Acts 5:27-32; John 17:20-26
May 16, 2010: Sixth Sunday of Easter
[Sources for Tom Chappell’s story: “Cabbie Hailed for Donating Kidney” By Steve Hartman, (Phoenix, Sept. 11, 2009) http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-500803_162-5301486-500803.html ; “A cabbie’s calling,” by Kimberly Hosey http://www.timespublications.com/feb10-feature1.asp . Also: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/09/07/20090907cabdriver0908.html; http://www.disabled-world.com/disability/blogs/cab-driver-kidney.php (citing the Mayo clinic); ]
In telling the stories of Easter people during these last six weeks, my hope has been to convey that God’s promise in the resurrection is something that shapes real lives in the real world – specifically shapes our real lives in our real world. But, I worry that I sometimes indirectly communicate that “Easter people” are somehow out of the ordinary – people who live their lives in ways that are dramatically different from you or I.
But “Easter people” are as common as can be. You know Easter people. You might be, or someday become, an Easter person. You see, Easter people are common; they fill our churches and communities and neighborhoods and workplaces.
The book of Acts is the Bible’s stories of Easter people. These are the stories of Jesus’ followers after Jesus was raised from the dead and ascended to be with God. They are the stories of how people lived lives that were transformed by Jesus’ resurrection, and by their faith in the resurrection.
Today we have a strange little story with a fantastic ending. Paul and Silas are hanging out in Philippi. They are, yet again, headed to a place of prayer. But along the way, they run into this “slave girl,” and she is, it seems, doubly possessed. She is a slave possessed by her owners and she is possessed by a spirit. When she sees Paul and Silas, she recognizes them! They must have been making quite a splash in Philippi. This young girl starts following them, proclaiming them as the ones who know the way to salvation – to wholeness, to freedom. And it’s a little strange…Paul gets annoyed. Not just a little annoyed, like my sister was when I was young and I tried to hang out with her and her friends, but “very much annoyed,” it says.
In spite of this, he frees her – from at least one of her possessors. He orders the spirit to come out of her, and out it came. And then Paul moves on to deal with other things – namely his arrest by the Roman authorities, subsequent imprisonment, a miraculous earthquake and saving the guard in the prison in both a literal and spiritual way. It’s a strange little story, with a fantastic ending. But when we think about it, life is full of strange little stories with fantastic endings.
This week’s “Easter Person”, Tom Chappell, is a great Easter person for those of us think we can never measure up to the giants like Imaculee Ilibigiza, Julia Ward Howe and Paul Farmer, because by all accounts he lives a very ordinary life. It’s possible you could have met him, if you’ve ever taken a taxi in Phoenix, Arizona.
As a cab driver, Tom Chappell insists he never gets lost. But he might occasionally miss a turn or two. Such was the case the first time Tom went to pick up Rita Van Loenen. He got there about 30 minutes late, and she was not happy. She did not tip him. Actually, she was hoping she'd never see him again, and Tom wouldn’t have minded that either. But, over the next two months, it seemed like every time Rita called a cab, Tom was the one who was dispatched. He says at the time he was thinking, “Why Lord? Why are you picking me?"
Tom says Rita was pretty much always cranky, even when he wasn't late. It made Tom wonder about her. “I finally figured maybe there’s a reason she’s upset,” Chappell said. He wondered if her attitude had anything to do with where he was taking her all the time - a medical office with a door marked "kidney dialysis." So Tom went to the library to look up dialysis, and then he started understanding why she might be cranky.
It had everything to do with where he was taking her. Dialysis is a pretty lousy experience. It’s draining, takes several hours at a time, and can cause significant side-effects. As Rita says, “it impacts your whole body. I’m always so tense; you never know what’s going to happen. There are screaming machines, alarms beeping. Sometimes I cramp up real bad or vomit. Sometimes I cry. I just want to get there and get it over with. I am crabby when I have to go to dialysis.”
Through his library research and then from Rita, Tom learned about dialysis and learned that what Rita really needs is a kidney transplant, but none of her friends or family are suitable donors. “So I went home one night, and was taking a shower and me and the Lord had a talk,” Chappell said matter-of-factly. “He said, ‘Tom, you give it to her.’ And so I said I would. Just seeing how sick she was every time I saw her, I knew I had to do it. There’s been no second-guessing. I’ve had no doubts about it.”
Tom had always been healthy himself, a wiry guy with a bushy mustache and a baseball cap, barely a hundred and fifty pounds, active, hard working and not much in tune with medical issues.
When Tom first told Rita he wanted to be tested to see if he might be a donor, she didn’t believe him. She didn’t even know his last name! She said she was like “Okay, sure, buddy.” Other people had made similar offers, and it never went anywhere. But Rita told him where to call. She was taken aback when he really did go to the Mayo Clinic to get tested—and even more shocked when they ended up being an almost-perfect match. “It’s amazing enough that a perfect stranger would offer,” she said. “And then to be a perfect match, as good as a sibling? It’s just too good.”
From there, the process began. Tom went through extensive testing. “It was the first time I’d been to the doctor in years,” he said, “and boy, if there’s anything to find out about you, they’ll find it. They took blood. They poked and prodded me. Two weeks of going in every day for something.” He lost several pounds during the testing, but it was worth it. Doctors couldn’t find any reason not to perform the transplant.
“Everything was falling into place. I’d seen her through bad and then through worse, and now I knew I was going to help fix her. I’d tell her, ‘It ain’t gonna be long, Rita. You’re gonna be fixed. We’re gonna get you back to your life,’” he says.
