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Brad's Sermons |
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| Author: | Brad Miller | Created: | 10/30/2007 2:53 AM |  | | Archive of BCC Sermons by Brad |
| Sunday January 27, 2008 "Praying For The Impossible" Acts 12:1-11 | |
| By Brad Miller on1/28/2008 11:39 AM | |
| The implication is clear, isn’t it?
If we pay attention to this story of Peter’s escape from prison, we are clearly led to believe that there is a direct connection between the escape and the fact that “the church prayed fervently to God for him.”
We want to believe it, don’t we? You know, that God answers our heartfelt prayers. Of course we want to believe it. In fact, there are times when we simply ache to believe it. But sometimes, when we are at our lowest, when danger seems to be closing in, we may have our doubts.
If you haven’t been there, I dare say you will. A situation seems completely untenable and beyond our control. A dear friend or loved one is gravely ill and doctors don’t seem to know what to do. Someone we care about is caught in the throes of addictive behavior and refuses to see the problem. We are desparately lonely in the wake of loss and not sure where to go for a comforting presence.
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| | Sunday January 20, 2008 "The Disciples' Prayer" Matthew 6:9-13 | |
| By Brad Miller on1/22/2008 3:39 PM | |
| Each week in worship we say a variation of today’s scripture. You may have heard it called “The Prayer of Jesus”, or as Jennifer’s beautiful solo indicates, “The Lord’s Prayer.” Both of those are right, I suppose, but 2000 years later, I think it is clear that it is OUR prayer, the Disciples’ prayer. Oh, I don’t mean big D Disciple as in Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), but rather little d disciples, followers and students of Jesus. All across Atlanta, this country, all over the world, Christians everywhere, small d disciples, are reciting this prayer as a communal part of their morning worship. It doesn’t matter if it’s high church formal, low church informal, or somewhere in between, hard shell Baptist or Book of Common Prayer Episcopalians, if they consider themselves Christian, there is a good chance they are reciting it this morning.
So many questions rise up around this. Is it specifically a Christian prayer? Couldn’t a Jewish person say this prayer just as easily as ... | | |
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| | Sunday January 13, 2008 "What Do You Want?" 1 Kings 3:1-15, 4:29-34 | |
| By Brad Miller on1/14/2008 5:22 AM | |
| Overall, Solomon’s heart seems to have been in the right place. We are told early on in this scripture lesson that “Solomon loved the Lord.” That sounds pretty good. If people were to talk about you or I and one of the first things they said was “they love Lord”, we’d be pretty pleased, wouldn’t we? After all, it says something important about who we are, about what we think is important, about what we strive to do in our lives.
Well, at least that is what I think it says.
When I think about people I have known that fall into the category of folks who “love the Lord” it is usually because of their actions, their deeds, the way they conduct themselves. They are selfless people. They seem to be always on the lookout for people who might need assistance. They are people of integrity. They do what is right.
Those people who are comfortable in their faith seem more likely to me to be “good people.” Maybe it’s because they know all good things have come to them through God’s grace ... | | |
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| | "What Now?" Luke 2:21-40 | |
| By Brad Miller on1/2/2008 10:42 AM | |
| “What now?”
It’s a common question, isn’t it? After a big event that we have anticipated with great excitement, it is not unusual for us to ask, “What now?” And certainly that is a question that many of us in the church are asking after we have spent the advent season waiting for the celebration that comes with Christmas. And for too many of us, the celebration ends with Christmas.
A former professor of mine is fond of saying, “There is nothing so over as Christmas.” She would point out the great speed at which we could clean out the trappings of Christmas, get rid of the Christmas tree, put away the presents, file away the Christmas pictures, use up the leftovers and get things back to normal, as soon as Christmas was over. And, when that happens, we find ourselves asking, “What now?”
It is also true of the church. Soon, the decorations will be down, the Christmas carols will be a memory, and we will continue on in what the church calendar calls “ordinary time.” And ... | | |
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| | "When Love Came to Town" Luke 2:1-20 | |
| By Brad Miller on12/24/2007 11:23 AM | |
| In the documentary “Rattle and Hum”, the popular Irish band U2, meets up with American blues legend B.B. King to practice a song that they will sing together in a U2 concert in Fort Worth, Texas. B.B. King is impressed with the strength of Bono’s songwriting and even shows a little hesitancy in playing such a song with them. But play they do, and the song became an instant classic. The name of that song? “When Love Comes to Town”.
