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| Paying Attention | Brad's Blog Mid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on4/21/2010 8:49 AM | |
| Greetings!
On Monday and Tuesday of this week I had the privilege of attending a workshop put on by Fred Craddock and Mike Graves called “The Preacher as Storyteller”. It was a wonderfully enlightening couple of days as it always is when Fred Craddock is involved. Not only is he probably the finest preacher I have ever heard, he is one of the finest people I have ever met. We got to know each other when we served as founding board members of the Atlanta United Divinity Center a few years back and I still count that as an amazing blessing. Whenever I get the chance to listen to him preach or teach, I come away with something that keeps me thinking.
On Tuesday morning Fred told a story about a waitress he met at a Waffle House. He asked for cream for his coffee and she reached into her apron and pulled out about 6 of the little creamer cups. He said that he only needed one and she said, “It’s better to have more than you need than to need more than you have.” ... |  | |
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| | Sunday April 18, 2010 "The Easter Command" John 21: 1-19 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on4/21/2010 8:43 AM | |
| Over the years, I have found myself in situations where an important person in my life was suddenly absent. Someone to whom I looked for guidance, someone to whom I looked for direction, someone whose presence made it possible for me to persevere, someone who presence was simply comforting.
I think of silly examples of that, like the night my high school football coach suffered chest pains in the locker room minutes before a game and had to be taken to the hospital. I remember that one of the assistant coaches gathered us for a prayer and we headed out to the field, intent on winning one for our stricken coach.
I wish I could tell you it was a magnificent effort that pushed our opponents to their limit. But, it was not a magnificent effort. I wish I could say we gave the winning game ball to our recovering coach, but we did not, mainly because we lost by about 45 points.
We knew what we were supposed to do, but we just couldn’t get it to ... | | |
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| | Remembering | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on4/14/2010 8:37 AM | |
| Greetings on this beautiful day,
Remembering can lead us to a lot of different places.
This thought crossed my mind this Sunday during Rev. Jennifer’s communion meditation. She said something along the lines that when Jesus said, “Remember me” at the Last Supper, he probably meant more than just, “think of me fondly.” He probably meant that we were to do certain things, act a certain way, as a way to “remember” him. And I think she was right.
It crossed my mind again earlier this week when I realized that my mother’s birthday is just around the corner. She’s been gone almost 12 years and the overwhelming feeling I get when I remember her is one of gratitude. Gratitude that I was so blessed to have her as my mother. Sometimes funny stories pop into my head, times when she laughed so hard she started to cry and then the laughter/crying turned into that weird noiseless laughter that left her coughing for breath. I remember times with fam ... | | |
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| | New Beginnings | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on4/13/2010 1:52 PM | |
| Greetings on this beautiful day,
What a day we had on Sunday! It was a wonderful celebration of the great gift we have been given: new life through Jesus Christ. The music was wonderful from start to finish; the celebration of baptisms reminded us once again of what it means to be part of the Body of Christ; the baby dedications moved us to rededicate our lives to nurturing and supporting the youngest and most precious of those among us; and the welcoming of a new member lets us know that our fellowship is a vital witness to those seeking a community of faith. It was, in a word, fantastic!
Our challenge, as always, is to not let that celebration slip away from us. I firmly believe that the more we keep Easter front and center, the more we live our lives as Easter people, the more vital and fulfilling our ministry will be to all who cross our paths. Join us in the coming weeks as we seek to carry over that Easter celebration into our work in the community, our ... | | |
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| | Sunday April 11, 2010 "The Easter Life" Revelation 1:4-8 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on4/13/2010 1:28 PM | |
| The New Testament scholar, Lauren Winner reports that one Sunday when she was a child, noticed that there was a typo in the bulletin that got her to thinking. Got her thinking about her faith and how she was supposed to live it out. It got her thinking about the difference in simply living, and living what I would call, the Easter life.
During the celebration of communion in her faith tradition, there was a place in the liturgy for the congregation to respond in unison: “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.”
But on this Sunday, it said something different: on this Sunday, it said: “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ HAS come again.”
She asked about it, fearing that she had missed something important since the last time they celebrated communion.
No, she was assured, it was a typo. It most certainly should say, “Christ will come again.”
