Celebrate Jesus

 

As anyone with a TV or internet knows, the summer Olympics are going on in Paris right now. There was quite a controversy caused by the part of the opening ceremonies that featured what looked to many like a mockery of a famous painting of the Last Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci. The part of the ceremony featured a celebration of various sexualized behaviors and identities, with men in drag, several nearly naked individuals, and some children there as well.

The creator of this part of the ceremony, Thomas Jolly, said that he did intend to offend and wanted the production to “celebrate community tolerance,” and I believe that was his intent. What the controversy shows is the wide divide between what various people think should be celebrated. The producers of the show are likely far enough removed from people with traditional religious views that they likely do not understand that rather than a celebration of various identities it looks like an intentional mockery of traditional Christian values and beliefs. 

But in their desire to celebrate tolerance, we do see an expression of the universal need to belong and be accepted. We all ground our understanding of ourselves in something. When we do not have a stable grounding for our identity outside ourselves, we look inward to create our own identities. This happens for many people in the western world because of the loss of faith in the external things which used to ground our identities. Many people have lost their trust in God, their families have broken down, and they’ve also lost trust in many other societal institutions. Unfortunately for us, we, in ourselves, are not a stable enough foundation upon which to build an identity. That is why people who seek to create their own identities crave affirmations from others. They want and need to be celebrated by others because they are not okay simply by themselves.

Jesus says in Matthew 7:24-27 that we should build our lives upon His words. When we follow Him as our Lord, we will stand firm on the rock of Jesus in the midst of the storms of life. Everyone will face the storms of life, such as illness, financial insecurity, and interpersonal conflict, so it makes a difference what we use as a foundation. If we build on anything in this world, including money, friends, family, country, or our own self-concept, these will eventually prove to be sand and cause our lives to crumble when the trials come. Jesus is the risen again Savior, who has even defeated death. He is the Lord of the whole world, and He wants us to recognize our need for Him. If we build our lives upon who Jesus is and what He has done, then we will not need any other source to celebrate us to make us feel valuable.

 When we humble ourselves before Him, He will lift us up (James 4:10). So, by celebrating Jesus and making Him the foundation of our lives, we ground our own identity on the strongest rock possible. Then whether we are at the pinnacle of the sporting world in Paris or living a simple life in NE Nebraska, we will not be shaken by any of the storms that will inevitably come. 

Is Your Love Bank Full?

 

I am currently rereading a book called, Love is a Choice, by three professional Christian counselors, and it is about the condition that they term, “codependency,” which they say many people have. The main issue with this condition is that people become unhealthily dependent on people or things, such as drugs, work, sex, anger, food, and bad relationships. Most of these unhealthy dependencies started in their childhood because they did not get the love that they needed and then sought to fill their internal love tank with things or people that could not give them true love. These things or people cannot truly make them whole again when they have such a love deficit and so they go deeper and deeper into an addictive cycle.

We are created to love and be loved. The greatest commandments are first to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and the second is to love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37-39). The most famous verse in the Bible is about God’s love for us through giving His son so that we could have eternal life (John 3:16). So it should not surprise us that when we face a lack of love and/or abuse, especially in our early, formative years, that we end up being wounded and seeking to make up for what we did not get. Unfortunately, when we do not know good love, we do not know how to give good love. Our addictions and sinful patterns perpetuate the problem to the people around us, especially if we have kids of our own. They end up not getting the appropriate love that we should be giving them, and thus the cycle continues on and on until someone intentionally seeks to break the cycle.

Some of these addictions, such as drugs or alcohol, have more immediate outward effects that others can see and lead to lives collapsing more quickly. If you go to jail for a DUI or your kids are taken away because of your drug addition, you are forced to at least consider what has gone wrong in your life. But other patterns are more subtle and sometimes are even encouraged by the society around you. Many of the examples given by the counselors in the book are of people who are externally very successful, but who are miserable in their marriages and personal lives. They highlight multi millionaires and starlets who have “made it” in worldly terms. Their clients even include “good Christians”  who put on a mask of happiness in public, but who hate each other in private.
Are you one of these people? We live in a fallen world where each of us has experienced some love deficit or abuse in our lives, so almost certainly you and I have sought out wrong ways of making up for that. Have you ever taken the time and energy to examine how you have been impacted by your past and what patterns have developed as a result? If you are living in pain right now, even private pain that you hardly even admit to yourself, God does not want you to stay there. Jesus came to give us an abundant life (John 10:10), but before we can love well and even be loved, we have to be willing to let God examine our hearts (Psalm 139:23-24). Then we can understand how we have run to the wrong things to find love and let God’s true love heal us. This is not just a one and done process, but rather a lifetime of learning to examine ourselves and then letting God change us into the person He created us to be!

