Christ, Substitute for Humanity

The ex-head of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, Masao Yoshida, 58, died at a Tokyo hospital of esophageal cancer on July 9, 2013.

When the tsunami devastated Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant on March 11, 2011, Masao Yoshida worked to control the damage caused by the failing reactors. He disobeyed a company order and secretly continued using seawater, a decision that experts say almost certainly prevented a more serious meltdown and has made him an unlikely hero. He chose to place himself in danger, exposing himself to extreme radiation. And his story is just one of many at the plant.

Remembering the disaster, he said "The level of radioactivity on the ground was terrible…but the workers of the plant leaped at the chance to go trying to fix the situation with the reactors…. My colleagues went out there again and again."

Possible Preaching Angle:

What a beautiful picture of sacrificial, Christ-like love.

On the Cross, Jesus was both our substitute and a representative. Here are two analogies to unpack what that means.

A substitute is someone who takes the place of another person but does not represent that person. For example, a pinch hitter in baseball enters the lineup to bat in the place of another player. He is a substitute for that player, but in no sense represents the other player.

On the other hand, a simple representative acts on behalf of another person, and serves as his spokesman but he’s not a substitute for that person. For example, a baseball player has an agent who represents him in contract negotiations with the team. The representative does not replace the player but merely advocates for him.

These roles can be combined. Here’s an illustration of both.

If you’re a shareholder for the company, and you can’t attend the shareholders meeting, you can sign an agreement authorizing someone else to serve as your proxy at the meeting. That person will vote for you, and because they have been authorized to do so, their votes are your votes. You have voted via proxy at the meeting of shareholders. The proxy is a substitute in that they attend the meeting in our place, but they are also a representative in that they do not vote instead of us, but on our behalf, so that we vote.

In bearing our punishment, Jesus was both our substitute and a representative before God. He was punished in our place and bore the suffering we deserved. But he also represented us before God, so that his punishment was our punishment.

The United States recorded its one millionth organ transplant in September of 2022, a historic milestone for the medical procedure that has saved thousands of lives. It's unclear which organ was the record one millionth and details about the patient are unknown at this time.

The very first successful organ transplant occurred in 1954 at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. That was when doctors transplanted a kidney from 23-year-old Ronald Herrick into his identical twin brother, Richard, who was suffering from chronic kidney failure. The lead surgeon, Dr. Joseph Murray, received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his role in the procedure.

Up until the early 1980s, the number of transplants every year remained low. However, success in transplants organs other than kidneys—such as hearts, livers, and pancreases—and the advent of anti-rejection medication led to a rise in transplants. Since then, transplants have become a far more common procedure. In 2021, more than 41,000 transplants occurred, which is the highest number ever recorded.

Sadly, approximately 5,000 people die waiting on transplant lists ever year. And a study published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology in October 2020 found that many donor kidneys in the U.S. are unnecessarily discarded. But organ donors and recipients hope that by sharing their stories, they will inspire people will sign up to donate and help reduce those long waiting lists.

Possible Preaching Angle:

1) Heart; New Life - God has also given millions of new hearts (Ezek. 11:19) through the work of the Great Physician. However, just as the article states, many die while waiting for a new organ, so also many die without taking advantage of God’s gracious offer of salvation (“why will you die?” Ezek. 33:11; Luke 13:34). 2) Christ, substitute for humanity – There is joy for the patients receiving a new heart. Yet, the joy is bittersweet because the cost of that new heart was someone's life. For one to live another had to die.

In the opening scene of the 2016 film Collateral Beauty, advertising CEO Howard Inlet explains that his strategy is driven by three things. At the end of the day, (1) we long for love. (2) We wish we had more time. And (3) we fear death. These three things, Howard claims, drive every human act.

But then we see him three years later. His six-year-old daughter has died of cancer. It has destroyed him. In his lament at life, he writes letters to love and time and death. To death he writes: “You’re just pathetic and powerless middle management. You don’t even have the authority to make a simple trade.”

Later, he explains what he meant: “When we realized our daughter was dying, I prayed. Not to God or the universe. But to death. Take me. Leave my daughter.”

Like Howard, Jesus volunteered to make the trade for us. But unlike death in Howard’s mind, Jesus wasn’t middle-management. He was completely in control. He is the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. Jesus really did die for us.

