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.

Sermon from Sunday, February 14, 2021. Enigma (Part 6). Mark 11:12-17. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. In a very familiar episode of the gospel story, Jesus overturns the tables of money changers in the temple. But just before he does this, he does a strange thing we’re not so familiar with: he curses a fig tree because he’s hungry and it has no fruit to offer him. This bizarre scene may look like a small tantrum, but in reality it is a symbol meant to help us understand Jesus’ more dramatic action in the temple.

Sermon from Sunday, February 7, 2021. Enigma (Part 5). Luke 16:1-13. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. In what is generally regarded as Jesus’ most difficult parable, Jesus seems to be praising the cunning and dishonesty of a manager who defrauds his master to save his own skin. Somewhere in this unsavory behavior is a lesson for Christian discipleship, but it certainly doesn’t jump off the page.

Sermon from Sunday, January 31, 2021. Enigma (Part 4). Luke 22:35-38. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. As Jesus nears the end of his ministry and prepares for his confrontation with authorities, he seems to command his disciples to take up arms - a very striking departure from the tone and substance of his teaching up to that point. His followers are eager to oblige his request, but in their hurry to answer the call to arms, they reveal how much they (and we) still have to learn about Jesus and his kingdom.

Sermon from Sunday, January 24, 2021. Enigma (Part 3). Mark 7:24-30. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. Jesus encounters a Gentile woman who seeks healing for her daughter. While it may seem like the set-up for a straightforward miracle story, it is anything but. In this desperate woman, Jesus is confronted with the question of how broad his ministry is really supposed to be, and by extension, how expansive the good news of the kingdom of God will ultimately become.

Sermon from Sunday, January 17, 2021. Enigma (Part 2). Luke 14:25-33. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. Jesus makes demands of his disciples so stringent and uncompromising that we can’t help but wonder if anyone can truly follow him. The reason his demand seems so unreasonable to us is that we struggle to put our loves in the proper order - but doing so is a prerequisite for discipleship.

Sermon from Sunday, January 10, 2021. Enigma (Part 1). Mark 4:10-12. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. Jesus explains to his disciples why he teaches in parables, and his explanation is far from satisfying. The fact that Jesus is difficult to understand - perhaps even intentionally so - may tell us just as much about ourselves as it does about him.

Sermon from Sunday, January 3, 2021. John 1:10-18. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. As a part of John’s unique telling of the Christmas story - the coming of God in the flesh - he tells us that Jesus gives us power to become children of God. This is much more than the bestowal of special status upon those who accept Jesus; it is our induction into the way of discipleship. It is a call to us to follow Jesus, not upward to heaven but downward in humility and service.

Sermon from Sunday, December 20, 2020. Home for the Holidays (Part 4). John 1:1-5, 14. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. John’s house at Christmastime isn’t really decorated for the season, but that’s because John is just too busy embedding himself in the deep, theological meaning and purpose of the celebration. The gathering at his home is not so much a Christmas party as it is an engaged and impassioned discussion. With the benefit of other evangelists already having told the story of Jesus’s birth, John is free to go all the way back to the very beginning.

Sermon from Sunday, December 13, 2020. Home for the Holidays (Part 3). Luke 2:1-14. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. Luke’s house at Christmastime is as festive as festive gets. Luke gives us the Christmas story that we know and love, the story that dominates the religious imagery and iconography of this season. The deep significance of Luke’s telling, however, goes beyond scenes of quiet stables and starlit fields; it is embedded in the characters who make up the stories and the world they inhabit - a world that is being made ready for the coming kingdom of God.

Sermon from Sunday, December 6, 2020. Home for the Holidays (Part 2). Matthew 1:18-25; 2:13-15, 19-23. Matthew’s house at Christmastime is a crowded place - it’s a family reunion, and there are many familiar faces and many unfamiliar, but all sharing in a common lineage. Pictures on the wall connect the living family to many who came before. The celebration of the coming of Jesus is the joyous recognition that the Savior is born into the long history of God’s loving covenant with God’s people - the family of God.