Abortion Amendments

 

Dear Nebraska Friends & Family

I wanted to make you aware of some possible state constitutional amendments about the issue of abortion. This is a moral issue that is dear to my heart and that I think is important for our state and our country. 

Here is a description of three potential amendments taken from this article. https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2024/05/28/nebraska-abortion-initiative-with-the-most-votes-would-become-law-if-voters-pass-more-than-one/

"Three groups are circulating potential constitutional amendments on abortion for the November ballot. Each appears at odds with the others.

One initiative, put forward by Protect Our Rights Nebraska, would enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution up until fetal viability, which most place between 22 and 24 weeks.

A second, put forward by Protect Women and Children, would prohibit most abortions after the first trimester, much like current law, but it would let the Legislature restrict abortion further in the future. 

A third, put forward by Now Choose Life, would grant “personhood” under the law to embryos and fetuses in a mother’s womb, making the law treat them like a child who has been born."

The first of these is supported by pro-abortion lobby and has had a great deal of support, meaning that it already had enough votes to make it on the November ballot. While the amendment says abortion would be legal until the age of viability, which is a subjective time, it also gives doctors the right to make exceptions later in pregnancy based on a very board definition of "life or health" of the mother. In practice this language has been used to mean that a doctor and a woman could make exceptions for abortions through all 9 months of pregnancy.

The second is a middle of the road amendment by some pro-life groups meant to specifically counter the pro-abortion amendment that would allow abortion for all nine months of pregnancy. This pro-life amendment would constitutional restrict later term abortions and still allow for further laws to be passed that would restrict abortion even more.

This is the amendment I am supporting because it has the greatest practical chance of being passed and gaining more votes than the pro-abortion amendment. They need signatures for the petition to get it on the ballot, and Dacey Nelson is working on this effort as she works for Senator Ricketts. If you would like to sign (and I encourage you to do so) and do not have her contact info, please contact me.

The last amendment is the one that reflects my true understanding of the issue, namely that all human life from the moment of conception on is valuable and should be protected. This attempt is late to the game and because it would basically restrict all abortions will likely not pass at this time in our history. Now you can sign both pro-life petitions and I probably will, but I do not believe a total constitutional ban is likely to pass and may even cause the pro-abortion amendment to do better if it is the only other option.

Finally, I want to make a short defense of why the issue of abortion is so important to me, and why I believe it should be to you too. The main moral issue is the value of human life. Not just unborn life, but all humans. Why is your life important? Why do you have value? The prevailing view in the western world over that last century has come to be a secular one that says that humans are simply the result of random chance accidents and have not more or less value than other forms of life. Therefore our value is contingent on various factors such as quality of life or utility to society. This has lead to a devaluation of not just unborn life, and we see this idea playing out with the promotion of assisted suicide and euthanasia in many places now. Older people, handicap people, and even depressed people are being encouraged to end their lives in countries like Canada because the value of their life is being judged by its utility.

The previous understanding of the value of human life came from the Christian understanding of the inherent value of all human life, grounded in the concept that we are made in the image of God. Therefore, no matter the age, sex, skin color, ability level, or utility to society, a person has value because they are valuable to God who is the grounding for all morality. The founding of our country that began to extend individual rights, the abolitionist movement, the women's suffrage movement, and the Civil Rights movement were all grounded on the idea that inalienable rights are tied to our value given by God.  Likewise, unborn humans are just that, human. They should be afforded the same basic rights as other humans because they have the same value. If your life has intrinsic value, then their life should as well. If we begin to make the value of their lives subjective, then it is only a matter of time before the value of every life is subjective. 

If we don't defend those who cannot defend themselves, then we will find ourselves in the position of German Pastor Martin Niemöller who said after WW2 in 1946,

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—

     Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—

     Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

     Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

True Holiday

The traditional greeting on Easter is, “He is Risen,” to which the proper response is, “He is risen indeed.” Most Christians (probably most of you reading this article) firmly believe this to be true and have not questioned it in a long time if ever. But what if someone were to ask you, “Is He risen?” How would you answer? Do we even need to answer? In our world of individual “truths” does it matter whether Jesus rose bodily from the dead? 

Well here is what the apostle Paul said about the importance of the resurrection, “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17). In other words, the bodily resurrection of Jesus is so important that if it didn't happen, we aren't saved from our sins. Death is not defeated, and we won't have eternal life. So yes, the truth of the bodily resurrection is pretty important.

How can we know it's true though? Well, we know it's true because it's the best explanation for the evidence that we have. Let's examine some of the evidence.

