The Pastor of our church is recuperating from a heart attack, church members are helping with church responsibilities including the Sunday morning worship services. I was asked to deliver the sermon on April 4, 2005. The following is the manuscript of my sermon.
Text: John 20:19-31
I would like to thank the members of the session for granting me the privilege of the pulpit this morning. I need to let you know that I spent the first 30 years of my life as a Baptist and I even attended a Southern Baptist seminary for a year. I’ve delivered sermons in a Baptist church and I have to tell you I’m accustomed to a little feedback from the congregation in the form of “Amens!” and even the occasional wave of a hanky. I attended a church where one man would even shout things like, “Park there a little while preacher!”
Don’t worry! I don’t expect any such outbursts this morning but rest assured, if the Spirit leads you to shout an “Amen” or “Praise the Lord” it won’t bother me a bit.
I want to talk with you this morning about tipping points. By tipping point I mean specific points in time in which something small – a product, an idea – begins to spread like wildfire. The Tipping Point is the title of a book written by Malcolm Gladwell. It spent several weeks on the bestseller list a couple of years ago. Gladwell describes the tipping point phenomenon as “That magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.” He contends that ideas and social movements behave like epidemics. They are infectious, and the infection spreads not gradually, but dramatically ― with an identifiable moment of critical mass, a boiling point, a threshold moment, a tipping point when equilibrium is significantly altered.
Here are a couple of Gladwell’s examples. New York City in the 1980s and early ’90s was a dangerous place. In poorer neighborhoods, the streets would turn into ghost towns at dusk. Ordinary working people wouldn’t stroll down the sidewalks. Old folks wouldn’t sit on stoops or park benches. The drug trade ran rampant, and gang warfare was so widespread that in some neighborhoods people simply shut themselves inside their apartments come nightfall. In 1992 there were 2,154 murders in New York City and 626,182 serious crimes. But then, at some mysterious and critical point, the crime rate began to turn. Within five years murders had dropped by 65 percent and total crimes had fallen by almost half. The sidewalks filled up again. The bicycles came back. Old folks reappeared on front porches. What caused the change? What was the tipping point? Politicians will tell you they had something to do with it. The police force attributes it to better policing. But Gladwell traces it back to a couple of minor things. First there was the decision to fix broken windows, remove graffiti, and pick up litter. Small groups of citizens in local neighborhoods took action, creating a tipping point.
Here is another example. Remember Hush Puppies? I used to wear Hush Puppies when I was about seven. Everybody did. But then they just dropped off the radar screen. During the 1980s and early ’90s the brand was all but dead with worldwide sales of only 15,000 pairs. The company was on the verge of phasing them out. But then something strange happened. A Hush Puppies executive ran into a stylist who told him that the classic, brushed-suede Hush Puppies were starting to show up on the feet of people in trendy nightclubs. Big-name fashion designers, quick to jump on an emerging trend, began to feature the shoes in their runway shows. There was no marketing campaign, billboards, or promotion. The shoes began to catch on with teens and young adults. No one was more surprised than the Hush Puppies people! In 1995, sales of classic Hush Puppies jumped to more than 400,000 pairs of shoes. Four times that number sold the next year, and by 1997, sales exceeded 2 million pairs of shoes. And the company had done almost nothing to make it happen! Hush Puppies had experienced a tipped point.
There is pretty important tipping point that Gladwell fails to mention in his book. We celebrated it last week. 2,000 years ago human history reached a tipping point. When Christ was raised from the dead, God once and for all showed that evil and death and loss can never be the last word.
The impact of the Christ on history is profound. Even non-believers acknowledge that Christ represents the focal point of history. H.G. Wells said, "I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history.”
The resurrection may have been the tipping point of history, but our passage today gives us a glimpse into another sort of tipping point. The tipping point for a small group of people. The scene is late on Sunday evening. Earlier in the day Peter and John had seen the empty tomb. Mary Magdalene had even seen the risen Lord and had rushed to tell the disciples. After such great news, you might expect that the disciples would be celebrating the ultimate victory, making plans. That’s not what we read in John’s gospel. We’re told that, “…the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews.” The disciples still didn’t understand the events of the day. Their primary concern was that they might be the next victims.
