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| True Community | Brad's Blog Mid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on4/21/2009 9:59 AM | |
| Greetings,
Normally, I would send this out tomorrow, but I just got off the phone with a man I have never met before, and probably never will. Yet, this man and his wife have touched me so profoundly this morning that I needed to share it with you. The whole scenario speaks to the mysterious power of God’s presence, the strength that we gather as members of a faith community and the absolute unknowable boundaries of that community.
As I mentioned on Sunday, Andrea Chambers, a member of BCC who moved to Texas about a year and a half ago, called me this past weekend. Things have been going well. She is engaged to a soldier named Mike, who is presently serving his second tour of duty in Iraq. She was 7 months pregnant when she went to the doctors for a test to let her know the gender of the baby. She was told there was no heart beat; the baby had died. For medical reasons, she needed to carry the baby another week and her delivery by c-section is scheduled for ... |  | |
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| | Sunday April 26, 2009 "Complete Joy" 1 John 1:1 - 2:2 | | Brad's Blog
| By Brad Miller on4/21/2009 8:20 AM | |
| Welcome to our “Low Sunday” service of worship. For many modern Christians, the Sunday after Easter is referred to as “low Sunday” because of the drop off in attendance between Easter Sunday and the second Sunday of Eastertide. But historically, it is considered low Sunday simply to highlight the “high” of Easter. Writers have suggested that the “low” might also refer to the almost predictable let down that so many of us experience in the wake of the big celebration that is Easter. That sagging “what next” feeling that exists when we struggle to keep the joy of Easter alive in our everyday lives.
In some ways, I think low Sunday is every bit as important as Easter Sunday.
It’s easy to be a Christian on Easter. We go to the tomb and we find it empty. And the good news that accompanies that empty tomb is the most incredibly gripping news we could ever receive. Jesus is arisen from the dead, but that’s not the whole story: the resurrection of Jesus if for US ... | | |
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| | After Easter | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on4/15/2009 3:25 PM | |
| Greetings on this beautiful spring day!
Easter is such a wonderful time, but it can also be one of great stress, too. Not only for the preacher who wants to find a new way to tell a story that everyone already knows, or the choir director who wants to have the best possible anthem on that special day, or the person who gives the children’s sermon who wants to wow the kids on the biggest day of the church calendar. No, it can be stressful to the person who after witnessing all the passion and joy of the resurrection, gets up on Monday morning and realizes that their life has not changed a bit. If Easter happened, why am I not in a better place,or in a better mood, or why haven’t I solved my problems? Year after year, Easter comes and goes and we celebrate. But what of the person who witnesses the perfect love of God revealed in Christ Jesus, and still finds themselves mired in a decidedly un-perfect world?
Well, it may just be that that is why the worshipping ... | | |
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| | Easter Sunday April 12, 2009 "An Idle Tale" Luke 24:1-12 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on4/14/2009 10:37 AM | |
| I learned about the power of resurrection when I was a teenager.
One day the front doorbell rang. I went to answer it and when I opened the door I saw a tall, broad, rather rough looking guy wearing a United Auto Workers jacket. Now, neither the roughness or the UAW jacket was out of the ordinary in my neighborhood, but when he asked if Dorothy Conely lived there, I was a bit surprised.
I asked him to wait a moment, closed the door and went and got my mother. I described who was at the door, that he had asked for her using her maiden name. She looked a little concerned and said, “stay behind me.”
She opened the door, and said, “Can I help you?” and the man responded, “Hi Dorothy.” My mother looked a little perplexed for a minute than suddenly cried out, “Oh, my gosh, Bob Hill!” She pushed open the door and he held out his arms and enveloped her in the biggest bear hug I have ever seen.
Now, I did not recogniz ... | | |
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| | Generosity | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on4/8/2009 3:03 PM | |
| Greetings on this beautiful spring day,
One of the things I have done each Holy Week for the last several years is read parts of the Gospel accounts of the events of the first Holy Week some 2000 years ago. I do it to put myself back in touch with the story, to remind myself that even faithful people are capable of horrible things and to guard myself against being one of those people. I do it to try and experience the reality of the situation: that Jesus, fully human, faced humiliation and death, for me, for us, for humanity. And when those things are accomplished, something else becomes apparent: we serve a generous God.
