God Catching Strays - Sermon Transcript

I first noticed that my husband was turning yellow sometime in mid-December of last year.

As jaundice does, it started in the eyes.

Every once in a while, I would catch him at a certain angle and think, are his eyes yellowing?

Then it started to expand to the rest of his face.

I started asking friends and family, does he look yellow to you?

 Yeah, I thought it was the lighting, but he definitely looks yellow, they would say.

When the calendar turned to the new year and he got on my health insurance, I made him a primary care appointment.

The earliest availability at my doctor's office was in three weeks, and I figured that would be okay.

However, the problem kept getting worse.

The second week of January, we took a trip to see his family in Oregon.

The first thing his mom said when we got in the car was,

 Why are you yellow?

Since she's a nurse, I knew she'd say something right away.

I don't remember whether I'd already brought the issue up with him, but his mom and I made it clear that something wasn't right.

She made some calls and somebody from her hospital said that she'd see him, or that they'd see him while we were in town.

 But we already had that doctor's appointment in Dallas scheduled for the week after, and we didn't know what the insurance situation would be with us out of state.

Plus, he insisted that he didn't feel ill or anything.

The only issue was his skin coloration.

When we got back to Dallas, though, things started getting noticeably worse.

His stamina plummeted to the point that he didn't feel confident driving the short trip from our apartment in Uptown to his graduate classes at SMU.

 so he had me drive him to class.

A few days later, he asked me to carry his backpack because he didn't have the strength to walk up a flight of stairs with a backpack on.

Finally, the day of the primary care appointment came.

When the doctor walked into the room, she was literally speechless.

He assumed that she was taken aback by two of us being in the room, so he explained that I was his husband.

 I knew that she was shocked because of how yellow he was.

She ordered blood work and made it pretty clear, at least to me, that she expected to call back saying that we needed to go to the hospital.

That evening, he went to class and turned his phone off.

Because they couldn't reach him, the doctor's office called me and said, don't be alarmed, but you need to take him to the hospital immediately.

 Hemoglobin is the protein in your blood that carries oxygen from your lungs to the rest of your body.

Men typically have a hemoglobin level of 13.5 to 17.5.

If your hemoglobin is below seven, the hospital will give you a blood transfusion.

Hemoglobin below five is a life-threatening emergency.

His was 4.8.

 I sped to campus, ran into his building, cracked the door to his classroom, and quietly motioned that we needed to leave.

On the way to the emergency room, he asked if we could just go home so that he could lie under a blanket.

I felt like that was a bad sign.

At the hospital, they ran a gamut of tests and pretty quickly determined that he had significant liver damage.

 Over the next few days, they gave him a ton of blood transfusions, which slowly brought his energy back up to a sustainable level.

The doctors discharged him and told us, sometimes liver damage reverses itself.

We'll just have to monitor it to see.

Unfortunately, things got worse from there.

Slowly, his thinking grew increasingly foggy.

He complained that his brain wasn't working, that he couldn't think straight.

 A month later, we were back in the emergency room.

He'd gotten so delusional by this point that he was mumbling nonsense, like when you wake up from a dream and accidentally say the last thing you were thinking, except this was constant.

Finally, he fell asleep and slept for about 48 hours, though his heart rate remained above 110 the whole time.

 Whenever they woke him up for a second, they'd ask him questions to gauge his coherence.

His name and his birthday were the only questions he consistently got right.

It took him three or four days to correctly say the year was 2026.

Slowly, day by day, he got a little more coherent and slept a little less.

About a week and a half into his hospital stay,

 although I would have guessed it was a month if I hadn't looked at the calendar writing the sermon.

The doctors dropped the bomb on us.

They told us that he desperately needed a liver transplant, and they weren't going to be giving him one at that hospital.

I don't really want to get into the reasons why in front of 250 of my closest friends, but we're fairly confident looking back that the hospital made an incredible number of mistakes.

 including but not limited to prescribing medication against FDA guidelines, violating requirements to receive government funding, and advertising an entire liver disease clinic that doesn't exist.

We'd sue them, but as far as we can tell, the hospital is only liable if they cause death or permanent damage.

Regardless, at this point, there was nothing we could do to get the hospital to change its mind.

 and I was fairly convinced that my husband was going to die.

Hospitals rate liver damage based on a metric called the MELD score.

At this time, his MELD score was around 32.

