Milford Presbyterian Church Sermons

Sermon from Sunday, June 27, 2021. Summer Road Trip (Part 3). Acts 15:1-11. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. Paul joins a council of church leaders in Jerusalem to decide under what conditions Gentiles are permitted to be a part of the family of faith. The result - an erasure of the boundaries that we create between us and others - cuts right to the heart of the nature of the Gospel the apostles are sent out to proclaim.

Sermon from Sunday, June 20, 2021. Summer Road Trip (Part 2). 1 Corinthians 1:10-15 & Acts 14:8-20. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. Paul and Barnabas are mistaken for deities when they heal a man who could not walk. It is not really surprising that people reacted this way after witnessing a miracle; what is truly surprising is that the Apostles refuse to be deified. This tells us a lot about the gospel they preached.

Sermon from Sunday, June 13, 2021. Summer Road Trip (Part 1). Acts 13:4-12. The Apostle Paul confronts a magician who is attempting to turn people away from the truth of the gospel. The very idea of truth has grown increasingly complicated in our pluralistic world, so how can Christians embrace the truth of the gospel without presuming to be its sole possessor?

Sermon from Sunday, May 30, 2021. Spirit of God (Part 4). Genesis 8:6-12, 20-22 & Matthew 3:13-17. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. The fourth and final biblical metaphor of the Holy Spirit is the dove. When we connect the dove that descended upon Jesus at his baptism with the dove from the story of Noah, we discover God's spirit at work in bringing about something new in this world and in us.

Sermon from Sunday, May 23, 2021, the Day of Pentecost. Spirit of God (Part 3). Malachi 3:1-6 & Acts 2:1-13. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. The Holy Spirit descends as tongues of fire on the Day of Pentecost and the church is born. Fire reveals something important about the working of God's spirit, and it has everything to do with the gospel and the fledgling movement that began to share it.

Sermon from Sunday, May 16, 2021. Spirit of God (Part 2). Genesis 1:1-2 & John 3:1-9. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. God's spirit shows up at times in scripture as WIND. When we imagine the movement of God in the world as wind, we embrace unpredictability, discomfort, and mystery. The wind of God surrounds us, spooks us, and stirs us up.

Sermon from Sunday, May 9, 2021. Spirit of God (Part 1). Genesis 2:4b-7; Ezekiel 37:1-10; John 20:19-22. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. One important metaphor for God's spirit in scripture is BREATH. This breath shows up at a few key moments in the biblical story, and these moments reveal to us the foundational nature of the work of God's spirit for the life of faith.

Sermon from Sunday, May 2, 2021. Nothing Less (Part 5). Romans 8:18-25. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. Is there a limit to hope? Does hope dwindle to nothing in the face of the truly hopeless? Or can hope be maintained even when there's no good reason left for hope? Hoping for the impossible - hoping against hope - proves to be the ultimate test case for the power of hope.

Sermon from Sunday, April 25, 2021. Nothing Less (Part 4). Matthew 25:31-46. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. Hope is not just something we cast out into an uncertain future; hope is something that has - or at least ought to have - a profound impact on who we are and how we live today. And when we live hope-shaped lives, we help bring hope to others.

Sermon from Sunday, April 18, 2021. Nothing Less (Part 3). Isaiah 65:17-25 & Revelation 21:1-5a. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. It is not uncommon for Christians to assume that ultimately, in the end, God plans to toss this broken world on the trash heap (minus the faithful, of course). But this assumption ignores the consistent through-line in scripture of God's unwavering hope for the world and all that is in it.

Sermon from Sunday, April 11, 2021. Nothing Less (Part 2). Hebrews 6:13-20. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. The character of hope is determined by its foundation. Hope that is founded upon ephemeral things - ambition, success, approval, comfort - will itself be fleeting. But when our hope is rooted in God's unchanging purpose for the world, our hope will never be shaken.

Sermon from Easter Sunday, April 4, 2021. Nothing Less (Part 1). Isaiah 25:6-9 & Mark 16:1-8. Mark's telling of the Easter story is a strange mixture of fear and hope, which is a fitting depiction of life in the world: hope and fear intermingled, inextricably tied together. But this is no ordinary hope; the hope we discover at the empty tomb is eternal, unending, undying hope.

Sermon from Maundy Thursday, April 1, 2021. Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. It is an odd thing that the Passover meal memorializes the moment before Israel's liberation, rather than the celebration after its completion. It is equally odd that the Christian sacrament of Communion memorializes the darkness of Holy Week, rather than the victory of Easter. But life is lived on this side of triumph, and we need to be trained to remember that God is with us even as we wait for the celebration to come.

Sermon from Sunday, March 28, 2021. Exiles (Part 6). Jonah 3:1 - 4:1; 1 Peter 4:1-11. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. At the end of the day, the life of a Christian exile is oriented in a very particular direction: toward the world. In the story of Jonah and some of the closing remarks of 1 Peter, this orientation becomes inescapably clear.

Sermon from Sunday, March 21, 2021. Exiles (Part 5). 1 Peter 3:13-22. Exiles who are called to a distinctive way of life are also instructed to be prepared to answer for their distinctiveness - to make a defense of their hope. In a world so often characterized by thin and misplaced hopes, our readiness as the church to declare our unique hope is critical to our witness and essential to faithfulness.

Sermon from Sunday, March 14, 2021. Exiles (Part 4). Daniel 1:3-5, 8-17 & 1 Peter 2:11-17. How to bear faithful witness in the world to the good news of God's kingdom depends to a great extent on where the church finds itself. Exiles face a unique set of constraints and challenges as they seek to live faithfully. Following the example of Daniel and heeding the words of 1 Peter, the church today can find wise guidance for how to shape our lives in ways that honor others and yet hold fast to the freedom that is ours in Christ.

Sermon from Sunday, March 7, 2021. Exiles (Part 3). Esther 7 & 9; 1 Peter 2:2-10. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. From the time of Israel's entrance into the Promised Land until the destruction of Jerusalem and beginning of their exile, their identity as a people was tied to place: the Land, the Holy City (Jerusalem), and the Temple. The loss of home and the experience of exile, however, forced Israel to rediscover its identity as no longer rooted in a particular place, but rooted instead in their covenant relationship with God.

Sermon from Sunday, February 28, 2021. Exiles (Part 2). 1 Peter 1:13-23. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. Part of what it means to be an exile is to navigate the persistent challenge of delineating between "us" and "them." Exiles hold their distinctiveness in tension with their participation in society, and going too far in either direction can compromise Christian identity and damage Christian witness.

Sermon from Sunday, February 21, 2021. Exiles (Part 1). 1 Peter 1:1-2. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. After the people of God suffer dislocation and exile at the hands of Babylon in the 6th century BCE, exile becomes an important controlling metaphor for how they understand their collective life in a challenging world, even long after they return to their homeland. For the Christian church today, exile remains a useful lens through which to view the challenges of faithful witness in a fast-changing world.

Sermon from Ash Wednesday, February 17, 2021. Isaiah 58:1-12 & Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. Entering into a season of Lenten sacrifice seems an odd thing to do in the midst of a pandemic that has forced sacrifice upon us for so long. Remembering our mortality feels equally unnecessary as death has been an inescapable part of life for the last year. Nevertheless, there is much more to remembering that we are dust. It’s not just about death; it is also very much about life.