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| Sunday April 27, 2008 "Wrestling with God" Genesis 32:22-31 | Brad's Blog Brad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on4/29/2008 4:25 AM | |
| At the very beginning of our service, we heard Crystal Evans read parts of the 46th Psalm to help us prepare our hearts for worship. It begins, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear…” These have been words of great comfort to many, many generations of people of faith. They are also words that we sometimes have a hard time reconciling when our lives seem to have taken a turn for the worse, where anger or depression or fear or grief have overtaken us and God’s presence is hard to grasp.
When we are struggling with issues beyond our understanding, when the world seems to be spinning out of control, these are the times when we need to be assured that in fact, God will not leave us. But if we are truthful, those can be the times when we feel the most alone, the times when God does not seem near. And as much as we want to feel the loving touch of God with us, in our humanness, we cannot. The struggle within our own being can be tit ... |  | |
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| | Sunday April 20, 2008 "Sacred Dreams" Genesis 28:10-22 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on4/21/2008 10:53 AM | |
| Scripture. Tradition. Experience.
These three are the hallmarks of our faith journey. Because in these three, God at work in the world is revealed to us. All are important, none can truly stand alone as God’s revelatory method, and none can be excluded if we are to truly understand how God is made known to us.
The scripture is the easiest one, and of course, it is the one that most Christian’s start with. We who are the legacy of Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone sometimes refer to ourselves as “people of the book,” because the studying of scripture was paramount to their way of thinking. In scripture we are able to connect up God’s movement in and among the various stories, poems, and history that make up this amazing book that we call the Holy Bible. In scripture, we are able to see how others understood God and how others reacted to God’s presence in their lives. In scripture, we see roads that run parallel and perpendicular to our own lives and see ... | | |
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| | Transitions | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on4/10/2008 7:36 AM | |
| Greetings on this pollen filled day,
I have been thinking a lot about transitions lately. Those changes that sometimes are planned, sometimes not, but that serve to change our world dramatically when they occur. Sometimes they are welcomed, sometimes they strike terror in our hearts, some are accidental, some are inevitable. No matter what we do, we will face times of transition in our lives.
The key is how we deal with these transitions. No one will react the same in every situation, but one thing is constant: our need to celebrate, commiserate, grieve and vent with those around us. For those of us who are members of a faith community, our brothers and sisters that share our faith walk will be the ones who are most likely to be there for us. They are there for us through their presence and their prayers. And do not underestimate just how important our simple presence and our simple prayers can be!
In that spirit, there are some folks ... | | |
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| | Good Lord, What a Day! | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on4/3/2008 7:16 AM | |
| Greetings!
I made a mistake today.
Oh, like that’s big news.
No, the mistake I made today was going outside. I went outside, without a jacket on. I went outside where God is slowly awakening all of creation around us after a long, dormant, winter. I went outside where the whole idea of going back inside seemed ridiculously absurd at best, and painfully torturous at worst. I went outside and saw people slowing crawling out of their cocoons, pale skin shining, dazed look in their eyes, squinting eyelids blinking back the glorious sun. I went outside and after awhile the idea of going inside didn’t bother me anymore, because the whole concept of “inside” held no meaning for me. I went outside and discovered a little bit of my humanity that I lost when the sun started setting early and the temperatures started to drop. I went outside and found that I was walking a little more quickly, smiling a little more broadly, breathing a little more d ... | | |
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| | Sunday March 30, 2008 "Can You Believe It?" Luke 24:13-35 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on3/31/2008 2:20 PM | |
| You knew this was going to take some time, didn’t you? I mean, let’s be serious: one unbelievable event after another had transpired. If you didn’t witness every single one of them, you would have a tough time taking it all in. No matter who you heard it from, no matter how much you trusted them, if you don’t witness something so remarkably surprising, it is hard to understand what really happened.
Of course, I am talking about the events surrounding the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, his arrest, his trial, his death, his resurrection.
Think about this for a minute: suppose you are a follower of Jesus during those tumultuous days. You’re not one of the 12 disciples or the other close followers like Mary Magdalene, but you believe that Jesus is the one who the Hebrew scriptures have foretold. You believe he will deliver the Jews from their bondage, he will redeem them, he will show himself to be the Messiah that you have longed for.