Sermon from Sunday, November 29, 2020. Home for the Holidays (Part 1). Mark 1:1-11. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. The home of Mark the evangelist is spare and unadorned at Christmastime. In fact, there is not a single holiday decoration anywhere in the place. But it would be too hasty to conclude that Mark doesn’t care (or know) about the Christmas story. Instead, it is more a question of the particular way that Mark wants us to think about the coming of God into the world - which is, after all, what Christmas is really about.

Sermon from Sunday, November 22, 2020. Ephesians (Part 5). Ephesians 6:10-17. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. Paul urges the Ephesians to put on the whole armor of God in order to defend against the assaults of the evil forces that are all around us. The challenges of living in a manner worthy of our calling in Christ are very real, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Sermon from Sunday, November 15, 2020. Ephesians (Part 4). Ephesians 5:8-20. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. Paul uses Light and Darkness to help the church understand its relationship to the world. But we need to be careful not to assume that the divisions between the two are perfectly clear, nor that living as Christians in the world is a simple matter of sheltering ourselves from the world. The days may be evil but God is good, and that has profound implications for who God is calling the church to be.

Sermon from Sunday, November 8, 2020. Ephesians (Part 3). Ephesians 4:1-16. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. When the resurrection power of God is at work in God’s people, we - who once were dead - are rescued and made alive in Christ. And having been saved by the grace of God, our life together as a Christian community takes a different shape: instead of being characterized by division and contempt, it is defined by humility, peace, and unity.

Sermon from Sunday, November 1, 2020. Ephesians (Part 2). Ephesians 2:1-10. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. For Protestant Christians, this portion of Ephesians forms a theological center of gravity for the whole of the Gospel: we are saved by grace. And despite the many complications Christians have constructed around the notion of salvation, it really is almost this simple. And that is Paul’s point as he writes this letter to the church. God’s gracious power is at work in us, rescuing us from the messes we make of ourselves and of this world.

Sermon from Sunday, October 25, 2020. Ephesians (Part 1). Ephesians 1:15-23. Paul’s prayer for the Ephesian church is simple: that they would see and experience the power of God at work among them and through them. At a time when so much seems to be out of control and we so often experience feelings of powerlessness, could there be any better prayer for the church today?

Sermon from Sunday, October 18, 2020. Holy Habits (Part 6). Romans 12:1-2. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. There is a great deal of overlap between worshiping and attending a worship service, but they are not the same thing. What happens when the community gathers for worship is a condensed and enhanced form of the kind of self-offering that God asks of us every day of the week. To worship is to make ourselves a living sacrifice for the health of our souls and for the good of the kingdom.

Sermon from Sunday, October 11, 2020. Holy Habits (Part 5). Isaiah 58:1-12 & Matthew 6:25-34. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. The ancient practice of fasting has fallen by the wayside for many Christians - especially Protestants - in recent generations. As a result, we struggle to understand how giving up food deepens our connection to God. But fasting, more than just going hungry, is about discovering what we hunger for in life. And it is only after we are aware of and honest about this that we can begin to set our priorities in the proper order.

Sermon from Sunday, October 4, 2020. Holy Habits (Part 4). Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 & Matthew 6:1-6. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. In the classic lists of spiritual disciplines, we usually find solitude: the practice of intentionally removing oneself not only from people but also from the noise and distractions that daily life brings. But because solitude has become an unintentional reality for many of us during this pandemic, it is also important at this moment to acknowledge the companion discipline of community, which may actually require more focused effort right now. The two disciplines - solitude and community - work hand-in-hand to nourish our souls and strengthen our spirits.

Sermon from Sunday, September 27, 2020. Holy Habits (Part 3). Luke 12:13-21. The pitfalls of wealth and possessions are many and dangerous, and scripture is uncommonly univocal on the matter. What is less clear is what we are supposed to do about it. Sometimes we assume that the answer is to rid ourselves of our possessions, which is impractical (and even irresponsible) in the modern world. Poverty may be the opposite of wealth, but that does not necessarily make it the antidote of wealth’s perils. Rather, the answer is the hard, steady, lifelong discipline of generosity.

