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| Maundy Thursday | Brad's Blog Mid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on4/20/2011 4:06 PM | |
| Greetings on this gray day,
A while back I was telling someone that I thought the observance of a Maundy Thursday service was among the most important of the Christian year. And they said, rightly enough, “Why?”
Maundy Thursday was the night that Jesus celebrated Passover with his Disciples for the last time. That “Last Supper” is the basis for our weekly celebration of Holy Communion, or the Lord’s Supper. It set the stage for what was to come and gave the Disciples an indelible touchstone to guide them as they moved forward: “…do this, in remembrance of me.” Now, mind you, the Disciples still didn’t understand exactly what was about to happen or exactly what Jesus meant by this, but soon enough, they would. If only for that, the celebration of Maundy Thursday is important. But that is not all there is.
The events that followed the Last Supper are among the most significant events of Christendom. The church in the 21st century too o ... |  | |
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| | Sunday April 17, 2011 - Palm Sunday - "Blessed Are We" Psalm 118 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on4/20/2011 4:03 PM | |
| For me, Palm Sunday has been a bit of a struggle for me. Just as the children demonstrated, it is a day of wonderful celebration. It is a day of great triumph as Jesus enters Jerusalem in a way sure to invoke thoughts of the prophecies of old. What really makes it a wonderful day is that it is such a great spontaneous outpouring of joy. This could not be scripted, it had to just happen. This is not a President or a King coming with an entourage of security and specially built viewing stands and police officers blocking off a parad route. This is simply people being swept up in the possibility of the moment. Is this the Messiah? This is the Messiah!
The struggle comes in because of what I know happened after that triumphal entry. The events of Holy Week are gut wrenching, to the extreme. Imagine what it must have felt like to be one of the disciples – seeing this man you have loved betrayed by one of his own followers. Seeing him be subjected to a sham of a trial and then bein ... | | |
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| | Questions | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on4/14/2011 7:37 AM | |
| Greetings on this gorgeous day!
“Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the Living God, Lord and Savior?”
This is what I will ask people as they join the church and prepare for baptism on Easter Sunday. It is also what I believe with my whole heart. But in recent weeks, I have been reminded that all Christians may not interpret those words in exactly the same way. In fact, all Christians rarely interpret anything in their faith journey exactly the same! We have different views on whether Bible is the “Inerrant Word of God” or “God’s Inspired Word” or “Inspired by God.” We have different views of baptism: how it should be done and what it exactly means. We view communion differently at times – do we partake of the actual body and blood of Christ, or is the Lord’s Supper a memorial of what Christ did for us? We pray differently. We worship differently. We even sing some songs differently!
A couple of weeks ago, Carol and ... | | |
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| | Sunday April 10, 2011 "Offering Forgiveness" Luke 6:36-38 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on4/12/2011 4:51 PM | |
| The heart of Lent is self awareness and growth. What we do during these 6 weeks is attempt to come to a better understanding of who we are, and as a result, grow in our faith walk. Grow in our relationship with God. Grow in our witness for Jesus Christ. Grow as a person.
And so, we try to spend some time in prayer, not only because the discipline is good for us, but it helps us learn how to listen for God’s voice in those still, quiet moments. We try to spend some time in Bible study, seeking to have a better understanding of who we are in God’s plan. We try to pay particular attention to the life of Jesus and discern all that he offers us.
That is what I want to explore a little bit more today: what does the life of Jesus say to us, and what does Jesus offer us that will help inform our Lenten journey? In short, how does our understanding of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection help us grow in our faith?
Most of know the basic sto ... | | |
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| | Sabbath | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on4/6/2011 9:50 AM | |
| This morning about 6:15, the power went out at our house. Thankfully, it came on about a half hour later and making coffee was the first order of the day! Compared to a lot of people in metro Atlanta, we got off pretty easy. I read that about a quarter of a million people were without power for the better part of yesterday due to the horrible storms that moved through the area Monday night.
It’s pretty amazing how quiet it gets when the power goes off. Anything that might make even the quietest of sounds is stilled. No radios. No ceiling fans. No air conditioner or furnace. No refrigerator occasionally turning on or off. No ice maker clicking on to fill up. No TV. Nothing. Just quiet. It is amazing how much background noise we have in our lives.