If your MELD score is above 30 and you don't get a liver transplant, your chance of living three months is 50-50.

I don't cry often, maybe five times in my adult life,

 but I cried for two straight days.

The only reason we knew he wasn't eligible for a transplant at that hospital was that a new doctor had rounded onto his care.

She told us that the decision had been made as soon as he was admitted, a week and a half earlier.

By getting us out of that hospital, she saved his life, but even she was a jerk about it.

 She told me it was my homework to see if I could get him transferred to another hospital that would consider giving him a transplant and accept our insurance.

I'll never forget her telling me that my husband's life was on the line and equating it to a math worksheet.

We tried to get him transferred to the other hospital in Dallas that does a number of liver transplants, but they refused to take him based on incorrect information the first hospital had shared with him.

 We heard that Houston Methodist was the best transplant hospital within driving distance, so we asked for a transfer there.

The next day, they called and did a brief questionnaire over the phone.

It was the first time in the past two weeks that anybody had considered that he might actually deserve a transplant.

A day later, they accepted him, and a few days after that, he was strapped into a gurney to ride the four hours to Houston in the back of an ambulance.

 When we got to Houston, they made it clear that just because he'd been accepted as a patient, that didn't mean he was getting approved for a transplant.

Their next transplant review meeting was in four days, so they did every evaluation as expeditiously as they could.

They drew so much blood for testing, 36 vials, that they had to give him a transfusion just to make up for it.

They scanned every body part imaginable.

They did a full psychological evaluation

 Finally, the day of the meeting came, and he was approved for a transplant.

We'd been in the hospital in Dallas for two weeks and gotten nowhere.

But after just four days in Houston, he was on the transplant list.

Now, if you know anyone who's waited for an organ transplant, you know that it's a complete crapshoot on when you'll get matched.

Livers aren't as persnickety as kidneys,

 But you still need someone who matches your blood type and is roughly the same size as you.

The way the system works, the higher your MELD score, the more likely you are to get matched.

By the time we got to Houston, his MELD score was 36.

The scale goes to 40.

He was so sick that he was listed on a Friday and matched with a liver the next Monday.

But there was a catch.

 If someone's removed from life support, they go ahead and match people with all of their organs so that they're ready when the individual passes.

But they still allow the person to die of natural causes out of respect for them and their family.

Unfortunately, if the person doesn't die within 24 hours of life support being removed, then their organs are no longer viable for transplant.

That's what happened with the first liver that he was matched with.

 He was getting prepped for surgery when they called him to say that the donor hadn't passed in time.

Yet his MELD score was so high that as soon as they unmatched him from that liver, the system immediately matched him with another.

Finally, a month after he'd been admitted, he got his transplant.

We thought the hard part was over.

We were wrong.

 When he woke up from his surgery, his cognition was immediately clearer than it had been at any point in the last month, even with the anesthesia still wearing off.

I had him record a video for me to send to his friends, showing them how much better he was.

Before surgery, he'd prepped a message for me to post on his social media.

However, when I showed him the post, he asked why I'd written that he needed a job.

 The message said nothing about a job.

I didn't know why he said that.

Soon after that, his mom was helping him adjust his position in bed while the doctors were in the room, and he freaked out, telling them she didn't mean to do that.

It took me a bit to realize that he thought he had accused her of violating him in some way, but he hadn't said anything like that.

The hallucinations quickly got worse.

 He was convinced that he was dead.

And when his mom and I said he wasn't, he said, well, then you're dead too.

Other times, he thought he had a gun or had set off a bomb and killed people.

On more than one occasion, he yelled about how he had counted to the right number, so please don't do that, talking to someone who wasn't in the room.

 Typically, when a patient is having hallucinations as a result of medication like he was, they would sedate him.

However, he was so lucid when he first woke up after surgery that they'd already removed him from the ventilator.

Sedating him meant putting him back on the ventilator, and they didn't want to do that if they didn't need to.

However, that meant that we had to sit there and listen to his delusions.

For a while, I tried to reason with him,

 but I eventually realized he was going to keep talking whether I responded or not.

So I resorted to putting on headphones and turning it up loud enough that I couldn't hear what he was saying.

During the day, I would play music for him on his phone.

Each day was a different artist.

One Beyonce, one Taylor Swift, one Lady Gaga.

 There's a band with a cult following in the queer community called Muna, whose fans have proclaimed them the greatest band in the world.