Sermon from Sunday, September 20, 2020. Holy Habits (Part 2). Isaiah 55:6-13 & Colossians 3:1-11. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. God is mysterious and God’s ways in the world are often inscrutable. But this does not mean that Christians forsake the pursuit of understanding God. On the contrary, it means that seeking a clearer understanding of our faith is a lifelong pursuit which does not yield easy or complete answers, but which is profoundly fulfilling nonetheless.

Sermon from Sunday, September 13, 2020. Holy Habits (Part 1). Deuteronomy 6:1-9 & Romans 8:22-27. Prayer is one of the most essential spiritual disciplines and one of the most widely practiced, but that doesn’t make it simple or straightforward. In fact, some of the thorniest questions of Christian life and theology are related to the act and function of prayer. Prayer means different things to different people, and that is the way God intends it to be.

Sermon from Sunday, September 6, 2020. Upside Down (Part 6). Isaiah 11:1-9 & Revelation 21:1-5a. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. God's plan for creation from the very beginning is not the evacuation of the faithful from a world destined to decay. God's plan is a new heaven and a new earth: all things remade and renewed - the world itself turned upside-down.

Sermon from Sunday, August 30, 2020. Upside Down (Part 5). Amos 5:18-24 & Matthew 20:1-16. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. The word "justice" echoes around our nation today on the lips of protestors and police officers, activists and agitators, preachers and politicians. But there is precious little agreement on what this loaded word actually means. Meanwhile, the Bible has its own take on justice: a notion of justice which both resembles and radically upends contemporary American understandings of the word.

Sermon from Sunday, August 23, 2020. Upside Down (Part 4). 1 Corinthians 1:17-25. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. The cross makes no sense - it is almost that simple. It’s a source of scandal to good religious folks and utter nonsense to the outside world. But it is the decisive location and the central symbol of God’s action in human history, and it looks for all the world like foolishness.

Sermon from Sunday, August 16, 2020. Upside Down (Part 3). Matthew 5:13-16 & Galatians 3:23-28. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. Jesus upends the ways we relate to one another in radical and disconcerting ways. We understand ourselves and others by drawing boundaries - boundaries that we use to define ourselves just as much as we use them to define others. Jesus eliminates the boundaries and instead proposes a boundary-less community that is united by a common purpose: to be salt and light.

Sermon from Sunday, August 9, 2020. Upside Down (Part 2). 2 Corinthians 12:6-10 & Matthew 5:38-42. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. Jesus was not just contesting the political powers of his day, he was contesting our very notions of power itself. In his teaching and in his life, he reveals the ways that God has set about unmasking our misguided notions of what is strength and what is weakness.

Sermon from Sunday, August 2, 2020. Upside Down (Part 1). Mark 10:35-45. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. James and John approach Jesus with an audacious request: to be given a special status when Jesus is glorified. But since they misunderstand the nature of Jesus' glorification, they are sadly mistaken about what sort of status he is able to offer them. Jesus reorients our hopes and ambitions around a completely different idea of glory.

Sermon from Sunday, July 26, 2020. Grace in the Wilderness (Part 6). Numbers 9:1-14. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. God instructs Israel to keep the Passover while they are journeying through the wilderness, and this may just be the most important action that God's people perform during their season of wandering. When we find ourselves disoriented or in the midst of hardship, we - like the Israelites - are anchored by our memory of God's great deeds and our hope of what God will yet do.

Sermon from Sunday, July 19, 2020. Grace in the Wilderness (Part 5). Exodus 17:1-7. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. The people of God grow thirsty in the wilderness, causing them to wonder if God is even with them at all there in that barren place. God hears their grumbling and their cries for help, and God provides. From the most lifeless object - a rock - the life-giving force of God flows forth and sustains God's people in their time of need.

Sermon from Sunday, July 12, 2020. Grace in the Wilderness (Part 4). Numbers 14:1-10, 19-23. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. God delivered Israel from captivity. God provided them with food and water in the wilderness. God covenanted to be faithful to them. Yet when the people of God reach the borders of Canaan - the land of God's promise - they balk. They struggle to trust that the God who has brought them this far can carry them any further. The wilderness can be an obstacle to faith or it can be the crucible in which deep, lasting faith takes shape.