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| Sunday September 28, 2008 "Asking Too Much?" Ezekiel 18:25-32 and Psalm 25:1-12 | Brad's Blog Brad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on9/29/2008 1:03 PM | |
| We don’t pay a lot of attention to the book of Ezekiel these days, but in the midst of this tumultuous time in our history, maybe we should.
Ezekiel was a prophet during the period when Jerusalem was overrun by the Babylonian armies, the city destroyed, the temple destroyed. It was a time when thousands upon thousands of Judeans were taken out of their beloved holy city and relegated to exile in Babylon. The raiding of Jerusalem and the temple took place in the year 597 B.C. and Ezekiel was one of those taken away into exile.
This was more than just an exile, however. It was a well calculated maneuver by the King of Babylon to make sure that it would be very difficult for Jerusalem to rebuild and Judea to rearm.
Here’s how it worked. The Babylonians didn’t just attack, destroy and leave a garrison or two to keep the order. They rounded up the best and the brightest of the Judeans and took them away, to Babylon, where they lived in exil ... |  | |
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| | Hope | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on9/24/2008 4:36 PM | |
| Greetings on this beautiful fall day!
Several of you have asked me when I was going to write about baseball again. Well, maybe not several of you. And maybe it wasn’t, “When are you going to write about baseball again?” But just a few people interested in how the Detroit Tigers are doing.
Okay, okay, I confess: it wasn’t several, and it wasn’t even “a few”. one person made a comment about how much they admired my loyalty to such a disappointing team. Or something like that. I know there was something in there about the Tigers being horrible. And me being disappointed.
Well, I am disappointed. And I’m sick of it.
I’m tired of getting my hopes up so high because Sports Illustrated and the Sporting News and ESPN and every clown with a teleprompter in front of them picked the Tigers to win the World Series this year. But where are they now? Are they fighting for a championship? Are they resting up, getting r ... | | |
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| | Sunday September 21, 2008 "Our Polar Star" Ephesians 4:1-6 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on9/22/2008 1:45 PM | |
| For the past several weeks, we have been concentrating on an exploration of our faith heritage and traditions in this sermon series called “We Call Ourselves Disciples” and today we finish with this sermon called “Our Polar Star.”
In the previous 5 sermons, I have concentrated on different aspects of who we are and how we became, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Why is baptism by immersion celebrated? Why is the communion table open to all who come? What does it mean to our life together that we live in covenant with God and each other? Does that fact that we are a non-creedal church impact how we live our lives together? What role does the Bible play in our understanding of God’s revelation in the world?
Now, you may have noticed a thread running through all these topics, at least in some small way. When the founders of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) have come to a place where a stand needed to taken, where decisions needed to be made ... | | |
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| | Do Not Fear | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on9/17/2008 1:19 PM | |
| Greetings on this dreary morning,
As I look out my window at the grey, overcast sky, it strikes me that this morning’s weather is a good reflection of the somber mood that many people find themselves in this week. It has been an unprecedented week of financial upheaval in the United States, with major financial institutions declaring bankruptcies, offering themselves for sale at bargain basement prices, and seeking government help to weather the crisis. Economists hold their breath over the potential worldwide impact of such moves, and the government seeks to act in the best interest of the American economy as well as the world economy. A word that I have heard a lot in the last few days is “fear.”
It’s been used in many contexts: fear of the individual share holder of the effected companies; fear of loss of jobs by the employees of those companies; fear of the economists that we may be on the brink of the dreaded “r” word – recession – or worse; fear of the “p ... | | |
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| | Remembering | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on9/15/2008 9:06 AM | |
| Greetings!
So, yesterday wasn’t such a great day…so what? Things didn’t go as I planned…big deal! The air conditioner quit working in the office…it’ll get fixed! Besides, as Scarlett O’Hara reminded us… “tomorrow is another day!” As trite as that line sounds these days, she was right. It is now tomorrow, and while I had planned on writing about my bad day and finding a life lesson in there somewhere…why bother? It’s over, today the sun is shining, the air conditioning man is at work on the problem and life is good. As God promises, new beginnings abound, and every day is a new beginning.
I have been thinking about a day 7 years ago that seemed like it would never end. A day that seemed like the sky had fallen in on. A day that felt like the earth had stopped turning. A day that I was sure would not get better. But, once again, I was wrong.
