Let love and justice rule

The National Weekender
WORLD AIDS DAY
World Aids Day message from Cardinal Sir John Ribat, Chairman of PNG Christian Leaders Alliance on HIV and Aids

PNG Christian Leaders Alliance on HIV and Aids pictured after a board meeting.

PNG Christian Leaders Alliance on HIV and Aids is an alliance of heads of churches in Papua New Guinea who have joined hands together in 2010 to address HIV and Aids-related stigma and discrimination and the cross-cutting issues to help minimise the spread and effects of HIV within families and communities.
The role of PNG Christian Leaders Alliance on HIV and Aids Secretariat is to organise forums and summits for heads of churches to meet, discuss on sensitive issues about HIV, share their various experiences on how each church are addressing HIV related issues within their church networks and together resolve on way forward recommendations on best HIV policy approaches, strategies and interventions that would better support the churches HIV response at the community level.
The alliance is made up of the mainline churches through the PNG Council of Churches and the Body of Christ network of all Pentecostal and Revival Churches in PNG with the aim of promoting one concerted voice in addressing HIV and Aids-related stigma and discrimination in the country.
Bible reading
Words of assurance: A reading from Romans 8: 32-35, 37-39
If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn?
It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord
Dear sisters and brothers,
Though all nations have committed to end Aids by 2030, a UNAids report warns us our journey ahead to end Aids is becoming more challenged, and if decisive and bold steps are not taken to overcome entrenched inequalities, we will fail.
Inequality and injustice are two faces of the same coin. If we are to remove inequality, we have to overcome injustice. Both of the pandemics – HIV and Covid-19 clearly impacted the most vulnerable communities. The same people who face the greatest injustice.
The words of assurance we read from Romans 8, clearly tells u that each child of God is entitled to the Love of God. One of the questions that is posed to us is – As a child of God, how can we demonstrate the love of God to our neighbours, people who we interact with every day including those we meet casually?
How does the love of God in us translate to in the life of each girl, woman, boy and man including each member of our marginalised community and the general population in the context of the HIV and Covid-19 pandemics?
If an adolescent girl experiences the love of God – unhindered by the manipulations of our broken society, will she be so vulnerable to succumb to HIV? We can ask the same question in the context of each vulnerable child of God. Their inability to experience the love of God is because of the injustice that is so widespread. Injustice that perpetuates inequality.
As we speak out to overcome inequalities with justice and love in our country on World Aids Day 2022 we have to be very clear on our side as concerned individuals and as children of God to minimise new HIV incidences, new HIV infections and the HIV prevalence rate.
We can promote justice and love to overcome inequalities for access to HIV services for our marginalised community but if we cannot prevent new HIV incidences and new HIV infections then we will continue to fail.
If we are to be seen as children of God, we have to be true in our faith and actions to promote real justice and love to overcome inequalities and vulnerabilities.
Nine new HIV infections every day in PNG is a worrying trend that will require all of us to educate ourselves and our children and the different target audience of the risk of HIV transmission so that as much as possible we help prevent new HIV transmission and infections in the country. This will also require the Government of PNG to make HIV and Aids a priority agenda and ensure that there is an increase in domestic funding towards HIV preventative programmes from 2023 – 2032.

“A UNAids report warns that the journey ahead to end Aids is becoming more challenged, and if decisive and bold steps are not taken to overcome entrenched inequalities, we will fail.”

As followers of Jesus, we are called to remove barriers that hinder the flow of the love of God, to each child of God. We are called to strive to overcome injustice and inequality, so that all will experience the embracing love of God.
Ephesians 5:2 reminds us to live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us. We are called to walk in love and in humility and with grace, to see the presence of God in others and not to judge and justify injustice and inequality.
The reading from Romans 8, is an expression of our faith and hope: In Jesus, God has given us everything and, in the future, nothing can separate us from God. May this commitment enable us to leave God in control as we work together to overcome injustice and inequality with our unconditional and inclusive love and compassion for others.