Photo: Christian Aid / Guy Tillim

John Bell’s new service, Flesh of our flesh, will provide inspiration for anyone marking World AIDS Day (1 December 2006) or wanting to incorporate HIV in their worship throughout the year.

The service features Christian Aid partner stories from Ethiopia and El Salvador and provides powerful accessible liturgy. Further materials for corporate worship and personal reflection will follow.

• Download Flesh of our Flesh (pdf 255kb)
• Download Cnawd o'n cnawd ni - Welsh version (pdf 255kb)

Telephone 08700 787 788 (quote F1280), or click here to order online.

Additional resources to accompany Flesh of our flesh

Artists: Wild Goose Collective
Title: Woza Nomthwalo Come Bring Your Burdens To God (South African traditional)
Recording copyright: (c) 2006 WGRG, Iona Community, Glasgow G2 3DH, Scotland. Used by permission.

Download mp3 file here (right-click and save).

Optional monologue to be used as a sermon

The leper
You should have seen the priest’s face
when I arrived at the door.
I suppose me grinning all over didn’t exactly help.

He knew my family … especially my father
Who had helped to build the parish hall.
My dad and the priest were very close,
But they never talked about me.

You see, when you get leprosy
you don’t belong any more.
you don’t belong to your family;
you don’t belong in the church.

This was the priest
who had confirmed the diagnosis,
the priest who had sent me from the sanctuary,
never to return,
asking God to ‘have mercy’ on my soul …
the kind of things you’d say
to a criminal en route to the gallows.

But here I was back …
seven years later,
minus an arm,
presenting myself as cured.

He didn’t know what to say.
He didn’t know which book to look for
or which page to turn.

He had only been taught the ceremonial word
with which to send lepers away.
He had never learned
how to receive them back.

It took a long while,
a long while for him to come
within three feet (a metre) of me.

He wanted me to tie a blindfold on
until I said,
‘I’ve only got one arm.
You’ll have to do it.’

But he couldn’t bring himself to touch me.
So he asked me to put a sack over my head,
and then he took a pin
and began to stick it
into different parts of my body
saying, ‘Where am I touching?’

And every time I knew;
Because every time it hurt.
Pain had returned because I was healthy.

He even pushed the pin into my stump
and I yelled.
Actually I yelled louder than I needed to,
but I reckoned that if this guy
was going to give me a hard time,
he should feel some of the pain too.

Then he took the bag off my head
And said…
‘How is this possible?’

I said,
‘It’s possible
because in a world where everybody,
including my religious friends,
has kept back and avoided me,
somebody…
one man…
touched me.

No, he didn’t just touch me,
he embraced me
as if I were the lost brother
he’s always wanted to find.’

The priest didn’t ask his name.
It was as if he knew,
and as if he were disappointed
that what religion turned away from
God embraced.’

© Wild Goose Publications

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