In the gospel of John today, Jesus is praying. In fact it’s his last prayer before he dies – arguably his most important prayer according to John’s gospel. The disciples are listening in – as Jesus is keenly aware. Jesus is praying for them – praying that they will become one with God, one with one another, and that the world may know of God through their lives. But it’s not just a prayer for the disciples. As someone in our lectionary bible study said this week, this prayer is about all of us. Jesus prays the disciples “get” what it’s all about so that once Jesus is gone, the message will continue. In the same way, when we “get” it, the message continues through us as well.
The central theme of this prayer for the disciples and for us is unity – oneness with God, oneness with others. The focus in on relationships – divine and human – relationships characterized by love. It is not an ethereal or spiritual unity without concrete expression. It is not spiritual or intellectual only. It is not unity only on paper. It is to be as embodied as God was in Christ.
We see something of what this means when we turn to 1 John – a sermon written by the same author of John in later years. By the time that sermon had been written there had been a split in John’s Christian community. 1 John is about lack of love. It was about failure to respond to physical needs. It seemed to have been rooted in an understanding of Jesus which also denied his human aspects. Splitting up his life led to splitting up the lives of individuals into spiritual and practical concerns. It led to splitting up of the community in which, it seems, one group saw itself as the spiritual ones and neglected the rest of life.
Well, God must have answered Jesus’ prayer – the disciples must have taken to heart what Jesus said, lived it and passed it on to others, because here it all is, 2000 years later – Tom Chappell. Oneness with God, oneness with others and no one can argue that Chappell’s version of oneness is only spiritual. He is ready to give part of his body to help heal Rita’s. This isn’t just talk, and it isn’t just commiserating. It’s as fleshy as God gets in Jesus.
As the transplant date was nearing, one day Mayo Clinic had left Tom a message. He went in the next day, looking forward to setting the date. But, it was not to be. The Mayo Clinic had wanted him to come in so they could tell him in person: He would not be able to give Rita his kidney. Tom had been the one to call Rita with the good news that he’d be able to donate, and he made the call himself to tell her it was off, too.
“Tom’s taking this harder than I am,” said Rita. “He really does have a heart of gold.”
She could have added that he has “a head of granite.” Tom spent about an hour and a half at Mayo, assuring them he’d be fine. But reassurances that he was “healthy as a boar hog” didn’t sway the doctors. Tom pointed out that he had never had a sick day, that he was "raised country," and taught to tough it out and not bother doctors. "If we were sick, we just had a hot toddy, wrapped ourselves in blankets and sweated it out," he said. He also insists, "God sent me a message. The man upstairs wants me to do this!"
“I know myself,” said Tom. “I know I would be okay. I can’t see throwing away this chance because of a maybe. But they’re worried about how it would look if I got all this media attention and then something happened. I told them it doesn’t matter, but they won’t risk it.”
Tom said he felt he was "letting Rita down." But Rita understands the decision by the Mayo doctors to not take any chances with the safety and health of her new friend. She said she is overwhelmed with Tom’s kindness, his wonderful gesture and his friendship.
Now Tom is on a mission: To find a kidney for Rita. "I'm not going to stop,” he says. “I have to finish what I started. I'm not a quitter. "
Rita said the sense of hope Tom’s offer gave her “really lifted [her] spirits.” And she points to all the good that has come from this whole chance encounter. Tom has supported and energized her. And after it came out that Tom would be unable to donate a kidney, other donors have come forward to be tested. It helped energize Tom, too; he was so excited about the possibility of being a donor. “I was going to be able to give someone life,” he said. “Try not to get a lift in your boots about that. It’s one [heck] of a high.”
“I’ve never gotten to do anything real big in my life,” he says. “And this... this was my big thing. It just didn’t go the way I wanted.”
Sometimes an Easter person is someone who brings hope. Sometimes an Easter person is someone who wants from the bottom of their heart to make a difference, and is willing to put their actions behind those words. Sometimes Easter people fail despite their best efforts.
Like Paul and the slave girl, what began as an annoying little encounter ended in healing. But, I can’t help noticing the irony in this all. I think in one important way, Tom Chappell chose differently than Paul. Paul was annoyed, and he stayed annoyed. He freed the girl from the spirit that possessed her, yet never really seemed to notice her as a person. On the other hand, Tom Chappell was annoyed, but then took notice. He really saw Rita – he went out of his way to learn more about the illness that possessed her. But in the end, he wasn’t able to pull the healing off. It seems unfair in a way.
Of course, that’s not the whole story. For one thing, Paul’s healing was incomplete – maybe even cruelly incomplete. He freed her of the spirit that possessed her, but didn’t even seem to notice she was still a possession – she was a slave. I wonder if that’s because he didn’t get to know her – after all, free men really never considered the possibility of getting to know slave girls in Paul’s day. Maybe because he didn’t know her and understand her life, he wasn’t able to truly heal her – to free her from her double possession.
Rita, however, was healed in many important ways even if Tom couldn’t in the end give her his kidney. Think about how healing it is to have someone care – and not just care, but completely connect their welfare to yours. Think about how healing it is when someone not only sympathizes with you, but offers their very own self in order to help you. This is the oneness Jesus talked about – both spiritual and practical. This is what God does in Jesus…becomes one with us. It’s more than just sympathizing, it’s taking on our very lives, feeling what we feel and at every turn reaching out to heal. This is what Jesus hopes the disciples will do with each other and with those they will meet.
Easter people are as common as taxi-drivers, as common as our neighbors and friends. May we so embody the promise of Christ’s resurrection that we, too, may be Easter people. Amen.
