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| Sunday February 24, 2008 "Living the Blessing" Matthew 5:1-12 | Brad's Blog Brad's Sermons | 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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| | God is Good! | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on2/21/2008 10:02 AM | |
| Greetings on this grey morning,
There is a woman who lives in our apartment complex that moved in about 2 years ago. She is, I would guess, in her 70’s and we introduced ourselves as her grandchildren were helping her move in. Her name is Dolly and for years she has made her living as a child care worker in a church child development center. She told us she was an active member of her church and was thrilled when she found out that both Carol and I were ministers. She asked lots of questions about Brookhaven and Decatur Christian churches and never failed to greet us with a smile and a sincere inquiry into our health, how the church was doing, etc.
About a year ago, I noticed that her car was in the parking lot during the day. I ran into someone coming to visit her and they told me that she had been very ill with congestive heart failure and other ailments and was having a very difficult time. I sent her my best and told the caregiver where our apartment w ... | | |
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| | Sunday February 10, 2008 "See How You Like It" Luke 6:27-31 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on2/10/2008 11:41 PM | |
| My parents had some weird ways of teaching us a lesson.
Take for instance a wintry evening when we were getting ready for dinner.
It was cold and snowy and dark outside and I had just come in from delivering newspapers. And I was not in a great mood. When I got home and went to put my bike away in the garage, there was a bunch of stuff blocking my bikes space; stuff that I recognized as my brothers.So I leaned my bike up against the side of the garage and went in the back door. When you walked in our back door there was a stairway to the basement on your left, and straight ahead were three steps that led up to the kitchen. I closed the door, and seeing that the basement light was on, I crouched down so as to be better heard in the basement. Then I bellowed to my brother, “Dale, get up here and move your junk in the garage. I can’t get my bike in!” At which point an answering shout came from the basement. “Dale’s not down here!” It was my sister’s voice. So, I kne ... | | |
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| | Feasting and Fasting | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on2/6/2008 10:48 AM | |
| Greetings on this gloomy Ash Wednesday,
There could hardly be two more divergent days than Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday. Where I come from, Shrove Tuesday (or as some call it, Fat Tuesday) is heartily celebrated as the time to load up on all the things that you should give up during Lent: strong drink, fattening entrees, too-sweet desserts, general overindulgence. I grew up in a heavily Roman Catholic area and lots of folks in my neighborhood took both days very seriously! After a night of overindulgence on Tuesday, vows were made that alcohol, chocolate, smoking, swearing, red meat and other pleasures would be given up for the 40 days of Lent. But, hey, the Sundays aren’t counted among the 40 days! So, it was not unusual for folks giving up alcohol and red meat to say things like: “After church, let’s go out for a steak and a drink.” Kind of makes me wonder what the people who gave up swearing said on Sunday. But, I digress.
This juxtaposition of Feastin ... | | |
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| | Faith and Politics | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on1/31/2008 9:19 AM | |
| Okay: enough. This stuff is starting to bug me now.
Never have religion and faith been such talked about issues in our political process. Oh, there were questions in the 1960 election as to whether a practicing Roman Catholic could be President and be trusted to do what was best for the country rather than follow the “instructions” of the pope. Just about the time that the question began to seem very antiquated, the same questions now surface with a candidate who is a devout Mormon. Reporters begin asking questions like, are Mormons really Christians or is it a cult? Will the power structure of the Mormon church dictate their wishes to a Mormon President? Then, we saw a candidate come on the scene who was once a pastor and a self-declared evangelical Christian. Suddenly there was a flurry of activity among reporters and pundits talking about “the evangelical vote” and their power in this election. Then a candidate who had a non-Christian father has had the “authenticity” of his Chris ... | | |
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| | Sunday January 27, 2008 "Praying For The Impossible" Acts 12:1-11 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | 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.
And ... | | |
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| | Resolved | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on1/24/2008 9:56 AM | |
| Well, we are now firmly into the New Year and let me be the first to ask: how are your resolutions going? It’s a loaded question, isn’t it? We sometimes make grand plans that have little hope of being fulfilled, then we get frustrated and pretty soon we have dropped the whole thing altogether. So, I’m not trying to rub salt in the wound; I only bring it up because I have had a few of you ask me about something I said in a sermon the last Sunday of 2007. It had to do with a resolution that I had pledged myself to this year, and challenged the congregation to do the same. For those who asked (and for those who didn’t) here it is: In 2008, I resolve to honor God, to do what God would have me do, so that I might be the person God would have me be.
This could take in a whole lot of things, couldn’t it? Exercise, eating right, stopping smoking, spending more time with your family, learning something new… they all involve a similar thing. That is, being a good steward of what God has gi ... | | |
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| | Sunday January 20, 2008 "The Disciples' Prayer" Matthew 6:9-13 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on1/22/2008 3:39 PM |
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| 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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| | Remembering | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on1/16/2008 3:48 PM | |
| It’s funny how something simple like a certain smell, a song, a not-often-heard phrase, a ray of light through a colored window, can take you back to a certain time or place in our lives. Today, I have experienced that feeling in a couple of ways.
First, when the weather forecaster laid out what might be in store for us over the next 36 hours, I was taken right back to getting up early when I was a boy and waiting to hear on the radio whether our school district was one of those that had called off school because of a snow storm. It is a wonderful sense of anticipation as they slowly go through the names of the different districts and they are on the “b’s” – Bloomfield Hills, Birmingham…then they finally get to the “c’s” – Canton, Clarkston…. “C’mon,” we would say, “get to the “d’s” already!” And then they started…Davison, Dexter…wait, that means they went right by “Detroit”! The sad truth is that Detroit schools almost never shut down. Most of us could walk to school, so why would they? But ... | | |
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| | Sunday January 13, 2008 "What Do You Want?" 1 Kings 3:1-15, 4:29-34 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | 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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