The day did end. The sky did not fall. The earth did not stop turning. And things did get ... | | |
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| | Sunday September 14, 2008 "We Call Ourselves Disciples: Gather Round the Table" 1 John 1:1-9 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on9/14/2008 11:09 PM | |
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As we continue our sermon series “We Call Ourselves Disciples: An Exploration of our Faith Heritage”, I can say with great certainty, that the most famous celebration of the Lord’s Supper in the history of this movement we call the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is one that never took place.
In 1809, Alexander Campbell was struggling mightily with issues of faith, the church and his role in it. He had been raised a strict Presbyterian, but had recently become acquainted with a Scottish pastor named Greville Ewing. Campbell attended small informal gatherings in Ewing’s home where any and all questions were freely and openly shared in lively discussions. Questions of how the church should organize itself, questions of interpretation of scriptures, questions about the nature of baptism and communion. It was a wonderfully freeing time for Alexander Campbell and set him on a lifelong effort to reform the church as he knew it and to restore the church to it’s origin ... | | |
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| | Sunday August 31, 2008 "A Covenant People" Genesis 17:1-9 and Acts 3:25-26 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on9/8/2008 1:38 PM | |
| The first covenant that I was aware of in my life came at the age of about 10 or 11. It took place, like so many important things in my life, in Barbeau, Michigan at the church camp my parents ran.
Those summers at Camp Conely were some of the most important and special times in my life. I loved seeing the campers come in each week…some new faces, some old friends. I loved the old trailer that we lived in back behind the lodge. I loved the food that the cooks, Mrs. Morrison and my mother cooked each day.
But what I especially loved, was that right down the river, my grandparents and my aunts and uncles on my mothers side all had cottages and every summer was one long family reunion.
I was especially close to my cousin Bryce, which is only natural, since he was born just 27 days after I was. We were close from the time we were infants, I am told, and those summers roaming the woods, fishing and playing together were the best.
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| | Because... | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on8/27/2008 2:34 PM | |
| Greetings on this drizzly day,
This past Sunday the sermon was about baptism and it’s meaning in our individual lives and the life of the church. I looked at where our founders came down on the issue of baptism – believers baptism vs. infant baptism; sprinkling verses immersion; symbol vs. reality – and where the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) stand today. It is an important topic, and it can be a challenging topic. Many of us who were not raised in the Disciple tradition sometimes feel a tug between how we were raised, and what our church practices today. Many of us who were raised in the Disciples tradition can remember a time where what we accept today was not necessarily what was acceptable years ago. But all of us are here now, and it’s important that we share our experiences and our beliefs on the subject. Many of you have shared your experiences and your beliefs with me, and so I’d like to share my experience.
I am one of the “pious unimmersed ... | | |
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| | Sunday August 24, 2008 "The Cost of Baptism" John 1:19-29 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on8/25/2008 10:22 AM | |
| So, just what was John the Baptist doing?
I think the Pharisees had a logical question. What is this thing called “baptism” and what power did it hold over these people who had experienced it? If John wasn’t the messiah, then exactly what was he doing?
Baptism is seen as a uniquely Christian event by many, but it has it’s roots in Jewish tradition. Ritual cleansing baths were required before people could take part in certain ceremonies. The Assenes, a Jewish sect that lived in the desert surrounding the Dead Sea are one of those groups who believed in ritual baths as part of their spiritual disciplines. The Assenes were thought to be the orignators of the Dead Sea Scrolls found in Qumran in Palestine in the late 1940’s and subsequent excavation has yielded much information about their daily lives and their faith practices. One of those was the use of a ritual bath, possibly as a prelude to every meal that they ate. The purpose of the daily baths is not ent ... | | |
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| | Singin' Like We Mean It! | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on8/21/2008 11:54 AM | |
| Greetings on this wonderful day!
If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought we were going to a worship service. It was after all, Sunday night, and a time when lots of people go to church. There were plenty of people making their way from the parking lot to their seats. When we got inside, I noticed that the back of the pavilion was almost full, but people in the front were coming in a bit more slowly. There seemed to be lots of breaking of the bread and sharing of the cup going on, so it was almost like communion. And to top it all off, besides Carol and me, there were three members of BCC present that we knew about: An elder, a deacon and the chair of the board! They had much better seats than we did, but they spotted us and came up to say hello. Hugs and handshakes went all around and it was just like the “Community Greeting” time before our worship. Yep, if I didn’t know better, I would have thought we were about to worship.
But, of course, it ... | | |
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