The plague wildly crashed into Center City Philadelphia like a runaway freight train. It had no name. Only the face of fear, and tentacles of terror. Gay men living in Philadelphia were its deadly target. All we knew was that city ambulances were rushing gay men to local hospitals, by the hundreds, and they weren’t checking out. If you were a gay man, if you were in Philadelphia, if it was 1981 or had already turned into 1982, you had every expectation, on a perpetual daily and nightly basis, that at any given moment, you would go for a final ride in a screaming ambulance headed to the hospital, and would die. 

Yet, my dates are misleading. While the initial hit was the sudden shock, there were many years the plague went on unaddressed, as an unknown, largely because it was called a “gay disease” and as such, considered a death sentence only on those who were gay, and, especially, sexually active. Most of the heterosexual population in the US didn’t consider this plague a threat that could touch them, so they left it to struggling scientists and dying gay men to work their problem out in their own little world. 

Until it spread. Until hemophiliacs were dying. Drug users were dying. Dentists were dying. Heterosexuals and bisexuals who flirting intimately with the gay community started dying. Then celebrities started to die. It became clear, the newly designated Acquired Immunity Deficiency Syndrome was acquired through blood, as it received its official, medical, dread acronym: AIDS.

Just the mention of AIDS in the early 1980s raised an instant specter of fear. Societal fear of AIDS itself was expectantly justified. After all, for years, we knew very little about the deadly virus, other than, if you were diagnosed with it, you would die. For several years there was no test, so there was in a sense, no actual personal barometer, except its terrible symptoms, which were a definite death sentence. Where American society went wrong was its self-righteous judgmental attitude towards gays.

In late autumn of 1982, I moved into an apartment with my favorite cousin. Earlier in the year, I had left my apartment on Christian Street in Philadelphia, six blocks off the decadent South Street of lyrical fame, and gone home to see my parents for a bit. Young and aimless, I moved in with Gary, who lived in Thorndale, a suburban community at the end of Philadelphia’s Main Line, outside Downingtown. I brought what little possessions I had to Gary’s place, setting myself up in a lovely, little sunroom he had. The most important thing I brought to my cousin’s little sanctuary was my constant fear: AIDS.

Gary and I were only a year apart. He had a typical bachelor pad, sparsely decorated, with no serious influence from his girlfriend at the time. I took a waiter job at a restaurant. Life was even, and relatively uneventful. Except for bedtime, when I would say the “Our Father” that I learned in Roman Catholic grade school. I’d say it really, really fast because I wasn’t religious, and planned to keep it that way. But I needed someone to hear it and know I was terrified every night as I fearfully tried to sleep.

I was never a good Catholic boy. Being Irish-Italian, the religion was splashed all over my childhood. I was fortunate to leave private school for public school in the third grade. My stepfather was an Episcopalian, my mother had joined Armstrongism at the time. When I was seven, my cousin Elaine tortured me with relentless tickling. Too small to get out from under her, when I did, I threw a fork at her. She made me go to confession. A priest heard my story, asked me if I wanted to go to Hell, and that day when I left his presence, I permanently left Catholicism. But I said my little ‘Lord’s Prayer” every night before bed, trying to peacefully sleep though the high possibility and risk of AIDS in Thorndale.

One Sunday night in November, Gary was out, and I was ironing my clothes for work the next day. I turned on the TV. Every turn of the dial was nothing but evangelical preachers. Frustrated, I let the dial stop on a woman preacher I had previously passed, but in the end decided, as a woman preacher, she would have to be the least threatening of the bunch.

The preacher was Gloria Copeland. Preaching out of Hebrews 9. Her words were sharp, pointed, and clear: How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? It made no sense, but I heard in  that verse, more distinctly than anything I ever heard in my life, two words that struck me: dead works.

I sat on the sofa. Dead works. My life was nothing but dead works. I realized in that moment, I had nothing of lasting value, only residue from pleasures in life I had pursued for myself. If ever anyone had dead works, I knew that person very, very well. I called my sister and rattled on about what I had just heard, so profoundly, how amazing it was that I learned my entire life was nothing but dead works.

The next day was windy. Pennsylvania autumn windy. On went the TV. Some show called The 700 Club was wrapping up with two guys talking. The one named Ben peered at me through the screen. I prayed with him. The end of his prayer became the beginning of mine. We had a tarp on the balcony over the firewood. During my prayer the tarp whipped wildly through the air, thrashing about, throughout my prayer. I heard it, and can hear it to this day, as a mighty, rushing wind. I took a walk, and for the next two and a half hours, talked to Jesus, about everything, in windy, sunny Thorndale.