Michael Wingard arrived at Houston Methodist Hospital with a cheerful "Howdy!" He's a young man with a healthy left kidney. In a couple of hours, a surgeon will remove the kidney and sew it into someone else's body. This also happens to be the day before his 20th birthday.

Michael's parents, Adrien and Ed, are with him, and they tear up as Michael is checked in. His mother said, “I'm very, very nervous and scared and all those emotions, but I'm so proud of him. He knew that his friend needed a kidney and he had to do whatever it took to make it happen.”

Michael Wingard's kidney isn't going to his friend, though, because he wasn't a match for her. But he was a match for someone else. And that's how Wingard became the first link in a 10-person chain that took place at Houston Methodist earlier this month.

In addition to Wingard, the swap involved:

Heather O'Neil Smarrella, who will get his kidney. Then her twin

Staci O'Neil gave her kidney to

Javier Ramirez Ochoa, whose son-in-law

Tomas Martinez, donated a kidney to

Chris McLellan, whose father

David McLellan, gave his kidney to

Barbara Moton, whose daughter

Lisa Jolivet, gave her kidney to

Kaelyn Connelly, Wingard's friend.

This 10-person procedure takes place over four days, and it's uncommon. Usually, the hospital has chains that involve up to six people. With all its complexities--from matching antibodies to patient health--a kidney swap of this size is hard to pull off. This one was postponed three times. But it's worth the effort. There are about 90,000 people on the transplant list, waiting for a kidney. Many will remain on the list for years. Some die waiting.

Two days after Michael Wingard's kidney surgery, a group of strangers gathered in a conference room at the hospital. Michael Wingard, Kaelyn Connelly, Heather O'Neil Smarrella, Staci O'Neil, Lisa Jolivet, Javier Ochoa, Tomas Martinez, and Chris McLellan sat around a conference table. And then they weren't strangers anymore. Chris McLellan leans over to Tomas Martinez: "Thank you for giving me my life back." And, he adds, "You have an awesome kidney."

Possible Preaching Angle:

You never know how your service to others, even to strangers, will radiate out into your community.

In 1951, Henrietta Lacks visited John Hopkins Hospital complaining of bleeding. Doctors discovered a large, malignant tumor on her cervix. Lacks began undergoing radium treatment for cervical cancer and later underwent a biopsy to determine the progress of the treatment. Doctors were shocked to find that Lacks’ cells were unlike any others they had ever seen. Whereas other cells that they used for research would die, Lacks’ cells doubled every 20-24 hours.

Today, these cells, nicknamed “HeLa” cells, are replicated worldwide and have been used to study the human genome; the effects of toxins, drugs, hormones, and viruses on the growth of cancer cells; and played a crucial role in the development of polio and COVID-19 vaccines. Lacks’ cells were the first immortalized human cell line and one of the most important cells in medical research.

Henrietta Lacks died more than seventy years ago at the age of thirty-one. History would have long since forgotten her if not for that special something drawn from her blood. Today, scores of polio survivors and the billions who've been vaccinated for COVID-19 owe a great debt to this woman of whom most people have never heard. Only as her story is retold each February as part of Black History Month is she remembered.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Jesus' story bears many similarities to Henrietta's. He, too, died around the age of thirty. He, too, might have long since been forgotten if his story wasn't regularly retold and at Easter especially. Like Lacks, Jesus is honored for that special something about his blood. As Isaiah puts it, "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed."

How are we to understand Jesus’ cry of dereliction, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” along with his desperate prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, pleading with God “if possible, let this cup pass from me?

Here’s the (question): Many mere mortals have managed to face death with more (composure) than Jesus did—Stephen, for example, just months later. Jesus knew he would rise from the dead, so why all the anguish?

In his ordeal on the cross … Christ mind-reads the mental states found in all the evil human acts human beings have ever committed. Every vile, shocking, disgusting, revulsive psychic state accompanying every human evil act will miraculously, be at once, in the human psyche of Christ … without yielding an evil configuration in either Christ’s intellect or will.

Such psychic agony “would greatly eclipse all other human psychological su­ffering … Flooded with such horror, Christ might well lose entirely his ability to find the mind of God the Father.” This drives home the suffering of Christ, a suffering so comprehensively horrible that it surpasses even the physical abuse of crucifixion.