This morning, as I found our flashlights I was reminded of a time in college when the power went off for a couple of days. It was the spring of my sophomore year at Michigan State and I was living in a dorm o ... | | |
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| | New Starts | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on3/30/2011 3:37 PM | |
| Greetings!
As we make our way through Lent, we need to keep in mind that the disciplines we work on, the fasting we may undertake, the introspection we engage in are all aimed at one thing: personal change and growth. These are not simply hoops to jump through for the sake of jumping through them. Rather, they are undertakings that will help us see where we can better serve God and strengthen our own individual faith journey. We all need to grow, not matter if we are 9 or 90. We all can make changes in our life that will strengthen and invigorate our walk with God. It is hard work, but it is necessary work. That opportunity for change and growth is among the reasons I love Lent so much.
As we work toward those changes, we must not lose sight of the fact that because of the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we have been offered an opportunity to have a relationship with God, and just as importantly, we are given the opportunity to grow and cha ... | | |
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| | Sunday March 27, 2011 "Serve and Find God" | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on3/29/2011 9:06 AM | |
| How many of you have heard this passage before?
And how many of you find it a little odd? How about a little hard to understand? Well, personally, I think it is both of those things.
I think this passage is one that we hear it, hear the buzz words, and keep on going. We don’t stop and linger on what it meant to the disciples, to Jesus, and maybe even to us. So, today, I want to do something a little different than normal: I want to walk through this passage and take some time to really dwell on its meaning and it’s importance. And I might need your help a little bit along the way.
So, take your Bibles out, and let’s go:
What’s the setting?
'While Jesus was going up to Jerusalem he takes his disciples aside by themselves…”
The fact that he took his disciples aside, alone, to talk with them is indicative of the fact that this is important. Whenever Jesus wanted to hamm ... |
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| | Service | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on3/23/2011 2:40 PM | |
| This morning I walked over to the funeral home to ask them a question about something, and on the way back I stopped and decided to enjoy the day a little bit and sat down on the wrought iron benches in the turnaround garden in the front of the church. (Okay, I was also taking the time to check my e-mails on my phone, but why not do it outside where it’s nice?)
As I sat there, two of the child care workers came out of the CDC entrance pushing those big multi-baby strollers. As they worked their way around the sidewalks, I could hear one of the workers talking softly to the children. I couldn’t make out exactly what she was saying – it may actually have been in Bulgarian! – but I could tell from her soft words and the cooing sounds she made in response to the babies that it was something up offered with love. As I sat and watched, I felt a little uncomfortable as I watched, because I felt like I was eavesdropping on something private. She did see me, eventually, and waved and in the ... | | |
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| | Sunday March 20, 2011 "Pray and Grow Strong" Matthew 6:5-13 | | Brad's Blog
| By Brad Miller on3/21/2011 9:52 AM | |
| The noted theologian Karl Barth once wrote, “Prayer is theology. Theology is prayer.”
The problem I have with that statement, and a whole lot of what Karl Barth wrote, is that I don’t know what it means. I think he means that if we listen in on someone’s prayers, we will get a pretty good idea of the theology they embrace, and as we continue to pray, our theological stance becomes sharpened and shaped.
At least that’s what I think he means.
One thing Barth has succeeded in doing is getting me to think a little harder about what this thing called prayer really is. And there is no better place to start then with this passage from Matthew that we just heard read.
It seems to me that embedded in this passage are the answers to two important questions about prayer. Those questions are, “How should we pray?” and “Why should we pray?”
Let’s set the stage first. In Matthew’s Gospel, these words of ... | | |
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| | Sunday February 27, 2011 "The Ministr of Healing" Luke 6:17-19 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on3/17/2011 9:37 AM | |
| Jesus traveled the countryside and healed people.
People who needed healing sought to be in his presence, to touch him and hear him. Why? Because Jesus healed them.
In our exploration of what it means to be the Body of Christ, we cannot skip over the amazing healing ministry that Jesus undertook when he was here.
By my count, I find 27 specific references to Jesus healing someone. People who came to him with physical disabilities and left whole.
Here’s the first question: Why did Jesus do it?
Let’s be serious, he could do it all! Power flowed from him like water from a waterfall. No problem was too big. He commanded people to rise up from the dead and they did! If you had that kind of power, wouldn’t you use it?
There are some who argue that the healing miracles were essential to his ministry because they offered indisputable evidence that he was the messiah, ... | | |
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