I shared my experience at work. A girl there said I had been born again. I said I didn’t know what that meant, but if it had something to do with God, let’s be clear, I’m not giving up sex and alcohol. I shared with Gary. Though I had not paid attention while living with him, he had a Bible sitting on the coffee table in front of the TV. Gary looked me in the face and said two words: “Read John.” I read John, then returned to Gary. “Read Job.” I read Job. So God loves me and I’m cast in an invisible war.

At night, I began to listen to a radio preacher out of Philadelphia. Her big thing for people who called into her show was, seriously, aloe vera juice. That was her spiritual prescription. I would not get to follow it until living in California more than 15 years later. Health-wise, she was onto something. But the specter of AIDS never left. While I had gotten down on my knees for spiritual purposes, and had begun to believe that God could heal, the mental torment of ‘What if?’ was always on a back burner.

And then it happened. I brought my AIDS terror up with God. Somewhere in my spirit, in the midst of a calm, I heard and understood: “If you’re right with me, AIDS doesn’t matter. I am bigger than AIDS.” It was then that I realized my future was in good hands, whether I were to die from the dread plague, or were I to live to hold onto its specter for dear life while someday proclaiming: I am bigger than AIDS.

That revelation helped me cope better with the personal threat of AIDS, but the disease had too many unknown variables. I left Thorndale before the year was out and moved home, where I daily read my Bible and, within six months, adjusted my self-destructive attitude and behavior. In 1983, I became a Christian broadcaster at a radio station that used Associated Press. News of AIDS was continual. I had to confront it with wire rewrites and sketchy fears they presented. Even if I could cope personally, what about my family? We knew little of its spread, even two years in. I needed to protect my loved ones.

So I went to a hospital for a test. A pastor friend accompanied me. The hospital staff said they had no test, and then proceeded per their protocol. I was sent into a bathroom for a urine sample, and can’t remember if they drew blood, largely because my concerns suddenly had a new terror dimension attached to them. The container I had been given had AIDS printed on it. I suddenly realized, in horror, that because there was no known test, anyone who showed up at the hospital with genuine concern was treated as if they had it. That person was subject to procedures, bathroom facilities, staff, treating AIDS.

The AP wire clacking away in the newsroom brought up repeated news about medical progress in identifying AIDS, and each report added to my fears. That first year as a broadcaster was tempered by my spiritual growth, yet not without its sorrows. One afternoon, I was giving my hourly newscast, and the main story coming over the wire was a multi-vehicle accident outside Philadelphia dubbed “the worst accident in Pennsylvania turnpike history.” Three people were killed in early morning rush hour traffic when a truck jumped a guardrail in severe weather conditions. One of them was Gary.   

Nearly 40 years later, the plague is back. Only now, it’s not just for gay men. It’s here for everyone.

But God is bigger than a coronavirus, bigger than COVID-19. He is bigger than all our fears. I learned nearly 40 years ago that there’s a God who can, and will, if we let him, spin our horrors into wonders. He is not silent. He is not angered in present judgment. God is grace, peace, and requisite comfort in a time of unrelenting sadness and fear. In times like these, despite the well-intentioned and caring love of our families and communities, despite our political differences and persuasions, despite our ignorance, negligence and recklessness, all Christians are called to be fearless, compassionate, and responsible. 

So history is repeating, and more so for the Church, yet now it’s closer to home. Added to the horror of dying by AIDS, and its stigma, was the decision that only ‘family’ members be permitted access to a hospitalized patient. That meant gay people in committed relationships had to let their lifelong partner die alone. This was both, a disturbing scenario in the classic Philadelphia film, and what led to the consequential fight for equal rights, or gay marriage. It’s now worse, as, apart from technological connections not present during the AIDS crisis, everyone intimately connected to a hospitalized loved one must grieve in exacerbated sorrow, as access to a hospital bedside is denied due to the contagion.

Churches are closed all around the world this coming Easter, and rightfully so. Organizations that permit public assembly for religious activities endanger their communities and spread coronavirus. If ever there were cause to responsibly apply Romans 13:1 to yield to authorities who are there for our good, this is the time. Right now, millions of people across the globe, in every nation and of every tongue, are paralyzed by fear…fear of the mystery, of a deadly virus stalking the earth that rapidly, indiscriminately selects its helpless victims. 

And right now, the God who created each of us patiently waits, with open arms, for each of us to realize there’s really only one place each of us can trustfully turn in a tragic time of calamity. And that’s to the One who gets worshiped around this sick world on Easter in word and song, yet is not resident in every heart. God found me almost 40 years ago exactly where I was supposed to be. Not in a church, but at home.

For some reason, only known to God, in the midst of what is now a tragic, catastrophic nationwide experience together, that’s where He will find all of us this coming Easter, as we stay home.