Sermon Archive

A Prophet's Touch … and Stem Cells
© by the Reverend Dr. Byron E. Shafer
A sermon preached at the Rutgers Presbyterian Church
on August 26, 2001, the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
Scripture Lessons:  Jeremiah 1:4–10;  Luke 13:10–17
[A few parts of the second half of this sermon are drawn from “A Resolution Enunciating
Ethical Guidelines for Fetal Tissue and Stem Cell Research,”  adopted by the
213th General Assembly (2001) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)]

Among the things Jesus most assuredly was, he was a “prophet” 
and a “healer.” Indeed, to his contemporaries Jesus sometimes 
showed himself to be both of these things through a single act—as 
in the story found in our Second Lesson, Luke 13:1–10.

In our First Lesson, Jeremiah 1:4–10, we learned that a “prophet”
 is one who is called and consecrated by God to speak God’s word 
and to do God’s work of both “pulling down” and “building up” (1:10).

“Pulling down”—that is, a prophet is to confront, challenge, 
and break down persons’ errant religiosity and unjust practices.

And “building up”—that is, a prophet is to help re-create among
us and within us a peace, wholeness, and well-being that’s physical
as well as spiritual.

So on the one hand, the prophet is called to precipitate crises, 
and on the other hand, the prophet is called to heal wounds.
And in the lesson from the Gospel of Luke Jesus does both.  He 
precipitates a crisis by healing a woman.

One sabbath day, Jesus is teaching in a synagogue.  Suddenly,
a woman appears, one who has been crippled for eighteen years.  
She is bent over and quite unable to stand straight.  Apparently she
has come to the synagogue this sabbath day to worship God, rather 
than to seek a cure from the visiting prophet, for unlike most recipients 
of Jesus’s healing touch she neither approaches him nor makes any 
request of him.

No, it is Jesus himself who takes the initiative here.  He calls the
 woman over to him, and, out of the blue, pronounces her “freed.” 
 He places his hands on her, and immediately she stands erect and 
begins to praise God.  Jesus frees her from what has been oppressing 
her.  Jesus breaks the bonds that have been limiting her life.  He brings 
to an end the loneliness, exclusion, and loss of social relationships she 
has experienced for so long.  He restores her to wholeness and well-being, 
and thereby to fullness of life in the community.

But coming as this does on a sabbath day, Jesus’s healing prophetic 
touch not only restores well-being to an afflicted woman but also 
precipitates a crisis, one that is calculated to “pull down” an outmoded 
style of religiousness, a style of rigid sabbath observance that is not 
creatively compassionate, not imaginatively loving.

For at the very moment the healed woman lifts her psalm in praise 
of God the leader of the synagogue raises his voice in indignation, 
proclaiming to the congregation that Jesus’s act of healing has 
violated the sanctity of the sabbath, a day on which every form 
of work is prohibited—including the work of curing any malady 
that is merely chronic, rather than life-threatening.

Jesus the prophet proceeds to reject and “pull down” the synagogue 
leader’s protest in this fashion.  Jesus points out that the leader, in 
accordance with the tradition of the rabbis, would find it acceptable 
on a sabbath day to perform such benevolent work as untying a donkey 
and bringing him to water, so that the beast can slake his thirst.  Well, 
if the synagogue leader would find it acceptable to do that, how much 
more ought he to find it acceptable on a sabbath day to perform such 
surpassingly benevolent work as “untying” a person and bringing her to 
health and well-being.

You see, Jesus is here proclaiming that in the eyes of God the work of 
bestowing health and well-being on another person takes precedence 
over normal sabbath prohibitions.  And through this line of reasoning 
and argumentation, offered in a typical rabbinic style, Jesus’s opponents 
are put to shame, while the rest of the congregation is led to rejoice over 
what Jesus has done for the woman.

A story of Jesus—a story of his prophetic touch and word, intended 
both to heal an ailing woman and to precipitate a religious crisis, 
intended both to “build up” and to “pull down.”

