Text — John 15:12-13

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 

A few weeks ago, at my 25the divinity school class reunion, I ran into a classmate named Janna Steed.  You will see her name is on our prayer list.  A few months after our graduation, Janna was diagnosed with a progressive liver disease called primary schlerosing cholangitis, or PSC.  This disease was the cause of the liver cancer that killed the professional football player Walter Payton.  In 1987, Janna’s doctor told her she would eventually need a liver transplant.  Her condition slowly got worse, and in 1998 she was put on the long list to receive a liver transplant. 

As you know, the vast majority of transplanted organs come from people who have died, but by 2001, Janna found herself in a “Catch 22 situation”.  She wasn’t close enough to death to be high on the list of recipients, but her condition could quickly get worse, any time.  Given the shortage of organ donors, her doctor told her that her best bet — that is, her best chance to live a longer life — was to find a live donor.

Since no one in Janna’s family was an eligible donor, this meant that she had to find someone out there in the world who would be willing to give her 60% of his or her own liver.  The risk to the donor was a 1% chance of dying from the surgery or from the potential complications such as infection, blood clot, respiratory problems, reaction to anesthesia, and so on.  On the positive side, the liver is one organ that regenerates very fast.  Even if you had 60% of your liver removed, it would grow back to its normal size in 4-6 weeks.

Take a moment right now, to think about this.  Imagine yourself being in that position.  Imagine knowing that you were going die within a year, maybe two years, unless you could find some person willing to give you 60% of his or her liver and offer to go through all the risk and pain that major surgery entails.

Take a look around you right now at the people sitting near you.  What would it be like to know that your own life depended on one of those people, or someone you know from work, or your neighborhood, or a friend of a friend, doing that for you.  Would you go around asking people their blood type, and when you got the right answer say, “Would you mind risking your life by giving me 60% of your liver?”

Now try to imagine something else.  This isn’t easy either.  How would you feel if someone you knew, someone you see here in church, was going to die, relatively soon, without a living donor transplant, and you had the right blood type to qualify as a donor.  What would that be like?

This is the situation that two women faced over three years ago.  When Janna heard this news that she needed a living donor, she had a friend in the church she was attending.  This friend’s name was Jean.  Both of them were living in Creston, Iowa, at the time. 

I want you to hear these women’s story in their own words, so I’ve put together statements from them that I’ve gathered in the last couple of weeks through phone conversations and emails.

Janna: 

Jean had moved back to Iowa after her divorce.  We knew each other at church and occasionally got together with another single woman friend to go to a movie, but we weren’t especially close.  We’d known each other for about a year.

I was getting sicker as my liver function got worse.  After one of my medical checkups, Jean called to see how it went.  I told her what my doctor said.  My best chance was to find a living donor.  Jean asked me:

Jean:  What does it take for someone to qualify as a donor? 

Janna:  I told her: the donor needs to be under 50, in excellent health, the right size, and have type O blood.  There was a long pause on the other end of the line.  I said to myself “Uh on.”  In that silence, I knew that Jean was hearing this news in a way that went beyond curiosity, and beyond empathy.  It was one of those moments when you sense a door opening to something phenomenal, but that "something" brings terror as well as hope.  I had felt reluctant to seek a donor.  I certainly hadn't meant to lay that burden on her. 

Jean:  As soon as she said “type O blood” I KNEW I would end up being her donor.  But I didn’t tell her during that conversation.  I prayed about it.  I analyzed the pros and cons.  I did a lot of research over the next few days.   But I knew what I wanted to do.   The following Sunday, I asked her what I needed to do to get started.  There would be a long list of physical and psychological exams.  We called it my auditions.  The doctors thought I would never pass.  But I did. 

Janna:  In the weeks that followed, Jean and I took long walks and talked about this monumental step.  I had to decide whether to accept her incredible offer, with all the risks to us both.  Either of us could die in surgery.  Maybe I should keeping waiting for a cadaver organ.  But should I even receive a cadaver organ when someone younger and healthier might need it?  What if I survived the surgery, but Jean died?  Could I live with that?  Maybe I should just accept that my life was coming to an end.  These thoughts raced through my spinning head.  But in the end, Jean’s willingness seems like a message to me that God wanted to give me this chance, this extra time to live. 

Janna put me in touch with Jean and I spoke with her directly on the phone a week ago.   I said, “You must have felt some deep conflict about this.  If I were in your situation, I can imagine a big part of me wanting to run in the opposite direction.  What was going through your mind?” 

I tried, repeatedly, from every approach, to uncover some wish on Jean’s part to escape this situation.  After she passed the screening tests, the doctor told her secretly, “Look, if you want to back out, just say so.  We can say you were medically disqualified and no one will ever know.”

Jean:  There was never a moment when I thought that I should not offer to help.  It would have been like watching a person drowning in a lake and not jumping in.  Of course I was scared, for my sake and hers.  I was worried that Janna would not survive the surgery or my liver would fail her.  But I wanted to help her. 

The surgery to remove the entire right lobe of Jean’s liver and put it in Janna’s body took place on June 21, 2001, over three years ago.  In my phone conversation with Jean last week, I asked her what this whole experience means to her now.

Jean:  I gained Janna.  We are bonded in way that is not only physical but spiritual.  I became a part of her family and she is part of mine.  I was out of state when my father’s life ended.  Janna prayed with my father just before he died. Janna was the first person to be with my mother after he died.  I was in Texas--"my liver" was with my mom and dad.

I asked her how this experience changed her outlook on life in general.

Jean:  Before this, I never knew what it meant to trust God COMPLETELY.  I prepared for all possible outcomes of the surgery, and now I see that I was really preparing for all the possible outcomes in my whole life. 

I am a teacher and I’ve always hoped that I could make an important difference in the lives of young people.  But now I look at Janna.  She’s my sister.  I feel my life has made a difference.  It’s made a difference through all the wonderful things she is out there doing in the world.  God gave me a chance to make a real difference.  I’m proud of the difference I know I made in Janna’s life.  

I asked Janna how this experience changed her outlook, her faith, and her relationship with Jean.  (Jean, by the way, over three years later, still feels some pain and difficulty in her abdomen from this radical surgery.  She can’t do sit ups the way she used to.  She feels twinges of pain.  She still hopes for a full recovery, but she isn’t quite there yet.)

This is part of Janna’s answer: 

Janna: In December of 2001, about six months after my transplant, I was at a Christmas Eve service.  For some reason, I felt untouched and strangely distant – until it was time to go forward for communion.  When I reached the lay couple who were offering the elements, the man changed the familiar words ever so slightly. “Janna” he said, “the broken body of Christ – for you. “  

Suddenly I felt my heart pierced to the core . I began to cry, and couldn’t stop, for I saw Jean’s body,  broken, scarred, in pain, yet offered willingly for me!  Jean became Christ to me: No one has greater love than this — to lay down her life for a friend.