The events of Holy Week are horrible, but Jesus, God incarnate on earth, generously gave of himself that we might have a relationship and know the joy of salvation. Because of that generosity, we are a forgiven people, secure in the fact that nothing can ever really harm us, for God is with us. Because of that generosity, we have been given e ... | | |
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| | Making Lists | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on4/8/2009 3:01 PM | |
| Greetings!
The last few weeks my life has been dominated by lists. Lists of what needed to be done in preparation for the closing on the house we were buying. Lists of what needed to be done at the apartment we were moving from and what needed to be done at the new house. Lists of utilities to be turned off and then turned on. Lists of things to buy. Lists of things to donate to the church yard sale. But the good news is that last Friday we closed, Monday the movers came, and Carol and I are seeing lots of progress on our lists and the “to do” portions get shorter and shorter. We are in the house, getting more and more things in place, checking off more and more items on our list, and going about the wonderful business of setting up a new home. We have appreciated everyone’s prayers and support as we moved through this whole process.
Since I have gotten so accustomed to lists, I thought I would include you in on the fun and make today’s missive a list of u ... | | |
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| | Hard Work: Big Results | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on3/25/2009 2:31 PM | |
| Greetings on the waiting to rain day….
How is your Lenten journey going? Have you had any “aha” moments? Have you been able to incorporate more of the spiritual disciplines of prayer and meditation into your daily life? Are you ready for it to be over?
Well, it will be in the not too distant future, but don’t wish this time away. A few weeks ago in worship I said “I love Lent.” I was surprised at the reactions I got: some who thought I was crazy (but, hey that could be for any number of reasons!), some who talked to me earnestly about their difficulties with Lent, but who were committed to doing their best to do the hard work in front of them. I heard from people who said that they never really thought of Lent as being much different from any other time of the year, and finally I even heard from a couple of you who understood what I meant and agreed with me!
But for those who didn’t understand what I meant, let me try and elaborate. ... | | |
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| | Sunday March 22, 2009 "Sacred Living" John 3:14-21 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on3/23/2009 12:35 PM | |
| For God so loved the world…
It is a phrase we hear often, and because we hear it so often, we sometimes don’t give it the attention we should. It comes from John 3:16 and I would hazard a guess that for most of us who grew up in the church, that was the first verse we ever memorized,
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.”
For quite awhile beginning in the 1970’s, just about every televised sporting event included someone in the crowd with a rainbow colored wig and a posterboard that said simply “John 3:16” The idea was, anyone who didn’t know the reference would go to their Bible and read this wonderful verse. And it is a wonderful verse. It encapsulates the basic reason that Jesus came to live among us, and it gives voice to what the reward will be for those who follow Jesus.
But too often we concentrate so heavily on the ... | | |
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| | It's that time of year again... | | Brad's Blog
| By Brad Miller on3/17/2009 2:55 PM | |
| Greetings,
You may be thinking, “Wow…Wednesday came quickly this week.” Not exactly. Tomorrow I have been summoned to report for jury duty in DeKalb County, and barring a last minute reprieve (man, you’d think I was the one on trial) I will be at the DeKalb County Courthouse tomorrow. So, I thought I’d get this out a little early.
This is a really special time of the year. Easter is not far off, the trees are starting to bud, the flowers are starting to make their presence known, and most importantly, before we know it BASEBALL will be back in town. (Okay, for those of you who haven’t guessed it, this is my annual baseball missive and after you read this, I promise you won’t hear much more about it this year – unless of course, the Detroit Tigers are good!)
In getting ready for last week’s sermon I was thinking of all the “sacred places” in my life and the ones that I highlighted in the sermon were home, the church sanctuary and our co ... | | |
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| | "The Church Together" | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on3/17/2009 10:00 AM | |
| Greetings on this beautiful day,
Last week I had lunch with someone who has been visiting the church for a while. He sat in on the board meeting after worship on February 28th to learn about possible building renovations and debt reduction and when I asked what he though he replied, “You know, in the past when I heard the word ‘church’ I would think of the building. Since coming to Brookhaven, I now know that the real ‘church’ is the people that make it up.”
Of course, he was right, it was just sort of odd that it came up when were talking about a meeting that specifically addressed some concerns for our physical plant! And he wasn’t trying to say that the building wasn’t important or didn’t matter. I think he was saying that the board meeting personified what it meant to be the church: thoughtful people, all working in the best interest of the ministry of Jesus Christ, all striving to find the best answers to questions, no matter if the topic was spiritual o ... | | |
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