Tipping Point

Yesterday's sermon left me wanting more...

I was actually trek along with the pastor's message, and was impressed by his mention of Christ and the ministry, death and resurrection of Christ. However, his primary focus upon the Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20), which was the lectionary text, seemed incomplete.
His argument that the 11 disciples (Judas is gone by this point) were given four verb commands by the resurrected Christ to "go, baptize, teach, and remember" shows that the church's role is to serve the oppressed, feed the hungry, etc. The Great Commission is what he labeled as the "Tipping Point" in human history.
The final line of his sermon echoes in my head today, because it was so hollow: "The tipping point of human history is God's mission." And by God's mission, he was primarly talking about the church's role to provide justice to those who are oppressed.
That line left me wanting more because I was slowly inching my way forward on the pew to cry out "amen" (the presbyterian head nod fashion) as he progressed through that final sentence thinking he would say, "The Tipping Point of all human history was Jesus Christ's death on the cross and resurrection."
It is due to these two events that the church is able to go, baptize, teach and remember. Those actions do not tip--transform--the world, those actions are the result of the transformation provided by Jesus Christ.


Something I did like from the sermon was fact that Matthew 28:16-20 talks about the disciples worshipping the resurrected Christ, "yet some doubted." This gives a neat image of the church as a place of worship and doubt--the two are in tension but not opposed to one another.