Did you know Jesus was HIV-positive?

My favourite answer to the “Did you know?” question found in the yellow Chappies gum wrapper (probably a South African invention) is the one that goes: “Did you know? People with large heads are not necessarily clever.” The Afrikaans version of the same went something like: “Het u geweet? Mense met groot koppe is nie altyd slim nie.” Despite the sugar-free gums flooding the market, Chappies remains my favourite, both for the question-and-answer insights as well as its unmistakably sugary taste. The bright yellow wrappings remind me of my boyhood years.

Imagine opening one of those wrappings only to find: “Did you know? Jesus was HIV-positive?” Imagine the controversy and the furore that would follow from certain sections of society.

Yet this is precisely the trouble a young Cape Town-based evangelical priest recently got himself into. Apparently he preached a sermon titles Jesus Christ is HIV-positive! His point was that since Jesus was in the habit of siding with the little ones, the stigmatised, the marginalised, he would in all probability identify with people living with HIV today. But boy oh boy, was the young priest in trouble! Journalists went after him. Concerned citizens accused him of disrespect and blasphemy. Some of his church members threatened to quit his church. Apparently he also received a considerable amount of hate mail.

I know about it because one journalist woke me up in the small hours of one rainy Sunday morning to quiz me about this. How dare this young priest say such a thing? Was this not intolerance, disrespect and even blasphemy? I told the journalist that to the best of my knowledge, the thought of Jesus being HIV-positive was neither original to the young priest nor outrageous. I heard it for the first time at least 10 years ago at a conference organised by the Medical Assistance Programme in Nairobi, Kenya.

I happen to agree that Jesus seems to have had a reputation to identify with the disadvantaged. Did he not come to the defence of a woman who was about to be stoned for adultery? Did he not praise the woman of “questionable character” who poured expensive oil over his feet only to use her hair to wipe it off — to the horror of the religious authorities? Besides, if as Christians tell us, the church is the body of Christ, then surely if one member of the body is HIV-positive, the whole body is both infected and affected. HIV is in the workplace. It is in the stadiums as we watch soccer. It is in our homes. It is in the church — the body of Christ. The body of Christ is HIV-positive.

As we commemorate World Aids day 2010, it is worth our while to ponder this thought. Jesus was HIV-positive. Did he not conquer death through dying? Why could he not conquer HIV by being HIV-positive? If death on the cross was the most scandalous and the most shameful in his days, has HIV not become the scandalous “cross” of our times? Why is this so hard to imagine? Is it because we persist in associating HIV with sinfulness? Is it because we refuse to see HIV for what it is — a disease? And because we refuse to see it as a disease we refuse to accept both the persons infected with it and our own vulnerability to it. Is this why we are also tempted to disregard the regimes currently available for its prevention and management? In the process many lives are destroyed and lost unnecessarily, prematurely. This then is the real scandal of our times and not the invitation to imagine an HIV-positive body of Jesus.