One of the few moments of coherence I could manage was when I'd ask him, what's Muna?

And he'd say, the greatest band in the world.

Later, he told me that in his delusions, he thought somebody had offered him one band to listen to before he died.

 and he'd chosen Muna, and that's why it was playing so much.

Then one night, a week after surgery, I could tell he was having trouble breathing.

He was supposed to have been doing breathing exercises once the ventilator had been removed, but he was so delusional that we couldn't get him to do anything but chew on the mouthpieces.

I told the nurses that something seemed wrong.

His heart rate was spiking, and he wasn't taking deep breaths.

 They rushed to take an x-ray of his lungs.

Normally, when your lungs are filled with air, they appear clear on an x-ray.

But on his, one of his lungs was completely white.

They put him back on the ventilator and did a brief procedure to clear out his lungs.

Before the procedure, the attending turned to the resident and asked if he felt comfortable doing it.

And he said, yes, with a question mark at the end.

 At that point, they closed the door and shut the blinds so I couldn't see and I did my best to suppress a panic attack.

The next night, he started shaking a lot.

He'd had tremors before and the medication he was on was known to amplify tremors, but this seemed worse.

The doctors thought it might be a seizure, so they gave him enough sedation medication to knock him out.

They hooked him up to a machine to monitor his brain activity.

 So at that point, he had electrodes connected to his head, three tubes up his nose for medication, feeding, and monitoring, a ventilator tube down his throat, a constant dialysis machine hooked up to tubes coming out of his neck, and multiple IVs in his arms.

I sent my friend a picture of him and said, if he doesn't come out of this with a superpower, I'm going to be pissed.

In reality, though, I started thinking again that he wasn't going to make it.

 At one point, the ICU doctor had said that if he had to be put back on the ventilator, someone would talk to you about what's next.

Later, I realized that she simply meant she wasn't going to be on duty in a few days, so I talked to the next doctor about his care.

But the phrase, someone will talk to you about what's next, kept ringing ominously in my head.

It was so vague that it sounded like a euphemism for death.

 By now his ICU room was so full of machines there wasn't room for my chair to lie flat while I slept at night.

I stuck with it for one night, but he was still knocked out the next day.

So I convinced myself that nothing could happen if I went home.

I went to sleep at the Airbnb that his mom had rented.

It was the first night in five weeks that nobody had slept with him in the room.

The next day I went back to the hospital

 And he was wide awake, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, acting as if nothing had ever happened.

The hallucinations had completely stopped.

It's like we'd unplugged the power cord and plugged it back in.

From there, it was constant, incremental improvement.

Slowly but surely, he was disconnected from various machines that had proved no longer necessary.

 He started agitating to get released from the hospital.

And I tell him, as soon as you can get out of bed and walk out that door without help, you can leave.

After two weeks in the ICU, we moved to the recovery floor.

A week after that, we moved to rehab.

A week after that, he was discharged.

He had been in the hospital for 57 days.

 There are some captivating near-death tales in the Bible too, one of which is the story of Joseph.

So while I read this, if something good happens, say, ooh, that's good.

Joseph was the 12th child in his family, with 10 older half-brothers and an older half-sister.

He was the firstborn of his father's preferred wife, and as such, his father's favorite son.

 Now, if your father clearly likes you better than your 11 older siblings, that's something you might avoid rubbing in their faces.

Joseph, however, had no shame.

From a young age, Joseph had the ability to interpret dreams, and he told his family on multiple occasions about dreams of his in which the rest of them bowed down to him.

Naturally, his older siblings didn't take too kindly to this, so they sold him into slavery

 to some traveling merchants and convinced their father that he'd been killed.

From there, he was sold to be a servant to Potiphar, the captain of Pharaoh's guard in Egypt.

Potiphar's wife, Zuleika, wanted to initiate a romantic relationship with Joseph, but he rebuffed her, so she falsely accused him of assault, and Potiphar had Joseph thrown in jail.

 While he was in jail, he was joined by two of Pharaoh's servants who had had dreams that Joseph correctly interpreted to mean that one of them would be freed and the other would be killed.

Joseph asked the one who was freed to try to free him as well after he got out, but he had no such luck.

That is until two years later when Pharaoh started having unexplained dreams himself.

 The servant, remembering Joseph's skill, recommended that he be released from prison to interpret the dreams, which Pharaoh agreed to do.

