Text: Assorted texts
Topic: A look at the embryonic stem cell debate

• Illustration: Noah Markum was born from an embryo rescued during Hurricane Katrina.
• The reality is, not every embryo gets rescued. As a matter of fact, many embryos are donated to research laboratories and destroyed for the purpose of harvesting stem cells.
• Since President Obama signed an executive order, the destruction of the embryo for the harvesting of stem cells is now being funded by Americans through federal funds.
• The heart of the Christian faith and mission is the call to abundant life. Whenever life—in its tiniest, most seemingly insignificant form or its most robust form or its most frail and infirm form—is under attack, Christians gather together, pray, and fight to protect that life.
• Our Lord came to bring abundant, full, flourishing life, but there's an enemy, a thief, who comes to steal what is not his, to destroy and kill what does not belong to him.
• Every generation has this battle of life and death. That's not new. But it's up to every generation to discern through careful reasoning and through life in the Spirit what the nature of the battle in their day is.
• I want to teach today on the realities around embryonic stem cell research and ask you to open your heart to the tiniest human person, the embryo.

• Father Richard John Neuhaus said the issues of life like abortion and embryonic stem cells are the civil rights issues of our day.
• Our text for today is John 10, a critical touch point for this civil rights issue of our day.
• Before we begin, it is important to be clear about what we mean by an embryo.
• It's most helpful to think about the word embryo as an adjective, as in embryonic person.
• Embryo refers to a stage of development in the life of a person, the earliest stage at conception.
• There's an embryonic person, then a fetal person, then a newborn person, then a toddler person, then a child person, then a teenage person, then a 20-something person, and so forth.
• Embryonic describes a human being at a stage of development.
  • Illustration: In Embryo, a Defense of Human Life, Dr. Robert George, a doctor of ethics at Princeton, and Christopher Tollefsen of USC, point out that there are four signs of life—metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and cell reproduction—and embryos have all four signs of life.
• Embryos carry stem cells, which are the building blocks of life. In the beginning of life, their bodies are full of stem cells, and these multiply to create cells our bodies need to grow.
• Dr. James Thompson is the original discoverer of the embryonic stem cell and was a chief advocate for harvesting embryonic stem cells for the purpose of finding healing agents from them.

• The embryo has a number of enemies. Let me tell you about them.
• The first enemy of the embryo is ignorance.
• A lot of us are ignorant about stem cells because we're not inclined toward things biological or scientific or ethical.
• We need to be informed, thinking long and hard about this issue.
• We could be ignorant about the issue and think all stem cells, then, are wrong.
• That would also be an ignorant or uninformed position, because some stem cells have proven to be remarkably healing and productive.
• For example, adult stem cells and stem cells from umbilical cords have 73 usable applications for healing.
• But do you know how many proven applications there are for embryonic stem cells? Zero.

• A second enemy of the embryo is mammon—money.
• As Jesus points out it the Gospels, there's a spirit around money called mammon—a spirit of greed or exploitation, of excessive accumulation at the manipulation of others.
• When you use adult stem cells, you're using an adult's own stem cells to bring healing. You can't patent or sell an adult stem cell, because they belong to someone.
• But with embryonic stem cells, you can patent lines of stem cells that can be purchased by pharmaceuticals.

• But there's an enemy greater than mammon, from which mammon originates, and he's not a new enemy: Satan.
• Satan blinds us to the issues of our day, because he wants us to stay dispassionate, detached, peripheral.
• Genesis 4 tells us the story of Cain and Abel. The way the passage is written gives us a sense that almost immediately after the birth of these sons, murder enters the picture.
• When Cain kills Abel, God speaks of Abel's blood crying out from the ground.
• Can you hear the blood in our country that is crying out from the ground?
• You need to move from peripheral or perplexed or political to participating and petitioning and listening for the blood that is crying out from American soil.
• A lot of countries are doing heinous things right now, and we should stand up against those heinous realities.
• We should fight for justice in the Sudan and other parts of Africa. We should stand up against sex trafficking in Asia and fight with everything we have. And as Americans, we have got to hear the blood crying out from our soil in this issue concerning embryos.

• Despite all the enemies of the embryo, the embryo also has an advocate: the Lord and his church.
• The Lord is the Good Shepherd—the one willing to lay down his life for the sake of all life.
• That's what's wrong with harvesting embryonic stem cells for the purpose of bringing life somewhere else. It's a bedrock Judeo-Christian principle that you don't take life involuntarily to give life, but you can give your life for the sake of the lives of others.
• The church is also an advocate for the embryo. We give our lives for the sake of the tiniest among us, or the most infirmed, or the most disabled. That's what we're wired to do.
• With this in mind, we know this issue will not prevail, as other critical civil rights issues have not prevailed.

• So where is our place of participation in this issue?
• First of all, intercede. Prayer changes the course of lives and nations and civilizations, so I'm asking you to intercede.
• Secondly, get educated on this issue. Some websites are doing very good work on this issue, and it won't take you long to learn.
• Third, engage in some way. That might mean focused prayer, serving in a public square, writing a letter to your congressman or congresswoman, or writing the president himself.
• Open your heart to Noah. Open your heart to this battle. Open your heart to Jesus, who is the great advocate of all life.