In one way, this song is a typical love song. Each verse details a different situation where the singer has done something - or someone - wrong, but in each chorus he owns up to his mistake: “Maybe I was wrong to ever let you down, but I did what I did before love came to town.”
It’s a common theme in pop music, isn’t it? True love comes like a flash of lightning, a thunderbolt out of the sky, and then things change, in a big way. When love comes to town, we are changed people. Never again will we be the people we used to be. Our ... | | |
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| | "A Restless Peace" Matthew 1:18-25 | |
| By Brad Miller on12/10/2007 10:02 AM | |
| The gospel story that is most associated with the coming of Christ is the one found in the gospel according to Luke. It is a lyrical, beautifully presented story of the mystery and the majesty of the original advent season, when the world was first waiting for the messiah to come. It is the one we usually highlight on Christmas Eve, mainly because it is so beautifully written and carries with it such a feeling of awe and power.
But there is another gospel that also presents those events. And it is not as full of light and beauty as Luke. It is a dark story written about a dark time. It’s darkness and tension foreshadow the ultimate need for the light that comes into the world with the birth of Jesus. It is a story that still commands our attention, because this was the world that Jesus was born into, a world that would be changed by his coming. But because that change is incomplete, it also speaks to us today. The world can still be a dark and foreboding place to many, and we can learn fro ... | | |
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| | "The House of the Lord" Exodus 35: 4-9, 20-24 | |
| By Brad Miller on11/18/2007 12:00 PM | |
| This reading we just heard Carolyn read would make a wonderful Advent scripture. The main idea is of the Hebrew people under Moses direction responding to God by building a wonderful tabernacle of gold and acacia wood. This tabernacle is designed to honor God, to give the people a chance to worship God properly, to recommit themselves to what it means to be God’s people. But, if we were looking at this scripture with an Advent lens, we would see that there is a deep importance and meaning in the preparation for God’s coming. Just as we use our Advent season to prepare our hearts to celebrate the wonder of the Christ child’s birth, so are the Hebrew people preparing themselves for the coming of God to the tabernacle, always to be with with, never to leave them.
But it is not yet Advent so we will not spend our time on exploring those themes.
The reading we just heard would be a wonderful treatise on the subject of repentance and forgiveness. Just prior to the gathering of the materials an ... | | |
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| | "The Big Ten" Exodus 20:1-17 | |
| By Brad Miller on11/11/2007 11:00 AM | |
| When it comes to picking scriptures for worship, we at Brookhaven do things a little differently than some churches. A few years ago we decided to try and coordinate our scripture for worship with the scripture being studied in the children’s Sunday school that day. Thus, the sermon topic is tied in somewhat with the Sunday school lesson. We view this as a holistic approach where the whole church, the whole faith community, is focused on the same theme each week. We see this as a way to bring our community even closer together through the study of God’s word.
Here’s how it works: the Christian Education Ministry, headed by our Director of Christian Education, Debbie Kinney goes through various curricula and makes some suggestions as to monthly themes and weekly scriptures. Then we meet together to tweak the suggestions to take into consideration special Sundays, special church seasons and celebrations and the like.
This month the theme is cente ... | | |
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| | Give Me A Reason - Joshua 24:14-24 | |
| By Brad Miller on10/28/2007 4:00 PM | |
| Remember the old westerns?The ones where the good guys and the bad guys were easily identifiable.Sometimes it was as easy as looking at what color hat they wore.Sometimes the bad guy was the one who hadn’t shaved for days and the good guy was somehow always clean cut and well groomed.If someone had a scar running down the side of their face, you knew they were the bad guys. ... | | |
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| | "Quick to Anger" - 1 Samuel 25: 2-35 | |
| By Brad Miller on10/14/2007 12:00 AM | |
| We are Christians in large part because of our Hebrew forebears. Oh, you may have heard it all before: the Hebrew Bible, the collection of stories we sometimes call the Old Testament, is an important part of our heritage. We cannot fully understand Jesus and his impact on his culture without having some passing acquaintance of the Hebrew Bible. Indeed, we cannot understand the importance of Jesus on our culture without striving to understand the lessons of the Hebrew Bible. That portion of our Holy Bible makes it clear that God chose to enter the world first through the Hebrew people: God’s chosen people. Through them, God’s presence was experienced first and most directly. And because Jesus was part of that chosen people, his voice found ears among those who understood who he was: the Messiah incarnate, come to connect God and humanity directly. ... | | |
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