First, Jesus actually died on the cross.The Romans knew how to kill people and they were very efficient at it. In fact, the soldiers responsible for their crucifixion would have been under a death sentence themselves if they didn't make sure that their prisoners were actually dead. That's one of the reasons that they either broke the legs of people still alive to kill them from suffocation or, as in the case of Jesus, stab them in the side to make sure that the heart-lung sack was punctured. 

Second, there's the empty tomb. No historian worth their salt actually questions that the tomb was empty. Otherwise, the Jewish authorities or Roman authorities simply would have produced Jesus' body to squash the growing conspiracy. 

Third, many people claimed to have seen Jesus alive. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says that over 500 people saw Jesus alive, and this was written within 25 years of the event, so he encouraged those who did not believe to go talk to some of those people who were still alive. This wasn't just the illusion of one or even a few people at one time. He was seen many times over a 40-day period by many different people. He even ate with some of them and encourage them to examine his scars.

Fourth, many of those people were persecuted and killed because they believed that Jesus had risen from the dead. Lots of people might die for something they believe to be true. But in this case, the claim is that the disciples would have had to make up the story and would have known it was false. Who dies for a lie? Chuck Colson, a lawyer in Nixon's White House during Watergate, said he saw people giving up on the lie after three weeks of possible prosecution, so he couldn't believe the disciples would be telling a lie and endure a lifetime of persecution and then execution unless they really believed in Christ's resurrection.

A final evidence is that the church took off after the resurrection of Jesus, growing to thousands within a few weeks. The disciples recount how they were locked away and scared after the crucifixion. But once Christ rose, they became bold and right away were willing to put themselves at risk and to proclaim the good news about Jesus.

Put together, the best explanation for this evidence is that Jesus really did rise from the dead. If that's the case, and I believe it is, then his resurrection verifies the work of the crucifixion and his teachings about himself. He really is the Messiah. He really did die to take away the sins of those who call on him for forgiveness. He really will come back and restore all things. He is the reason for this season.

He has risen!!

Lonely Holiday

When Jesus started His public ministry, He was doing amazing miracles and teaching some profound truths, so many people started to follow Him. At times He had crowds over 10,000 listening, and He likely had as many as 120 regular followers if you include the men and women. Furthermore, from those regular followers He chose 12 men who were particularly close to Him and seemed to do everything with Him. Even among the 12, He had three, Peter, James, and John, that were even closer and who were with Him in the most intimate moments like the Transfiguration (see Matthew 17:1-8). Jesus’s life was so full of people that at times He had to move on from places to not get swamped, and He also went away some nights to be alone and pray with God the Father.

Yet as He approached the time of His crucifixion, He began to be clear about the cost of following Hi
m and many people left. He even asked the 12 if they were going to leave, and Peter said “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). When Peter said those words, I am sure he meant them, just like he and the other disciples meant it when they claimed they would die for Jesus rather than abandon Him (Matthew 26:25). But in the Garden of Gethsemane they could not stay awake and pray for Him, and then they all ran away when He was arrested, even Peter! I am sure that Peter felt like an incredible failure and totally alone when he wept after having denied even knowing Jesus three times that same night.

The next day as Jesus suffered and died on the cross, He even felt abandoned by the Father, repeating the words of Psalm 22:1, “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?” He did not deserve the punishment for our sins, and He did not deserve to be abandoned. But Jesus willingly allowed Himself to be abandoned and forsaken because He knew it was necessary so that we would not stay alone. He endured the cross so our sin would not mean that we had to stay guilty, ashamed, and alone after our failures.

When He rose again, Jesus took Peter aside and restored him. Three times He asked Peter, “Do you love me?” to which Peter answered, “Yes Lord.” After each answer, Jesus commissioned Peter to care for others. He was showing Peter that he was once again loved and accepted not just as a follower, but as a valuable member of Jesus’s kingdom.

Likewise, the brokenness of the world and our own brokenness can leave us feeling abandoned and alone. Jesus knows what it feels like to be alone. He came to the world to seek those who are lost and alone. He came to restore those who are broken. He came to connect the disconnected. Because He took on and defeated death, the ultimate aloneness, we can have abundant rich fellowship with both God and man. We can be restored and like Peter be part of reaching out in love to others who are still hurting and alone. 

This Easter, no matter your circumstances or your sins, come to Jesus to find a friend and be restored. You do not have to be alone because Jesus made a way for us to find everlasting love and to learn how to give that love to others.

Bloody Holiday

 

In 1 Kings 8, Solomon is dedicating the new temple to the LORD and they have a two-week festival in Jerusalem during which they sacrifice 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep. Having just helped my family process three cows in 2 ½ days, I can attest to the enormous amount of work that must have been. In fact, I think that would be a lot of work even for some of the modern processing plants near us. 

