As the French novelist J.K. Huysmans wrote:

That awful Christ who hung dying over the altar of the Isenheim hospital would seem to have been made in the image of the ergotics who prayed to him; they must surely have found consolation in the thought that this God they invoked had suffered the same torments as themselves, and had become flesh in a form as repulsive as their own; and they must have felt less forsaken, less contemptible. It is easy to see why Grünewald’s name, unlike the names of Holbein, Cranach and Dürer, is not to be found in the account-books or the records of commissions left by emperors and princes. His pestiferous Christ would have offended the taste of the courts; he could only be understood by the sick, the unhappy and the monks, by the suffering members of Christ.

It should also be noted, though, that Grünewald’s resurrection panel of the Alterpiece depicts Christ blazingly alive and triumphant.

Incidentally, the Isenheim Altarpiece directly inspired the Keiskamma Altarpiece, an AIDS-related artwork.

First – the presumption that a person’s HIV status is connected exclusively to personal sin is one of the worst aspects of this disease. There is an entire generation of children in Afica dying of this disease solely because they were conceived when AIDS-infected men raped virgins as a way to rid themselves of it. They were conceived in sin, their parents eventually leave them oprhaned because of sin, and they bear in their little bodies the consequences of others’ sin their entire, short lives.

Second, those of you who took time to read the whole post, instead of just the title, might note how Dr. Moore deals with the idea of Jesus bearing the curse of all sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21 and Gal. 3). He deals with the reality that while He is now in Heaven, His children, those already adopted into His family, and those still to be brought in through, perish the thought, our Jesus-shaped lovefor them, are still on earth.

And they have AIDS. And Tuesday was Global AIDS day. And while the world was busy feeling special buying extra lattes so that Starbucks would send bags of nickels to temporarily alleviate the physical suffering caused by AIDS in the here and now,

Dr. Moore described how the real, flesh-and-blood lived out Gospel offers the truest hope for those stricken by this disease, both now and for eternity.

What a concept.

That’s precisely why I said “Jesus had AIDS”.

Because, he was all that you said, and worse…on the cross, and only there.

I get that the point is that we can’t, as Christians ignore the low end of society. But yes, you put the finger on what I couldn’t quite get to.

Jesus is a rape victim.

Jesus is drunk right now.

No. No. NO! A little respect, please.

Maybe, if all I do is sit around examining the finer points of the gospel, and never leave the house.

But I don’t think that’s what’s happening here.

Precision is a good thing, and being clear on the little things is an important thing.

To often that very argument is really just to say “I don’t want to deal with the finer points, so I’ll ignore them”, which is a far larger problem.

However, I’m left wondering if the Enemy can make getting the Gospel precisely right such an overwhelming preoccupation that it nullifies Godly action and it nullifies Godly witness, thereby, and ironically, undermining the Witness of the Gospel!

That’s a good point. Another way to get at the issue is…who exactly was Paul telling to love their wives? Was it husbands or the Holy Spirit?

I’m pretty sure it was husbands.

The law doesn’t nullify or override the gospel, it sets the stage for the gospel.

…not to mention that it tells us how to live…

“Agreed, Reverend. Any reflection/reminder about how scripture calls upon us to live is Law (boo!) and a failure to understand the Gospel.”

Wow. There’s that Gospel message thing again. And about not getting it right. I heard ad nauseam about how the Gospel is getting blurred and obscured because of the Manhattan Declaration, and now I’m hearing that this post is missing on the Gospel message.

Help AIDS sufferers? Stop! Until you get the Gospel just perfectly right. Don’t want it to be obscured and blurred.

Manhattan Declaration? Stop! Until you get the Gospel just perfectly right. Don’t want it to be obscured and blurred.

Criticism is fine and all, and I assume it’s well-intended, but I sure am glad that Jesus and the Apostles didn’t let criticism stop them from doing God’s Will.

And, no, to be precise, Jesus did not have “AIDS” unless that physical condition was around in Christ’s day.

Did He have the common cold? Perhaps he did.

I think the post misses the point, actually, of the Gospel itself.

It had a lot of Law though, I’ll grant that.

So let me help you distill it down, from grand-standing to everyday.

The guy in your church who you can’t stand, who’s headed right for you after each sermon with a list of things you preached wrongly.

That guy.

Treat him right, treat him fairly, but don’t stop serving him, specifically.

Or anybody else who gets under your skin, or with whom it would be embarrassing to be seen, who is a part of the body, or not.

Serve that person, specifically.

The point is, there is no one in our sphere of influence, to whom we may completely turn our back. As individuals.

I’m guilty, so are you. Specifically.

Forget the grand-standishness, if that’s how you see it, and ask yourself the hard questions.

I’m not saying you’re not asking them, I’m just saying, you wanted to see the point of the post, I think that’s it.

I know of no responsible church body, or Christian, for that matter who has “turned their back” on AIDS victims. This kind of rhetoric plays into the pro-gay groups in this nation and elsewhere.

Perhaps this is an attempt to take the edge of the pro-homosexual lobby in this nation who have heard of the Manhattan Declaration?

Let’s all show now how outraged we are by the “lack of treatment” of AIDS victims.

I would be far more impressed by drawing our attention to even greater health crises in the world today: lack of potable water, food, children dieing of malaria.

The attention grabbing “AIDS crisis” sucks up a lot of attention and as a result are neglected a whole host of other issues.

So, count me as particularly unimpressed and unmoved by this post.

Jesus has AIDS.
Jesus has heart disease.
Jesus has cancer.
Jesus has the common cold.
Yes. All true.

Most importantly Jesus has carried our sins to the cross and set us free from sin, death and the devil, serve to thank and praise, serve and obey Him, by loving one another.

I guess that is a “news flash” in some circles.

The point is, we cannot claim to love God if we turn our backs on the world He has created.

If we love someone, we love the works of their hands. And so it will not do for the church to turn her back on the AIDS victims of the world, or, more precisely, the AIDS victims in our neighbourhood, and still believe itself to be the church.

I’m not saying that happens, I’m saying it muist not.