Avoiding Transplant Rejection

“Transplant rejection occurs when transplanted tissue is rejected by the recipient's immune system, which destroys the transplanted tissue. Transplant rejection can be lessened by determining the molecular similitude between donor and recipient and by use of immunosuppressant drugs after transplant.”

Most people don’t ever have to think about that, but I do.  I think about it almost every day.  My wife is a heart transplant recipient.  Nearly 5 years ago her own heart was so severely damaged by a virus that it began a downward spiral toward complete failure.  The only solution – and our one only hope – was a heart transplant.  If a heart did not become available to her in time I was going to lose the love of my life, the mother of my three daughters, and the grandma of three awesome little boys. 

There is no way to describe what goes through your head when you are teetering on the brink of that kind of loss, and suddenly you get a phone call telling you to get to the hospital because a heart has become available.  For us, that phone call came before dawn one morning.  To her credit, my wife’s first reaction was to have a prayer for the family of the heart donor.  She knew that they were, at that moment, having the worst day imaginable.  Their loved one, somewhere and under some circumstances unknown to us, had died.  And all of that person’s organs would have died too, but for their extraordinarily generous decision to be an organ donor.  So we prayed, we packed, we hurried to the hospital, and my wife received that transplant.

If you ran into her today you would never know she was a heart transplant recipient.  She is active and full of life.  She works out regularly, is involved with her grandkids actively, and is the picture of health.  But that’s because of the immunosuppressant drugs she will have to take for the rest of her life.  Her body, you see, still recognizes that heart as a foreign body.  It accepts it and is very well served by it only because of the daily doses of her treatment.  If she stops taking it, her body will go into transplant rejection.

As I worked on the sermon text for last Sunday, I was reminded of all of this by a statement the apostle Paul made in this section from Ephesians 4:  “As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.  {2} Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.  {3} Make very effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.  {4} There is one body and one Spirit – just as you were called to one hope when you were called – {5} one Lord, one faith, one baptism; {6} one God and Father of all, who is over all and though all and in all.”  As I think about the congregation I serve, I find that to be a profoundly important statement.  That’s because not one of the members of Jesus’ church – me included – are natural born parts of it.  Quite the opposite.  We were all born into this world dead in sin and unbelief and separate from Christ.  Left in that condition, I – we – would have died.  Eternally.  But then the Holy Spirit, that master transplant surgeon, acted.  By calling each of us to one and the same hope in Christ, he transplanted us into the Body of Christ, the Church.  Now we each draw our life from him.  Now we can contribute our spiritual gifts, our talents, our skills, our encouragement and support, and all that we have and are to benefit all the other parts of that Body. 

But did you notice in Paul’s words above that he is concerned about transplant rejection in that Body?  An unkind word, a grudge that’s held, forgiveness that is withheld,  a lack of concern for another part of that Body, the idea that I have more of a right to or am more important in the Body than another part of it – any of that stuff is nothing less than transplant rejection. To reject what God himself transplanted is a bad thing, don’t you think?

So every day each member of that Body has a responsibility to honor God and care for his or her fellow transplanted souls by administering that which preserves the unity God has given us.  Did you notice how Paul described that? – “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.”  That shouldn’t be all that hard to do.  After all, that’s exactly how God loves each of us every day for Jesus’ sake.  All he’s saying here is this, “Let my humility, gentleness, patience and forgiveness for you reflect from you to others.” When all is said and done, regular treatments of the gospel in Word and Sacrament are just what’s needed so that I (part of the Body) don’t reject Christ (the Head), and so that I don’t reject another part of the Body God himself thinks I need and who needs me.