Now why did they have to sacrifice so many animals just to dedicate the temple? Likely, it was because so many people came to the festival and they all wanted to sacrifice to the Lord and because they used much of the meat for the festival itself. But if you read the Old Testament description of tabernacle and temple worship you have to admit that God required lots of sacrifices and the whole process of worship really was bloody. The temple was really a slaughterhouse filled daily with animals being killed. 

Then when we get to the New Testament we see that Jesus is called the Lamb of God and He endured a bloody awful death on a cross. Furthermore, He even established the practice of communion in which His followers were supposed to look back on this bloody sacrifice by “eating His flesh” and “drinking His blood.” This unusual practice was so misunderstood that early in church history, other people thought Christians were cannibals. At this time of year, we especially remember Christ’s sacrifice on a day we call Good Friday even though the most evil act in history took place. The perfect sinless Lamb of God was killed on that day! 

Is all this blood and death necessary, and if so why? Do you know? We find the answer in Genesis 3 when Adam and Eve sinned they were broken and the world was broken. Not only that, but we learn in Romans 3, that it is not just Adam and Eve’s fault, but that no one is righteous and that all (you and me) have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Sin causes death, and a holy and good God that made the world just, must balance the scales of justice. If sin causes death then for sin to be forgiven and individuals restored, Hebrews 9:22 says there must be shedding of blood. 

Sin is serious, destructive, and even deadly, and as the righteous judge of the world, God must respond and deliver punishment. We are responsible for our sins and deserve to face the judgment of death. We deserve to shed our own blood for our sins! But God is also loving and does not desire for anyone to perish, so He provides a sacrifice on our behalf. Jesus, God the Son, came down to be the better sacrifice than any ox or sheep. He shed His blood so that we do not have to face eternal death. The offer of forgiven is available for anyone who is willing to admit there own guilt and ask Jesus to take on the punishment for us.

Therefore, those who truly understand what Jesus did celebrate this bloody holiday because we know it is our blood that should be shed. He who did not sin and did not deserve death, died on our behalf. On Good Friday, I often end up contemplating my sin and the brokenness in my own life as I remember Jesus’s broken body and shed blood, but my focus eventually comes back to His love and goodness which shine bright on the darkest of days.

My Favorite Holiday

I am looking forward to writing the next few pastor articles for the local paper, because I get to focus on Easter, my favorite holiday. It is my favorite because, it is filled with hope and joy. We start out with the bad news of Good Friday, but end with the best news of Easter morning: He is risen! He is risen indeed!! All the songs we sing on Easter Sunday are filled with joy and praise and hope because death has been defeated.

The first Easter is the center of history. I know that the Christian calendar starts at what was thought to be the year of Jesus’s birth, but in fact Easter, Christ’s rising from the dead, is the moment that makes our new birth into the family of God a reality. The work of redemption was accomplished on the cross, where Jesus died to pay the penalty for the sins of those who believe in Him, but it is only at the resurrection that His followers and the world can recognize the effectiveness of His work.

Easter is when we can answer the definitive question of history, “Who is Jesus?” In the modern world, we are uncertain about what we know and how we know it. Many people even struggle with knowing themselves let alone the many other questions about meaning and purpose for the whole world. One of the reasons we struggle is that we do not perceive a firm place on which to stand and from which we can make sound judgments. So many things from politics, to family, to personal identity, to even the very definition of truth seem up in the air. But Jesus claimed to the “THE way, THE truth, and THE life,” and if what He says about Himself is true, then He can and should be the starting point for the rest of our investigation of reality.

Jesus asked His disciples, “Who do you say I am?” Peter responded, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Yet not long after, when threatened, Peter denied even knowing Jesus. Why? Because while at one level he did believe in Jesus, he was not convinced enough to actually surrender His life. But the resurrection changed that for Peter because it verified Jesus’s claims to be the Messiah. 

By rising from the dead, Jesus proved He was the Messiah. He proved that the sacrifice for sins was acceptable and that our sins can be forgiven. He proved death was defeated, and that if we trust and follow Him, we can have eternal life with Him. Peter’s and all the disciples' lives were radically transformed when they saw the risen Jesus. So much so that even though they faced persecution and death soon after, they were more than willing to continue to proclaim the good news that Jesus was their Savior and Lord.

So the question remains for us, “Is Jesus who He says He is?” If He really raised from the dead on Easter morning, then yes. He is right now, the living and reigning Lord of the universe. He really is your Lord and your sins really are forgiven (or can be if you believe). You really can have assurance of eternal and abundant life with Him, because He is risen! He is risen indeed!!