Taking Up the Cross: Putting on the T-shirt

by Chris Chivers

[Ed. Note: This sermon was originally preached at Wycombe Abbey School on September 14, 2003, centered on the scriptural readings Ephesians 2:12-22 and Matthew 16:21-25.]

South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki - who has just left the stage - has stunned us all with a speech in which he has continued to defend his bizarre - and completely unscientific - claim that there is no connection between HIV and AIDS. This has made most of us angry and restless.

It is Sunday 9 th July in the year 2000 and I am sitting with thousands of people in a stadium on the outskirts of Durban, South Africa, attending the opening ceremony of the 13th International AIDS Conference. Although it is mid-winter in the Southern Hemisphere, Durban's humidity levels are as high as ever. It is the emotional temperature around the place, however, that is soaring just at the moment, since South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki - who has just left the stage - has stunned us all with a speech in which he has continued to defend his bizarre - and completely unscientific - claim that there is no connection between HIV and AIDS. This has made most of us angry and restless. But rapturous applause is now beginning to transform the tense atmosphere as we watch a little boy step into a solitary spotlight - frail and clearly nervous, but with a huge smile on his face.

"Hi," he says, "My name is Nkosi Johnson. I live in Melville, Johannesburg, South Africa. I am 11 years old and I have full-blown AIDS. I was born HIV-positive." He pauses to clear his throat and to lift the microphone off its stand. Without a single note or prompt in front of him he continues.

"When I was two years old, I was living in a care centre for HIV/AIDS-infected people. My mommy was obviously also infected and could not afford to keep me because she was very scared that the community she lived in would find out that we were both infected and chase us away.

"I know she loved me very much and would visit me when she could. And then the care centre had to close down because they didn't have any funds. So my foster mother, Gail Johnson, who was a director of the care centre and had taken me home for weekends, said at a board meeting she would take me... She took me home ... and I have been living with her for eight years now."

With a glance towards Gail for reassurance, Nkosi explains something of what it means to live with AIDS and then he describes the events that brought him to prominence.

"In 1997 mommy Gail went to the school, Melpark Primary, and she had to fill in a form for my admission and it said does your child suffer from anything, so she said, 'Yes: AIDS.'

"My mommy Gail and I have always been open about me having AIDS. And then my mommy Gail was waiting to hear if I was [going to be] admitted to school... She phoned the school, who said 'we will call you', and then they had a meeting about me.

"Of the parents and the teachers at the meeting 50% said yes and 50% said no. And then on the day of my big brother's wedding, the media found out that there was a problem about me going to school. No one seemed to know what to do with me because I am infected.

"AIDS workshops were done at the school for parents and teachers to teach them not to be scared of a child with AIDS. I am very proud to say that there is now a policy for all HIV-infected children to be allowed to go into schools and not be discriminated against."

Speaking about those awful weeks when he didn't know whether he would be allowed to go to school has clearly made Nkosi very emotional, and he stumbles a little as he goes on to describe yet more traumatic experiences - his mother Daphne's death, and the death of his friend Micky, an AIDS baby who had been living with him and Gail. He regains some composure as he describes the first Nkosi Haven that he and Gail have started to provide care and support for HIV/AIDS mothers and their children so that, unlike Nkosi and his birth mother Daphne, they don't have to be separated from each other. He ends with a heartfelt plea.

  "Care for us and accept us - we are all human beings.

"We are normal. We have hands. We have feet. We can walk, we can talk, we have needs just like everyone else - don't be afraid of us - we are all the same!"

As Nkosi turns to leave the stage thousands of us are standing with tears streaming down our faces to applaud and cheer. President Mbeki is nowhere to be seen. He left his seat halfway though the speech to catch a flight to Kenya.

As Nkosi turns to leave the stage thousands of us are standing with tears streaming down our faces to applaud and cheer. President Mbeki is nowhere to be seen. He left his seat halfway though the speech to catch a flight to Kenya.

We are now in Cape Town. It is 8 th June 2001 and I am standing at the main entrance to St George's Cathedral - where I worked at that time - to greet the mourners who are attending a memorial service for Nkosi Johnson who died a week ago. Already there are several hundred people sat in the building, but there are many more to come, as with an enormous burst of noise - chanting, singing and dancing - a crowd of about a thousand rounds the corner and marches up the street towards the doorway. They are all members of the Treatment Action Campaign - a non-governmental organisation which has been trying in the previous weeks and months to persuade the South African government to provide anti-retroviral drugs to pregnant mothers who live with HIV/AIDS, so that mother to child transmission of the virus can be avoided.