In China, the extremely wealthy can avoid prison terms by hiring body doubles. Incredibly, this is true! Slate.com originally broke the story of how the super-rich in China get away with pretty much everything, including murder.

According to Slate, a wealthy 20-year-old named Hu was drag racing his friends, when he struck and killed a pedestrian. Although Hu received a three-year prison sentence, allegations arose that the man appearing in court and serving the three-year sentence wasn’t Hu at all, but a hired body double!

In another case, the owner of a demolition company that illegally demolished a home hired a destitute man and promised him $31 for each day the “body double” spent in jail. In China, the practice is so common that there is even a term for it: “substitute criminal.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

This may seem scandalous, but 2000 years ago Someone became our substitute and took the punishment we deserve. He took the penalty of all our sins in his own body on the Cross. Justice is not met by the wealthy getting off scot-free. However, the death of Christ was “The just for the unjust – so that he might bring us to God” (1 Pet. 3:18).

In a sermon on the Atonement, Will Anderson used the following illustration:

Food demonstrates how everyone benefits from a form of atonement, whether they acknowledge it or not. Everything we eat—whether plant or animal—was once alive. It had to be plucked from the tree, pulled from the earth, or slaughtered in order to sustain you. Every meal is a testament to the fact that other things must die, if you are to live.

Most people who regularly enjoy a juicy burger or steak have never looked into the eyes of the animal that gave its life for their sustenance. The realities of the slaughterhouse are unseen and unthought of by most consumers—we reap the benefits without considering the cost. It’s hypocritical to caricature the Cross as needlessly cruel while benefiting from atonement at the dinner table every day.

Some may object: It’s one thing to kill an animal, but another entirely for God to (sacrifice) his Son. Yes, it’s true that the Cross is horrific. And yet Christ willingly embraced it, which should fill us with trembling and humility, not disgust.

Something stirs our souls when we watch someone willingly die for another—it moves and breaks us simultaneously. Why? It’s because our souls were formed by a Creator who sacrificed himself for us. We may deny atonement with our heads, but our hearts can’t be fooled.

Pastor and author J.D. Greear writes:

I remember a Muslim asking me when I lived in Southeast Asia, why would God need somebody to die in order to forgive our sin? He said, "If you sinned against me, and I wanted to forgive you, I wouldn't make you kill your dog before I forgave you. Why would God require some kind of sacrifice to forgive?"

Here's how I answered him:

Choosing to forgive somebody means that you are agreeing to absorb the cost of the injustice of what they've done. Imagine you stole my car and you wrecked it, and you don't have insurance and or the money to pay for it. What are my choices? I could make you pay. I could haul you before a judge and request a court-mandated payment plan. If you were foolish enough to steal my $1.5 million Ferrari (No, I do not actually own a Ferrari), you might never pay it off, and you'd always be in my debt.

But I have another choice. I could forgive you …. What am I choosing to do if I say, “I forgive you”? I'm choosing to absorb the cost of your wrong. I'll have to pay the price of having the car fixed. ... You have no debt to pay—not because there was nothing to pay, but because I paid it all. Not only that, I'm choosing to absorb the pain of your treatment of me. ... I'm choosing to give you friendship and acceptance even though you deserve the opposite.

This is always how forgiveness works. It comes at a cost. If you forgive someone, you bear the cost rather than insisting that the wrongdoer does. And that is what Jesus, the Mighty God, was doing when he came to earth and lived as a man and died a criminal's death on a wooden cross.

In her book Ten Fingers for God, Dorothy Clarke Wilson writes about Dr. Paul Brand who worked with leprosy patients in India.

Sometimes they would all gather together in fellowship. One evening, Paul joined them, and they asked him to speak.

Dr. Brand had nothing prepared, yet he willingly stood up, paused for a moment and looked at their hands, some with no fingers, and some with only a few stumps. Then he spoke: "I am a hand surgeon, so when I meet people, I can't help looking at their hands. I would like to have examined Christ's hands. With the nails driven through, they must have appeared twisted and crippled. Remember, Jesus, at the end, was crippled too."

The patients, on hearing this, suddenly lifted their poor hands towards heaven. Hearing of God's response to suffering had made their suffering easier.