When Pharaoh told Joseph the dreams, Joseph correctly predicted a period of agricultural surplus followed by a famine.

So Pharaoh installed Joseph as his top advisor.

 and asked him to oversee a campaign to store up enough food during the good years that they wouldn't be ravaged by the impending famine.

Joseph did this, and when the famine came, Egypt was in such a strong position that people from across the region would come there to buy food.

As fate would have it, Joseph's family was one of those in need.

When they came to Egypt for food, they met directly with Joseph.

 And he recognized his brothers, but his brothers didn't recognize him.

And that brings us to this scene, our scripture reading for today, from Genesis 45, one through 15.

Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all those who stood by him.

And he cried out, send everyone away from me.

So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers.

 And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it.

Joseph said to his brothers, I am Joseph.

Is my father still alive?

But his brothers could not answer him.

So dismayed were they at his presence.

Then Joseph said to his brothers, come closer to me.

And they came closer.

He said, I'm your brother Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt.

 And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life.

For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest.

God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors.

So it was not you who sent me here, but God."

 God has made me a father to Pharaoh, Lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt.

Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, thus says your son Joseph, God has made me Lord of all Egypt.

Come down to me, do not delay.

You shall settle in the land of Goshen.

You shall be near me, you and your children and your children's children, as well as your flocks, your herds, and all that you have.

 I will provide for you there since there are five more years of famine to come so that you and your household and all that you have will not come to poverty.

And now your eyes and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see that it is my own mouth that speaks to you.

You must tell my father how greatly I am honored in Egypt and all that you have seen.

Hurry and bring my father down here."

Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin's neck and wept.

 while Benjamin wept upon his neck.

And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them.

And after that, his brothers talked with him.

For the word of God in scripture, for the word of God among us, and the word of God within us.

Thanks be to God.

There are a number of great things about this passage, most notably the way Joseph forgives his brothers and the reconciliation that forgiveness enables.

 But to be honest with you, there's something that I hate about this passage too.

It's the part where Joseph says that God is the reason that he's in the position to bless his brothers and provide them with food.

The reason I don't like this part is because of the inevitable theological statements it makes.

If God is responsible for Joseph's prosperity, then God was also responsible for Joseph's previous demise.

 If God pulled the strings to put Joseph in a position of power, then God either caused Joseph's false imprisonment or willingly allowed it to happen.

However, when you go through the story, as we just did, you know exactly why Joseph ended up where he did.

God didn't sell him into slavery.

His brothers did.

God didn't falsely accuse him.

Zuleika did.

 God didn't put him in jail.

Potiphar did.

How then can we credit God with Joseph's later blessings when we know God wasn't responsible for the trials and tribulations that brought them about in the first place?

In the same way, God didn't cause my husband's liver damage.

And God didn't force the doctors in Dallas to refuse to treat him.

 And God didn't give him the hallucinations in Houston.

If God had, that'd be a terrible, miserable God that I wouldn't spend my life devoted to serving.

Yet if I'm unwilling to blame God for the bad experiences, it would be hypocritical to turn around and credit God for the happy ending.

I feel like you can't have your cake and eat it too.

 Either God is responsible for everything, including the bad, or God is responsible for nothing, including the good.

Now, I refuse to believe in a God that's responsible for all the terrible things that happen in this world, so that leaves me only with the option of believing in a God that is responsible for nothing.

But what kind of God is that?

 What exactly is the point of a God that never intervenes in the world?

Why believe in a God that exists but doesn't do anything?

It seems like a waste of time.

And this is awkward because you pay me to have answers to these questions.

But in all sincerity, I don't.

 I don't know why all the suffering exists in the world if there's a loving, all-powerful God who could do something about it.

Is God unwilling?

Is God incapable?

Is God not real?

None of these are satisfying answers.

I just don't know.

But I'll tell you what I do know.

 I know that my husband is alive because his parents and I fought to save him.

I know he's alive because the doctors and nurses and techs and custodians in Houston dedicated their lives to helping others survive.

I know that the love we all share between ourselves makes life worth living.

I know that beauty and joy and peace and generosity make the world a better place.

 I know that there's no one word that describes laughing with friends over dinner, and describes your favorite song washing over you at a sold-out concert, and describes stumbling upon a piece of nature that takes your breath away.

But somehow it feels like all of those things come from the same source, the same feeling of transcendence.

It feels like they need one word.

 to describe them.

So if you want that word to be God, that's okay with me.

Amen.