World AIDS Day and Candle Light Vigil - Rev'd Theresa Angert-Quilter

Each of us have a story, since HIV AIDS is so wide spread, it is not likely that any of us have not been touched. My story to share tonight is of two sets of partners Zane and Chris and Ginny and Kath. They were the two gay couples who welcomed me into ministry.

Zane died of AIDS in 1987 in the United States. As a Methodist Minister he could never bring Chris to official church functions, their love was a love in hiding. So was the love of Ginny and Kath. I was pastoring Ginnv's church at the time while she was having a kidney transplant and Kath was nursing and loving her back to full health.

Zane was the one person among the other Methodist clergy, who really understood me. He felt my words. You know what I mean, he didn't hear my words he felt them. He allayed my doubts and companioning me in faith in those early years of ministry. As he and Ginny both flirted with eternal life at death's open door, they pulled no punches. They said what they meant and meant what they said. It was the shear beauty of life's reality that drew so many of us to them.

Yet, how ashamed we should be as a church that we required this hiding of their love. How dare we expect deception from people who loved and served us so well. Forcing this kind of hiding, fuels and aggravates the AIDS epidemic. It continues today and in many places it is worse.

Christianity, I am convinced, is essentially a religion of repentance. There is much of which the Christian Church has yet to repent. Even when a local Australian congregation sees the light, it can be a safe place, but can it cannot guarantee that its gay members will have access to all the life and choices of its denomination. We pray, may God have mercy on us and blot out our offences, may we be washed more and more of our sin, and may a new and steadfast Spirit be put within us. Christian Churches are meant to take the lead in such repentance, and to show that this is befitting for all of society, to set aright its discriminations and to say its sorry for all of its human rights abuses.

The book of Revelations is written during the persecution of Domintian in the Decapolis. That is around 110 in the place called Jordan today. The people of this literary work are frightened and they have reason to be frightened. They are dying in this persecution. This reading is altogether appropriate for tonight, those of our communities who are dying are also persecuted and we see them as did those Christians of Revelations, as the glorious, vindicated, free and honoured of our company. They are those who have gone before us, marked with the signs of love, who are now at rest. For we all must die, they have simply preceded us in this most human of acts. Most of them have died untimely deaths, far too young, completely tragic. AIDS continues to kill, now mostly beyond our island, in Papua, 10 % of the population is now infected. Epidemiologists predict that within a decade it will be 50% and that most of these people will die. Nelson Mandela's son has died, and millions of Africans are dying. We understand that AIDS is actually on the increase even in Australia where it is managed medically in way that can only be dreamed of overseas. HIV-AIDS becomes another of the ways in which we measure our inequality on this beautiful planet.

We have not tried to do what it says in John's gospel tonight. We have not tried to love one another and failed, we have not yet even made an attempt. We live content each night as we wrap ourselves in warm blankets and sleep away our worries. As if in a dream, we live not watching the life's energy drain from the faces of the dying.

There is much work to do, both here at home and abroad. Abroad we need money, it's that simple, we need the money that we have wasted on the agenda of the conservative Christian Right's war on Afghanistan and Iraq. We need the money for education, medicine, and facilities. We needed it yesterday. If we can deport our Philippino citizens but only detain our German ones, can we imagine that our dark skinned sister and brothers are not dying with the same gasping for breath that saw our loved ones depart? AIDS on a global level is also a Racist issue, we must make no mistake about this.

And it continues to be a homophobic issue. Let's get our legislation in order, let's recognise gay marriages here at home. Let's get it done. Let's make it possible in all of our churches and communities. Let's make it safe for our gay and lesbian friends to love each other in gay abandon, and publicly show affection and make vows of everlasting love before God and all the people. Let's make it safe for our young adolescents to enjoy the bodies God gave them, whether they, are gay, lesbian or even straight. Let us give thanks for the ability to be able to love another human person, to desire them, and to rest in the trust is generated.

And curtailing AIDS continues to be a matter of providing for all persons who use injections a safe and dignified place to inject. We must treat the hard drug issue as a health issue not as a criminal issue. Heroine has only been illegal for 50 years. It's a mistake for it to be illegal. It gives opportunities to pathetically deprived and oppressed people and countries to traffic in this lucrative trade. We bomb Afghanistan then we buy its opium illegally then we make it a problem to talk about it. We must be mad, this is nothing but cutting your nose off to spite your face. What chance has an intravenous drug user got? They've got Buckleys as long as we keep up these kind of insane global relationships. And all the while people keep dying of AIDS, people who could live if we used our money responsibly at a global level.

Today is Pentecost in the Christian traditions, a feast of rejoicing for there is one Spirit which enlivens us and inspires all of us to walk gently on our beautiful earth. There is one Spirit that unites us and that speaks the truth among us. We have gathered today to mourn, to remember and to vow to do all that we can to change things for the better. Our love and respect of all human beings should be at that calibre where each of them is honoured as our beloved dead are honoured. Every person, no matter what their race, or economic status, or sexual orientation: whether gay or straight, or bi-sexual or trans gendered or trans sexual persons, all persons are to be loved and cared for in this one Holy Spirit of love and peace.

We are to love one another, taking for our courage the remembering of our loved ones. Never say that it cannot be done. We have made much progress, we move on in the Spirit of God and we proclaim that there at the crystal sea is the great army of those who were slain in the great tribulation, and see their robes are^, white, washed in the blood of that same lamb, Jesus, who also died a young and innocent man with John, his beloved, keeping vigil at the foot of the cross. When we break bread and drink the wine of the covenant of love, we share in his life, that says that no more are the innocent to die. No more are they to suffer, neither humiliation nor pain. The cross says that we stand against all victimisation of all innocent people. The cup of blessing that we take and the bread that we share is a blessing for the global community and a promise of enough of the fruit of the fields for all on our lovely planet. Let us pray.