In his book Jack Alexander writes:

From the time he was six years old, Welles Crowther wore a red bandana. His father gave it to him, explaining the clean white hand­kerchief in breast pocket was "for show," the red bandanna was "for blow." Welles took that red bandanna everywhere. When he volunteered with the Empire Hook and Ladder Company at age sixteen—joining his father on the force—he carried it with him. When he played lacrosse for Boston College, he tied it around his head and wore it under his helmet. Even when he took a job as an equities trader, working on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center's South Tower, he brought it with him.

In a culture of starched white handkerchiefs folded neatly in Italian-suit breast pockets, Welles kept his bandanna close. And it was with him on Sept. 11, 2001, when United Airlines Flight 175 exploded into the South Tower, cutting a fatal swath between floors 78 and 85.

Several floors below Welles, Lin Yung was blown back by the explosion and couldn't see anything at first because her eyeglasses were covered in blood. When she wiped them off, Lin saw a world of nightmare: mangled bodies strewn around her, dust and debris everywhere. Lin didn't know how long her luck would hold.

Then she saw a young man through the smoke and ash, seemingly more shadow than flesh. He said, "I found the stairs. Follow me." Welles led Lin and others down seventeen flights of stairs to where firefighters led survivors down another twenty floors to a set of still-working elevators. But Welles didn't follow them. Instead, he went back up, a red bandanna wrapped around his nose and mouth.

He found Judy Wein in the rubble–her arm was broken, ribs cracked. One of her lungs was punctured. Welles called out: "Everyone who can stand, stand now. If you can help others, do so." Welles led Judy down the stairs, again to a band of waiting firefighters. And then he went back up. Again.

Welles didn't make it out of the South Tower. Perhaps he never expected to. His body was found six months later, surrounded by the bodies of uniformed firefighters. It's said that he saved perhaps as many as a dozen people that day. He was twenty-four years old. Wein told CNN, "People can live 100 years and not have the compassion, the wherewithal to do what he did.”

Lin keeps a photo of Welles in her apartment. She says, "Without him, I wouldn't be here. He saved my life. And he will always be in my heart. Always be with me.”

Welles is gone, but his bandanna is not. It's part of the 9/11 museum now, and it's become a symbol of the man's heroism and self-sacrifice. Think mercy can't change the world? Take a look at Welles Crowther. Take a look at the people he saved. Think again.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The cross of Christ is the supreme powerful symbol of sacrifice for others. We should remember it and display it in His honor.

In an interview on NPR’S Fresh Air, Joshua Mezrich, an associate professor in the division of multiorgan transplantation at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, reflected on saying a few words about the donor before the operation begins:

I want to reiterate as many times as possible how important the donors are. How much they are heroes to us and we always want to remember their stories and this gift that they're giving. It's very emotional when … we're in the operating room, we always take a pause. Our people from our organ procurement team, after a moment of silence, will read something. Often it's a poem or something that one of the loved ones asked us to say about the person. Maybe a little bit about who they were and what was important to them. Sometimes it has a religious base, sometimes it doesn't.

And we all think about it, and it is very special. It's emotional. And then the second that's over, we move on and really go after the task at hand. So it's interesting. You have this emotional experience. Then you have to very quickly kind of push it out of the way and move on to the operation. But it's always very special.

How much more should we as Christians seek to remember the gospel story and what we have been given?

Three-year-old Zainab Mughal, who lives in Florida, requires frequent blood transfusions for cancer treatment. There are over 300 different blood types, and 90 per cent of the population is fairly easy to match to one of those types. The challenge for the doctors treating Zainab is that her very rare blood type only occurs within Indian, Pakistani, or Iranian communities. So far, only five donors around the world have been tracked down.

Adjunct Professor David Irving is with the Australian Red Cross Blood Service, which found the match for Zainab. This process has been aided by an effective system that has been established for the international tracking of blood. The blood collected from the Australian donor has been sent to Florida, for use in Zainab's stem cell transplant operation.

Zainab still needs more blood for further treatments, so the search for donors will not stop at five. Professor Irving said, “We are certainly looking to diversify our blood donor pool so that we are ready for those patients like Zainab. Our red cell reference laboratory researchers are working hard to make sure that they get the best match for all of the patients who are in need of red blood cell transfusion.”

Possible Preaching Angle: Blood of Christ; Easter; Sin Nature; Substitution – Our terminal disease of sin also requires an extremely unique blood donor. In all of history, only the blood of the sinless Son of God is the perfect match. Nor is there is a need for repeated transfusions – one time is sufficient for all of our needs.

