grief upon grief. The oldest children forced to forage to feed the youngest-- forced to beg, to do dangerous work, forced even into prostitution. Multiply the cumulative effect on whole villages, whole towns and cities. National economies are wrecked. Whole regions of the world are destabilized, educational levels decline, and life expectancy drops. Millions become susceptible to religious and political fanaticism. Violence spreads, and it should be obvious for all to see the huge Atlantic and Pacific oceans cannot separate us, cannot protect us from the downward spiral of societies around the world.
So what is the Christian to do? How is a church to fight the tyranny of a disease? Dare we take on the modern-day variation on cruel King Herod?
So far, Christian Americans have been somewhat better and somewhat worse than the average citizen in responding to the crisis. Some were quick to interpret AIDS as God’s punishment of the promiscuous in general, homosexuals in particular. Other Christians insist that the God of mercy and grace would never unleash such an affliction on humanity--one that now, worldwide, infects as many women as men, one that infects 6,000 young people each and every day, and one that makes orphans of millions.
For a while, AIDS was a pretty hot topic in the Church, but now both sides--the side of judgment, the side of compassion. . . . . Both have moved on to other issues, other concerns. Thank goodness the US government--long AWOL in the battle against AIDS-- has stepped in to help. The US is finally releasing some serious money-- $15 billion over the next five years-- to fight this epidemic worldwide.
“More than a drop in the bucket,” says our Mike Bertram, “but not nearly enough.” Mike coordinates AIDS research at UAB. I went to see Mike this week as I worked on this sermon. I wanted help with a question that invariable comes up whenever the cause of AIDS is brought to the forefront. Why all the concern over AIDS when far more people are afflicted with cancer? Mike is a good person to ask this question, because before he went into AIDS work, he did cancer research. We’ve got our own in-house expert!
AIDS is an epidemic, says Mike, not at all unlike the Black plague that devastated Europe in the Middle ages. AIDS, unlike cancer, is a communicable, infectious disease. One person can spread it to another without even knowing it. Not so with cancer. Cancer is not spread from one person to another. The single largest risk factor in cancer is age, Mike says. Live long enough, avoid heart disease and stroke, and cancer will likely get you. While far too many young people are stricken, the vast majority of cancer develops in people who are age 55 plus. Now, terrifying as cancer is, heart-breaking as the deaths it causes, still cancer does not destabilize governments. It does not breed despotism and terrorism, leading to hatred and war. It does not destroy the family structures of whole societies, wiping out the primary work force, leaving educational systems in shambles, and economies in ruins.
And don’t think Africa alone is at risk. This disease has only just begun to work its woe in Russian, China, and India--important trading partners. Countries directly tied to our own economic self-interest.
So what’s the Christian to do? The needs are so very great, and our boat is so small--our resources so limited. Even here in Alabama-- where more than 200 people are on a waiting list to get the medication that could vastly improve their quality of life even prolong their lives. With the drug tabs running $1,000/month per patient, we could hardly support a single AIDS victim, much less 200, much less make any kind of dent in the global crisis.
So what’s a Christian to do? Well, Mike has a suggestion. And you will be pleased to know it is a doable deal. Mike says we can have an impact by simply doing something we already do quite well. What’s a Christian to do?
Talk about it, says Mike. Discuss it. Discuss it in church, at home, in school, on the streets, at the the grocery store, in the office. Let the whole world know that you are not afraid of this Herod called AIDS. Don’t let the politicians fiddle away with trivial issues while Rome burns--while millions die, and millions more become orphans. Don’t let the youth and children grow up uninformed or ill-informed on issues related to human sexuality because of our own discomfort with the subject.
Above all, let us, American Christians, remember the commandment of Christ our Lord:
to love our neighbor as ourselves. Jesus did not exempt us from such love based on distance, or lack of economic self-interest, or race or nationality. Wherever parents grieve the loss of their children, wherever children suffer the loss of their parents, there should we be to offer hope--for we know that the work of God in Christ is not over.
In fact and in faith, God calls us to hope for more than we have yet seen. Hope for a new heaven and new earth. Hope for victory over death, over all forces the would deform or destroy life in God’s good creation.
What’s a Christian to do in the face of Herod’s attack? Proclaim our confidence in Jesus as Lord. Our faith that a time is surely coming when all evil will be condemned and rooted out of God’s good creation. A time when there will be no more tears, no more pain. All things will be made new. And the fellowship of human beings with God and with each other will be perfected.
Blessing and glory and wisdom
and thanksgiving and honor
and power and might
be to our God forever and ever! Amen.” Rev. 7:12
[1] from Do You Believe in Magic? by Dale Hanson Bourke. Sojourners Magazine, October 2004