She reports being a little sa ... | | |
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| | Easter Sunday April 4, 2010 "The Easter Response" John 20:108 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on4/13/2010 1:23 PM | |
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What a day! As winter turns into spring, our Lenten journey ends with the celebration of the miraculous events of Easter. It is a celebration that opens our eyes and breathes new life into our very being. A celebration that marks the most wonderful day that there could ever be: the day that Jesus rose from the dead and put an exclamation point next to all that he had been telling his disciples, his followers and the people of Israel and Palestine.
Oh, I’m sure the people who followed Jesus were faithful people who believed that God was with them, believed that God had guided them and their people from the very beginning. But there is a difference between believing in God and experiencing the reality of God personally.
And that is what was different for those folks closest to Jesus before that fateful day. The difference between belief and experience.
They had heard Jesus preach and even been able to question him about wha ... | | |
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| | It's almost here... | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on3/31/2010 3:23 PM | |
| Greetings on this gorgeous day!
It has already happened…but we need it to happen again. It is almost here…but still, it seems a long way off.
That in a nutshell is what Easter seems to be all about. We will gather on Sunday to celebrate the fact that the resurrection did happen, yet we still ache for resurrection in our own lives. We know that it is almost here, but can’t it just hurry up? As much as I love Lent and the buildup to Easter…as much as I love the celebration that will take place on Sunday all over the world…as much as I thankful for what Easter means to us all, I wonder sometimes if we don’t do the celebration a disservice by concentrating so much energy on one particular celebration on one particular day.
Oh, don’t get me wrong: the resurrection of Jesus is the most amazing, miraculous, life changing event I can even imagine. I give thanks every day for the fact that through Jesus, death has been overcome. I revel in each ... | | |
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| | Sunday March 28, 2010 "The End of the Beginning" Luke 19: 28-40 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on3/31/2010 10:17 AM | |
| | It was sometime between 2:30 and 3:00 in the morning when the phone rang. It’s never good news when the phone rings between 2:30 and 3:00 in the morning.Good news can wait at least a few hours, but bad news doesn’t wait.Before I answered the phone I knew who it was, and I was right. There was a pause and in a voice choked with emotion, my friend Linda said simply, “It’s time. Can you come to the hospital?” I said “Of course, I’ll be there as fast as I can.”As I made my way to the hospital, the last 3 years ran through my mind. Linda was the wife of a good friend of mine named Mike. Mike was an artist of national, even international, renown, but I didn’t know that when I first met him. He was simply a guy who came to the noon time Men’s Bible study I was facilitating at the church where I served. After the meeting, we sat and chatted for almost an hour. Mike had told the group that the day before, he had been diagnosed with cancer, and he was going back the next day to get the full rundown of what the doctors ... | | |
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| | From the Winter Comes the Spring | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on3/24/2010 9:00 AM | |
| Greetings!
Today is one of those days when winter seems like a distant memory…
Well, okay, not so distant. Monday morning about 8:00 a.m. I sat down at my desk, turned on my computer and waited for it to boot up so I could check my e-mail. As it was coming up, I glanced out the window to see…SNOW! And not just a flake or two that I had to strain to see and wonder if it really was snow…SNOW! Flurries that danced all around in front of me. I was in shock. Of course, it stopped within about 5 minutes, nothing stuck to the ground and it turned out to be a reasonably nice day. But still, I thought, “Please! I can’t take it any more!” I was reminded of a cousin of mine who went to college at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Michigan. Marquette is about as far north as you can get in Michigan and is known for long, harsh winters. When he enrolled there he was looking forward to lots of skiing and snow-shoeing and outdoor winter activities. He reveled ... | | |
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| | Sunday March 21, 2010 "Press On" Philippians 3:4b - 14 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on3/22/2010 2:57 PM | |
| Sunday March 21, 2010
“Press On”
Philippians 3:4b -14
From the time I can really remember beginning to understand some of what is in the Bible, I wasn’t sure what to make of Paul. I wasn’t sure that I was ready to trust someone who did a 180 degree turn in their life like he did. He was the persecutor of the Christians, after all. He was responsible for imprisoning and possibly even executing those who were followers of Jesus, those who dared believe that Jesus was indeed the promised Messiah.
But I have come to understand that it is precisely because Paul did that 180 degree turn in his life that we need to listen to him. Because Paul knows of what he speaks: he knows what it means to change; he knows what it means to turn his life around. He has something very important to tell us.
Today’s passage is one of those times when I look at Paul and realize that he understands what it means to struggle with giving one ... | | |
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