On The Transplant List
Stories
Lectionary Tales For The Pulpit
Series IV Cycle C
In August of 1988, Shelly Arrollo was told by doctors that she had a rare disease called "polyarteritis nodosa." It's a disease that attacks the arteries and blood vessels causing them to expand and burst. It then moves on the major organs.
Blood vessels had burst in one of Shelly's kidneys, completely filling it with blood. The same thing began to happen in the second kidney. Shelly slipped into a coma where she remained for two weeks. Her priest gave her last rites.
She was flown to the hospital at the University of California at San Francisco because the people there had some experience with the disease. Their knowledge was slight. The doctors and students there wanted to learn everything they could about the disease. Shelly was an anomaly: there were only fifty recorded cases of the disease and all the patients had died within the first two weeks.
They immediately intubated her because she couldn't breathe on her own. She was told she was going to die and wouldn't make it out of the hospital.
That was over eleven years ago. Her treatment has been successful, but throughout her recovery, the doctors watched her kidneys closely. A few years after the crisis, the kidneys began to deteriorate, and once again, her life was threatened.
The doctors had assumed that Shelly's brother Troy would be able to donate his kidney, but he wasn't a match. But Shelly had a friend who had confided that if Shelly ever needed a kidney, she could have one of hers. The kidneys of her friend, Shannon Breshears, were indeed a match, and out of love for her friend and in spite of months of testing and going through what she called an emotional hell, Shannon donated a kidney in a successful five-hour operation.
Stories like Shannon's and Shelly's are not all that unusual. But every time we hear about them, we pause, do we not, to reflect on the enormous love that empowers one to give up one's own organs and tissue to save the life of another.
This account, however, pales compared to the story told in the movie John Q. In this film, John, played by Denzel Washington, has a son with a severe heart defect. He cannot get on the transplant list because John doesn't have adequate insurance to cover the cost of a transplant operation.
So John commandeers the hospital, threatening violence, until the Chief of Staff agrees to put his son on the list. In a developing sub-plot, a car accident has taken the life of a young woman whose heart could be a match. But John does not know this. As things get desperate, John has the surgeon and nursing staff in the operating room, and suggests that they take John's own heart and give it to his son.
It is a dramatic and powerful scene. Of course, the surgeon and staff refuse. But John argues that surely, if he voluntarily puts a bullet through his head, they would not refuse to take his heart to save the life of the child lying unconscious on the operating table.
I'll not tell you how the story ends.
But the story of Jesus' death on the cross is no less dramatic. Shannon gave a kidney, but she lives. Here, Jesus voluntarily gives up his life at the age of 33 in the most far-reaching, history-altering heart transplant story of all time: "He breathed his last" so that we could have hearts of the spirit, hearts of love, and hearts of mercy and compassion -- not to speak of life eternal. In the mind and heart of God, we've always been on his transplant list.
Blood vessels had burst in one of Shelly's kidneys, completely filling it with blood. The same thing began to happen in the second kidney. Shelly slipped into a coma where she remained for two weeks. Her priest gave her last rites.
She was flown to the hospital at the University of California at San Francisco because the people there had some experience with the disease. Their knowledge was slight. The doctors and students there wanted to learn everything they could about the disease. Shelly was an anomaly: there were only fifty recorded cases of the disease and all the patients had died within the first two weeks.
They immediately intubated her because she couldn't breathe on her own. She was told she was going to die and wouldn't make it out of the hospital.
That was over eleven years ago. Her treatment has been successful, but throughout her recovery, the doctors watched her kidneys closely. A few years after the crisis, the kidneys began to deteriorate, and once again, her life was threatened.
The doctors had assumed that Shelly's brother Troy would be able to donate his kidney, but he wasn't a match. But Shelly had a friend who had confided that if Shelly ever needed a kidney, she could have one of hers. The kidneys of her friend, Shannon Breshears, were indeed a match, and out of love for her friend and in spite of months of testing and going through what she called an emotional hell, Shannon donated a kidney in a successful five-hour operation.
Stories like Shannon's and Shelly's are not all that unusual. But every time we hear about them, we pause, do we not, to reflect on the enormous love that empowers one to give up one's own organs and tissue to save the life of another.
This account, however, pales compared to the story told in the movie John Q. In this film, John, played by Denzel Washington, has a son with a severe heart defect. He cannot get on the transplant list because John doesn't have adequate insurance to cover the cost of a transplant operation.
So John commandeers the hospital, threatening violence, until the Chief of Staff agrees to put his son on the list. In a developing sub-plot, a car accident has taken the life of a young woman whose heart could be a match. But John does not know this. As things get desperate, John has the surgeon and nursing staff in the operating room, and suggests that they take John's own heart and give it to his son.
It is a dramatic and powerful scene. Of course, the surgeon and staff refuse. But John argues that surely, if he voluntarily puts a bullet through his head, they would not refuse to take his heart to save the life of the child lying unconscious on the operating table.
I'll not tell you how the story ends.
But the story of Jesus' death on the cross is no less dramatic. Shannon gave a kidney, but she lives. Here, Jesus voluntarily gives up his life at the age of 33 in the most far-reaching, history-altering heart transplant story of all time: "He breathed his last" so that we could have hearts of the spirit, hearts of love, and hearts of mercy and compassion -- not to speak of life eternal. In the mind and heart of God, we've always been on his transplant list.