In March 2018 a lone gunman took several people hostage in a French supermarket. Arnaud Beltrame, a French police officer, offered to trade places with a hostage during the standoff. Because of his actions the hostage lived, but the officer died. A spokesperson for French President Emmanuel Macron said that Beltrame "died in the service of the nation, to which he had already brought so much. By giving his life to put an end to the … armed jihadist terrorist, he has fallen as a hero." Although we don’t know for certain the state of this man’s heart his Catholic priest thinks he was a true Christian.

Father Jean-Baptiste wrote this of Officer Arnaud:

It seems to me that only his faith can explain the madness of this sacrifice which is today the admiration of all. He understood, as Jesus told us, that there is no greater love than to give one’s life for one’s friends (John 15:13). He knew that if his life belonged to [his wife] Marielle, it also belonged to God, to France and to his brothers in danger of death. I believe that only a Christian faith animated by charity could ask for this superhuman sacrifice.

In his book (Re)union, Bruxy Cavey writes:

The Victoria Cross is Canada's highest military honor, similar to the Medal of Honor in the United States. These medals are awarded for personal acts of valor above and beyond the call of duty. Of the thousands awarded to date, more citations have been bestowed for falling on grenades to save comrades than any other single act.

The first Victoria Cross of World War II was awarded to Company Sergeant-Major John Robert Osborn. The sergeant-major and his men were cut off from their battalion and under heavy attack. When the enemy came close enough, the Canadian soldiers were subjected to a concentrated barrage of grenades. Several times Osborn protected his men by picking up live grenades and throwing them back, but eventually one fell in just the wrong position to pick up in time. With only a split second to decide, Osborn shouted a warning and threw himself on top of the grenade. It exploded, killing him instantly. The rest of his company survived that battle because of Osborn's selfless other-centeredness.

I love stories of this kind of bravery and self-sacrifice. They give me hope for humanity and offer us all a glimpse of God's goodness reflected in his image-bearers. But no matter how beautiful that heroic act may be, through Jesus we see an even greater love at the heart of God. You see, soldiers who fall on grenades do so out of love for their friends while they are on the battlefield trying to kill their enemies. Jesus died for his friends, and his enemies, and for everyone in between.

In his sermon, Todd Wilson tells a powerful story of rescue in a life and death situation.

As a country, we are still reeling from many tragic events. But there are a few flashes of hope coming forth from the stories of tragedy. One is from a survivor of the 2015 San Bernardino shootings, 27-year-old Denise Peraza. Her life was spared, not because the shooters saw her and turned the other way, but because a valiant man named Shannon Johnson shielded her body with his own and saved her life. Listen to her recount the situation:

Wednesday morning at 10:55 A.M. we were seated next to each other at a table, joking about how we thought the large clock on the wall might be broken because time seemed to be moving so slowly. I would have never guessed that only five minutes later, we would be huddled next to each other under the same table, using a fallen chair as a shield from over 60 rounds of bullets being fired across the room. While I cannot recall every single second that played out that morning, I will always remember his left arm wrapped around me, holding me as close as possible next to him behind that chair. And amidst all the chaos, I'll always remember him saying these three words: "I got you."

Always, no matter what, remember these three words: "I got you." These are God's three words to you, not just in time of need, but all the time. He is your everlasting Father through the Lord Jesus Christ, who will never leave you nor forsake you. He says to you, "I got you, I got you, I got you."

On June 17, 2017 the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Fitzgerald collided with a Philippine-flagged container ship 56 miles off the coast of Japan. But one of the seven sailors who died aboard the USS Fitzgerald saved more than a dozen of his fellow shipmates before he ultimately lost his own life.

When the Fitzgerald collided with the merchant ship, 37-year-old Fire Controlman 1st Class Gary Leo Rehm Jr., "leapt into action." The Fitzgerald was struck below the waterline, and Rehm Jr.'s family was told by the Navy that he went under and saved some of his crewmates, possibly even 20 of them.

But here's an interesting part of this story. People who knew Rehm have said the same thing: Gary was just acting according to the character he had spent years shaping. A close friend said, "[The heroic rescue] was Gary to a T. He never thought about himself."

Rehm's uncle said, "He called [the sailors on the ship] his kids. He said, 'If my kids die, I'm going to die. He was always ready to help anybody who needed it. He was just that kind of guy.'"