This reflection was written by Jesse Zink for this week’s Wingèd Ox, a weekly news digest distributed to the college community. You will find reflections from previous weeks here.

Last week in class, I had some of you read a chapter from Sam Wells’ book The Nazareth Manifesto, in which he argues that all ministry begins with the decision to do things for other people but simply to be with others. He bases this claim, as the title of the book suggests, on the fact that Jesus spent about 90% of his life—the part not written about in the gospels—in Nazareth, simply being with people.

This came to mind yesterday, December 1, which is World AIDS Day. Though this is not a day marked in church calendars, it is a day I pause on each year. Before I was ordained, I worked for a couple of years for a church ministry that served a shantytown community built on a garbage dump outside the small city of Mthatha in South Africa. Part of the ministry was a medical clinic and it was there that I was introduced to the reality of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. A significant percentage of the patients we saw in the clinic were HIV-positive and a fair amount of my work involved accompanying these patients through the South African health care system. It was a time when life-saving anti-retroviral drugs were just beginning to be made available in South Africa (nearly a decade after they had first become available in much of the wealthy, western world) so there was real hope for these patients, but it was a hope that often was not realized due to bureaucratic inefficiencies, logistical snafus, and the stigma that surrounds a positive test result.

There are many things I learned from my time working in this community—about myself, about how change happens in the world, about what counts as accomplishment—but what I find myself dwelling on in this season is the nature of ministry. Before I moved to South Africa I had heard the phrase “ministry of presence.” This is a phrase used to refer to ministry that is characterized chiefly by a willingness to show up and be with other people. There’s good Biblical precedent for this. Even setting aside Sam Wells’ manifesto, the Gospel of Mark tell us that Jesus “appointed twelve, whom he also named apostles, to be with him…” (3:14) Apostolic ministry begins with being with Jesus and, since we can find Jesus through others (Matthew 25:45), it begins with being with others as well.

As I accompanied residents of this shantytown through the South African healthcare system, I learned how important being with people is: to accompany, to pray with, and to stand alongside as they approached the end of their lives. I also learned just how astonishingly, profoundly difficult being with can be. On so many occasions I wanted to be able to snap my fingers and make everything right, to cut through whatever bureaucratic tangle we were in, to instantly locate lost test results, to prescribe the anti-retrovirals then and there. I wanted to offer something more than simply my companionship. It helped me realize how strong the temptation is in me to problem-solve, fix, improve, and make better. But a ministry of presence begins in a different place: in the face of the world’s injustices, we are called first to be—with Jesus, and with those in need. I saw lives transformed in South Africa and people made whole but it all began with a decision to be alongside.

World AIDS Day this year fell on the First Sunday of Advent, a season when we prepare for the Incarnation and for Christ’s coming again. This season is a reminder that God’s great desire is to be with God’s people—to show up, be present, and walk alongside all whom God has created. Our calling in ministry is nothing more—but nothing less—than to do the same.