As they reach the cathedral door, the singing subsides, and I look out for their co-ordinator, Zackie Achmat, who is himself HIV positive and who is giving the address at the service. He has been a supporter and friend of Nkosi Johnson for some time and is clearly distressed as he greets me and thrusts into my hand the latest Treatment Action Campaign t-shirt which all the marchers are wearing. He invites me to put it on. I explain that it is difficult for me to do so as I am dressed in cassock and surplice. I will carry the t-shirt instead.

The service begins with a welcome and a biblical reading. It continues with a favourite passage of Nkosi's from Winnie the Pooh , the lighting of memorial candles, and a hymn. Then Zackie gives the address.

All the while I have been holding my t-shirt. I now look at it, exactly as Zackie is talking about the latest phase of the Treatment Action Campaign's strategy. This will be dedicated to the memory of Nkosi, with as many people as possible being encouraged simply to wear the very t-shirt I am holding. On the front are the words HIV positive, and on the back is a picture of Nkosi. Zackie hammers home the point with eloquence and directness. "Nkosi had the courage to risk much abuse, and to be open about being HIV positive. Let us resolve to be united in our humanity. Let each of us wear this t-shirt to show that we will stand against prejudice and with all those who are HIV positive".

Zackie rips into the inadequacy of the South African Government's response to the pandemic as I imagine for a moment what the response would be if I wore the t-shirt at the dinner party I am to attend that very evening. All I can see are horrified faces trying to hide behind glasses of Chardonnay and plates of pre-dinner snacks.

Then the whole idea evokes memories for me of a story I was once told about Second World War Denmark. The Nazis, in their horrifying campaign against the Jews, had decreed that from the next Sunday morning all Jews must wear yellow stars on the arms of their coats and jackets. Now Sunday was always, by tradition, the day in Copenhagen when the King of Denmark rode his horse through the city to keep up morale amongst his people; for though they were now yoked to Nazi tyranny - and he, a displaced ruler - everyone nonetheless continued to look to him for moral leadership and support. On the Sunday when the decree was to come into force the king rode his horse, as usual, through the palace gates and into the city's streets. But as he did so everyone noticed that he was wearing a yellow star. A buzz of excitement spread across the city and within hours all its citizens were wearing yellow stars to make the decree absolutely unworkeable.

I look down at my t-shirt as others - prompted by Zackie's call - are putting on their t-shirts. But faced with the difficulty of fitting it over my cassock and surplice or taking these off in the middle of the cathedral and then putting the t-shirt on, I hold onto it instead.

Today the church keeps the feast of the Holy Cross, the day when we remember that Helena, the mother of the emperor Constantine, found the remnants of what was supposed to be the cross of Christ as she was overseeing excavations in the city of Rome early in the fourth century. A basilica was subsequently built on the site and dedicated on this day in the year 335. All of this suggests that the theme for today could well be framed in the question: 'Where do we discover the cross in our own times?'

But seeing the face of the suffering Christ in someone else's pain is actually the easy part. Responding to what we have seen, taking up the cross... that is quite another proposition.

And in response to that question aren't there just so many cross-shaped places right now - in Iraq and Afghanistan, at Ground Zero, amid the starving millions of Zimbabwe and Liberia, the damaged and disturbed citizens of Sierra Leone and Rwanda, the oppressed people of Myanmar and a hundred other places? To sharpen our response I have given just one concrete example of the cross in our age, a cross which racked its bearer with terrible pain, but which was borne with extraordinary courage and dignity by a little black boy who met his Calvary at the tender age of twelve years old. But discovering the cross is one thing. It may be - it almost always is - harrowing - the kind of thing from which we will want to avert our gaze. But seeing the face of the suffering Christ in someone else's pain is actually the easy part. Responding to what we have seen, taking up the cross, as our second reading suggests, sensing that I am somehow connected with and responsible for those who are suffering - which was what our first reading argues - that is quite another proposition.

It invites a harder question and it is quite simply this: Are we going to put on that t-shirt? Are we going to identify ourselves, involve ourselves in the suffering around us? And are we going to start right now, not with the people out there, but with the people in this community who are having a hard time or who are perhaps being ignored, even picked-on because they don't seem quite to fit in? Do we know who they are? And are we going to stand alongside them, carry their cross and turn the misery of their Calvary into something more hopeful?

I'm not a very courageous person, which is why the t-shirt stayed firmly in my hands. But all of you are no doubt much more courageous and imaginative than me. Will it remain in yours?

The Rev. Chris Chivers is Minor Canon and Precentor at Westminster Abbey in England. He previously served as a canon at St. George's Cathedral in Cape Town, South Africa. Chris may be reached by email at Chris.Chivers@westminster-abbey.org