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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 May 25, 2008 "Changing Hearts" Acts 16:11-15 | |
| By Brad Miller on5/27/2008 8:22 AM | |
| All month long we have been concentrating on the Pentecost story in one way or another. The day we celebrate as Pentecost, the birthday of the church, conincides with the appearance of the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem. With that appearance, amazing things began to happen. The disciples suddenly began communicating in different languages, languages they did not know. And the important word here is communicating, because it was not just the ecstatic murmurings of people caught in the spell of the Holy Spirit, but real, true communication – communication of the gospel of Jesus Christ to those who had not heard.
Peter gave an amazing sermon that day, and 3000 people were said to have become followers of Christ right then and there.
The church was born that day, but like a newborn baby, many things had to fall into place so that it would be nurtured and grow strong and healthy. We know from the book of The Acts of the Apostles that those who initially were drawn to t ... |  | |
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| | Sunday May 18, 2008 "Changing Sides" Acts 9:1-19 | |
| By Brad Miller on5/20/2008 12:50 PM | |
| Preaching about Paul is a tricky business. It’s tricky because we don’t always know what to make of him.
Here’s the first thing: he’s got two names! First, he’s Saul, then he’s Paul. C’mon, Abram and Sarai become Abraham and Sarah, Jacob becomes Israel, Simon becomes Peter, Saul becomes Paul. Enough already! For our purposes today, let’s all remember that Saul is the name before the incident on the road to Damascus and Paul is the name after the incident on the road. But I’m going to call him Paul, all the time, because, well, I’m easily confused.
Here are some of the other tricky things about Paul:
His letters to the various churches carry some of the most beautiful messages of encouragement we can imagine. Some of our best loved and lyrical passages are attributed to Paul’s hand. His role of mentor to Timothy and champion of Philemon inspire us to reach out to, to be guides to others.
But then there is what I call the “hostile” P ... | | |
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| | Sunday May 11, 2008 "Changing Course" Acts 2:1-42 | |
| By Brad Miller on5/12/2008 10:35 AM | |
| I sometimes wonder why we don’t do more with Pentecost. What I mean by that is, why isn’t Pentecost a bigger holiday? The civic culture here in the United States, Christian and non-Christian alike, has come to accept Christmas and Easter as worthy of extended celebration. At Christmas, government offices even shut down and take it as a national holiday.
I do understand that the birth and the resurrection of our savior are big, big events: but why isn’t the birth of our savior’s church a big event? It is after all, the continuation of his ministry. It is the advent of what Jesus promised his disciples, the coming of the Holy Spirit to comfort, to empower, to guide. Isn’t what happened on that first Pentecost worthy of more?
Sure, we decorate the sanctuary and we wear red, but do we really grasp all that happened that day so many years ago? If we did, I think we would anticipate Pentecost much like we do Christmas and Easter.
Let’s st ... | | |
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| | Sunday April 27, 2008 "Wrestling with God" Genesis 32:22-31 | |
| 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 | |
| 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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| | Sunday March 30, 2008 "Can You Believe It?" Luke 24:13-35 | |
| 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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| | Easter Sunday March 23, 2008 "Roll Away the Stone" Luke 24:1-12 | |
| 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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| | Sunday March 23, 2008 "Turning the Tables" Matthew 21:1-17 | |
| 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 | |
| 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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| | Sunday February 24, 2008 "Living the Blessing" Matthew 5:1-12 | |
| By Brad Miller on2/25/2008 12:42 AM | |
| When we hear a scripture like the one we just heard read, it is easy to say, “Oh, I’ve heard this a thousand times before. How am I supposed to get something new out of this?”
I think it helps if we approach it like we would any scripture, and forget for the moment that is the opening salvo of Jesus’ most important and extended sermon on Christian living.There are questions I think we should ask ourselves whenever we delve into the scriptures. What is the context, the situation in life, of this scripture? For whom was the original message intended? How would they have heard it? How can an ancient text have an impact on us, in wildly different circumstances today?
Let’s start with the context of this passage.The Gospel according to Matthew tells us that Jesus was baptized by John in the river Jordan. Immediately following this event, Jesus is led into the wilderness where the preparation for his ministry is begun. It is, indeed, an odd preparation, but it seems to ... | | |
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