Be ... | | |
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| | Living an Easter Life | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on3/26/2008 3:31 PM | |
| Greetings on this gorgeous spring day!
Yesterday, I had the privilege of going to a presentation by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author/poet, Alice Walker. She is most famous for having written the novel “The Color Purple”, but has also written 20 some other books of poetry and essays, as well as several other novels such as “The Temple of My Familiar.” It was a fascinating time of hearing an author read selections from her own work, in her own voice, interspersed with commentary and reflections upon 50 years of the writing life.
All of the selections she read evoked amazing images in my mind, and I was absolutely enthralled with Ms. Walker’s ability to make the written word come alive, to sing, to touch hundreds of people at once. One of the readings in particular really hit me. The story was one of her role in a protest march and the importance of activism on all levels. She described her feelings at being in the midst of these people as they stood up for wha ... | | |
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| | Easter Sunday March 23, 2008 "Roll Away the Stone" Luke 24:1-12 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on3/25/2008 9:26 AM | |
| This is the day we have been waiting for.
This is the day the Lord has made.
This is the day we rejoice.
This is the day we celebrate the resurrection. The day when the burial tomb was unsealed, the day the entrance was unblocked and God rolled away the stone of death. The day Jesus conquered death and by so doing offered life to all of the world. The day when each and every one of us was offered a chance to begin again, renewed, whole and at peace with God.
This is the day the Lord has made.
So what do we do about it?
We have arrived at this place along many different roads, but I would hazard a guess that they have not all been easy roads. We have arrived here in need of the comfort of this community, in need of the fellowship of like minded folks and in need of God’s presence in our lives. We have experienced good times and bad; times of despair and joy; loneliness ... | | |
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| | The Hardest Week | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on3/25/2008 9:04 AM | |
| Greetings!
This is a hard week.
As I look out my window I see a gray sky accompanied by a steady cold rain. In many ways, the gloom of the day mirrors what we feel as we move this week we call “Holy.” When I stop and really think about what was happening during that firs Holy Week, I can scarce take it all in. I can’t even imagine what the people who lived through it the first time coped.
First, there are the disciples of Jesus. Jesus is sending them cryptic messages about his not being around much longer, and that must have been confusing. They witnessed a joyous occasion when they entered Jerusalem, but that was to give way to even more confusion as Jesus is arrested later in the week. Their anger with their brother Judas must have led them to want to lash out, but they were overcome with a fear that drove them into hiding. And as they abandoned Jesus, can you imagine the guilt that must have induced in them? While they hid, Jes ... | | |
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| | Sunday March 23, 2008 "Turning the Tables" Matthew 21:1-17 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on3/19/2008 5:49 AM | |
| From the time I first understood that there was something called Holy Week, something has bothered me. Oh, I don’t think I am alone in this; it might bother some of you, too. How could Jesus enter Jerusalem to such a cheering, adoring crowd on Sunday and have the crowd turn against him on Friday?
People have tried to explain it away in lots of ways. But it the explanations all seem to ring just a little hollow to me.
Where was the outcry for the release of Jesus? How quickly could they turn away from Jesus? Was it just human nature?
If we focus on the triumphal entry, and then shift our attention to the betrayal and crucifixion of Jesus, the contrasts are enormous, the possibilities for explanation are many. But it still bothers me.
I am bothered by the crowds actions because I am part of the crowd.
And I don’t think I am being too presumptive to say, at times, we all can identify with t ... | | |
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| | Sunday March 9, 2008 "Setting an Example" John 13:1-17 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on3/13/2008 7:50 AM | |
| “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him, not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
I think that may be my favorite passage in the entire Bible. It comes from what I consider to be my favorite gospel, the Gospel according to John. John’s Gospel is different than the other three. In fact, scholars talk about the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke as the “synoptic” gospels, while the Gospel of John is in a category all by itself. Matthew, Mark and Luke are “comprehensive” writings of the life of Jesus that more or less follow the same pattern. John, on the other hand, differs in form and even in function. John is an evangelizer, wanting people to come to know the messiah personally. And in so doing, he is n ... | | |
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