And now, let us look at a contemporary application for this story.  
Let us consider what light it has to shed on one of today’s 
controversies—the one surrounding embryonic stem-cell research 
and its public funding.  For here, too, we have a religious controversy 
over whether a traditional prohibition should take precedence over a 
creative new potential for persons’ health and well-being.

Is there today, in the matter of stem-cell research, an outmoded
style of religiousness that needs to yield to a new and imaginative 
way of expressing compassion?  Is there today need for a prophetic 
word to “pull down” something old so that a prophetic touch may
“build up” something new?  I believe so.

Human pluripotent stem cells, more commonly called just simply
 “stem cells,” are: cells (1) that have the ability to divide in a Petri-dish 
culture for an almost indefinite period of time, and (2) that are also able 
to develop into most of the specialized cell and tissue types found in the 
body—such as muscle, nerve, brain, pancreas, liver, skin, blood, and 
bone marrow cells.  Yes, believe it or not, our bodies have more than 
200 cell types!

Scientists believe that any stem cells stimulated into becoming 
specific kinds of specialized cells can then be used to wage medical 
battles against such dread conditions as juvenile diabetes, stroke, 
Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, heart disease, burns, and spinal cord injuries.  
Scientists also believe that stem-cell transmutation can reduce our 
dependence on organ donation and transplantation.  In short, human
embryonic stem-cell research has the potential for many lifesaving
medical breakthroughs.

Now, it is possible—but far, far more difficult—to harvest stem cells 
from adults rather than from embryos and then to grow these adult 
stem cells in culture.  But scientists believe firmly that stem cells 
harvested from embryos are much more versatile and, therefore, have 
far greater potential for being transmuted into the specialized nerve, 
liver, blood, and skin cells that would lead to dramatic medical advances.

But here’s the problem. Harvesting stem cells from a human embryo 
ends the embryo’s viability for implantation into a woman’s womb, 
where it may grow first into a fetus and then into a child.  So harvesting 
stem cells destroys the embryo, and it is this fact that raises the moral
question, “Is the harvesting of embryonic stem cells the taking of life?”

President Bush, among others, has taken the position that an 
embryo is human life, so harvesting stem cells from it is “the taking of life.”

But our denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), among 
others, has taken the position that an embryo is not yet human life,
so harvesting stem cells from it is not “the taking of life.”

Because an embryonic stem cell, once harvested, has the ability to
divide in a Petri-dish culture for an almost indefinite period of time, 
one harvested embryonic stem cell can become a “reservoir” from 
which many further generations of identical cells are producible, 
establishing what is called a “stem-cell line.”  Thus, only one embryo 
need be sacrificed to establish a whole colony of cells.

President Bush announced in his nationally televised speech of Aug. 9th 
that scientists and companies around the world had by that date produced 
some sixty stem-cell lines that meet the following criteria: (1) the line was 
derived with the donors’ informed consent; (2) it was derived from an excess 
embryo created solely for reproductive purposes rather than experimental 
purposes; and (3) it was derived without any financial inducement being 
given to the donors.

President Bush then announced that since the use of these sixty stem-cell 
lines for future research would entail no further destruction of human 
embryos, he would authorize the use of public funds to underwrite research 
that utilizes these lines, and these lines only.  (Fewer than ten of these sixty 
are found in the Unites States.  The rest are in Sweden, Israel, India, Singapore, 
and Australia.)

There are somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 embryos currently 
being kept frozen in fertility clinics around the world.  Almost all of these,
too, are “extra” embryos—ones produced by in vitro fertilization but for 
one reason or another no longer needed by the couple who donated the 
original egg and/or sperm.  And each of these frozen embryos is, of course, 
a potential source for yet one additional stem-cell line that scientists could 
use for medical research.  Yet because the President’s particular religious 
view is that each of these embryos is a human life he has ruled that public 
funds may not be used to sponsor research done on any stem-cell lines 
derived from these embryos.

Now, public funds are necessary if scientists are to be enabled to conduct 
the massive and complex research projects needed to turn the potential 
of stem cells into the actuality of healed patients.

You see, scientists at this point do not really know much about how to 
coax embryonic stem cells into becoming self-sustaining colonies or lines 
of specific specialized cells, like pancreas cells as opposed to nerve cells 
or heart cells.  One report of success in growing specialized cells from 
human embryonic stem cells was released just August 1st, when researchers 
in Israel announced that they had created in a Petri dish a few early-stage 
heart cells called cardiomyocytes.  The researchers noted, however, that any 
theoretical transplantation of such cells into a heart patient would require 
not just a few such cells but several million of them.

And after scientists learn more about how to create specific specialized 
cells, they will have to overcome many other obstacles before stem-cell-derived 
specialized cells may be transplanted into people.  For instance, they will 
have to prove that these cells are safe, that they pose no danger of growing
indefinitely into giant tumors.  Also, researchers will have to develop ways 
of delivering such cells to a patient without the patient’s immune system 
reacting in such a way as to reject them.  Scientists are still decades and 
thousands of research projects away from actualizing the potential of 
stem cells.

Scientists are deeply skeptical that the sixty approved stem-cell lines 
will be adequate for handling the decades-long amount of research 
necessary.  Indeed they are deeply skeptical that anything like all 
sixty will actually be made available for widespread research use, 
for most of the sixty are held under patents or by institutions that 
have commercial or proprietary interests.  A number of institutions 
may choose not to make their lines easily and widely available.

Because so many existing stem-cell lines are commercially controlled, 
additional public funding of research is all the more necessary so 
that whatever research is done may be focused more on human benefit 
than on commercial profit.

I believe the time has come to break free from outmoded religious 
thinking and to release ourselves for creative compassion and 
imaginative loving.

I believe the prophetic word being spoken to us in our time is this: 
“Why, in the face of so much potential healing for all of humankind—why 
do you cling to the notion that a several-day-old embryo conceived in 
a Petri dish is the fullness of human life?  Why do you imagine that a 
microscopic clump of embryonic cells created in a laboratory is the 
moral equivalent of a human being, or even the moral equivalent of 
a fetus in a woman’s womb?  And why do you believe that harvesting 
the stem cells from such a clump is anything like the taking of a life, 
when stretching out before you is such limitless potential for using these 
cells as a God-given prophetic touch that may heal thousands, and in 
time millions, of women, men, and children?”

I ask both our congregation and society at large to heed the counsel 
of this year’s General Assembly of our denomination, offered in a 
document entitled: “A Resolution Enunciating Ethical Guidelines for 
Fetal Tissue and Stem Cell Research.”

This resolution acknowledges that because human embryos have the 
potential for personhood they clearly do deserve respect.  But the 
document goes on to state that to prohibit the derivation of stem cells 
from embryos would be to give “respect for embryos” precedence over 
“helping living persons,” persons whose pain and suffering may be alleviated.  
And this would be to establish the wrong order of priority.  
"Helping living persons" should take precedence over 
"respect for embryos."

But, actually, it is possible both to show proper respect for human 
embryos and at the same time to provide for the future healing 
of millions.  This can be done first: by harvesting stem cells only 
from embryos that will not have a chance to grow into personhood—
those that are no longer needed for the fertility of the donors and are 
also not available for donation to another woman.  And this providing 
of healing along with a showing of respect can be done second: by 
prohibiting the sale and commercialization of human embryonic 
cells and tissues.

With these careful regulations in place, human stem cells may rightly 
be derived from many additional human embryos and may rightly be 
used for much additional creative research, research that offers the 
potential to restore health to countless persons suffering many illnesses.  
And with these guidelines in place, further public funds should be made 
available to help accomplish this right use.

May Jesus the prophet and healer bless our imaginative new application 
of human wisdom to the use of embryonic stem cells—a resource whose 
versatility is surely God-given, a resource simply awaiting a prophet’s 
touch!

Let us pray:

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