As they cowered in fear, suddenly, everything changed. The resurrected Christ stood in their midst. Joy broke through their fear as they saw the risen Lord. As Christ spoke to them he gave them a preview of the Great Commission, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”
This was the tipping point for this small group of men and women. Gladwell says that tipping points often start with small, close-knit groups that become the impetus behind the epidemic-like dissemination of a message. This was certainly the case for this rag-tag group of ordinary people took on the extraordinary task of spreading the good news. And spread it did. It started with this handful of people and in less than 300 years Christianity would become the official religion of the Roman Empire. 2000 years later, a third of the world’s population would claim to be Christian.
This gospel account also gives an individual perspective of a tipping point. Verse 20 tells us that Thomas was not with the disciples when the resurrected Christ appeared to them. We’re not told where he was. It could be that he was so despondent that he did not want to be with the others. It could also be the case that he was away taking care of other responsibilities. We do know, however, that he eventually met up with the other disciples and they told him what they had experienced. As we all know, it was here Thomas earned the nickname history has given him – Doubting Thomas. He didn’t believe his friends and told them he would have to see to believe. We’re told that a week later Christ made another appearance, especially, it seems, for Thomas’ sake. He invited Thomas to touch his wounds for the proof he needed. Verse 28, I think, is Thomas’ tipping point. He proclaims, “My Lord and my God.”
Could it be that single moment in time where it all tipped for Thomas? The gospel does not tell us much more about this disciple but church folklore does. It is believed that Thomas became a fearless evangelist and a great builder of churches. He spread the gospel to Babylon, China, Persia, and India where he is said to have been martyred.
We’ve looked at three different tipping points this morning. The tipping point of history represented by the death and resurrection of Christ, the tipping point for the disciples as they emerged from behind a locked door to spread the gospel message, and the tipping point for Thomas as he proclaims the risen Christ as Lord and God. I would like to pose for us two questions. The first of which is this, “Have you, like Thomas, experienced your own tipping point?”
Many of you know that my stepfather was a pastor. As I was growing up his morning greeting was often, “Are you going to live for the Lord today?” I would answer yes, of course. He then would ask, “Half way or all the way?” to which the expected reply was “All the way.” That was just a silly sort of game we played but that gets at what I mean by my question. Have you experienced a tipping point at which you say, “I’m going to live for the Lord, all the way?”
For some, that point comes like it did for the Apostle Paul – bight lights, voices out of nowhere – a Damascus Road experience. Growing up I used to listen to the radio program, “Unshackled” which was produced by the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago. It was produced in the style of old-time radio shows. Each week, Unshackled would tell the dramatic true-life stories of people who came to Christ.
My late father-in-law’s had a conversion story that could have been on Unshackled. As a young man he was a real thrill-seeker. In fact, he made his living as a race car driver. One day at the track he had a pretty bad accident. While he was home recuperating he was contemplating the accident, death, the meaning of life. One evening there was a knock on the door. If this story was on Unshackled this would be a point at which the organ would do one of those suspenseful runs. At the door was a Baptist Pastor. This is another thing many Baptists do. They call it “soul winning.” Sometimes, they will canvass a neighborhood knocking on every door hoping to find someone at their “tipping point.” That’s what this pastor was doing that night – knocking on doors, sharing the good news. My father-in-law invited the pastor in and heard from him the gospel message. It was the right time, the right message, and the right messenger. It was his tipping point.
That evening my father-in-law became a Christian. Not only that, he committed his life to spreading the gospel himself. He put a life of racing behind him and moved his young family across the country to go to school and become educated as a pastor. At the calling hours last month, we stood in line for over five hours greeting people whose lives had been touched by my father-in-law.
A tipping point for Christ doesn’t always mean a change of vocation but it usually means a change in focus. Maybe for many of us, our Christian walk is really a series of tipping points with our zeal, commitment, and effectiveness coming in ebbs and flows. I challenge you to consider whether or not you’ve had your tipping point for Christ and whether you are living for him, as my dad put it, “half way or all the way.”
I hope that we will also remain aware of those around us – some of which may be on the brink of their very own tipping point. Just like that pastor, who for my father-in-law, was there at just the right time with the right message. Our words and actions can help others walk more closely with Christ.
Conclusion
In conclusion, another question I would like to ask is this, has First Presbyterian Church of Lebanon experienced its tipping point? Just as the disciples in today’s scripture, we are gathered together behind closed doors. We’re not here cowering in fear, but are we perhaps congregating in complacency? Just like the disciples we have come face-to-face with the risen Lord. Not just Easter Sunday, but every Sunday. He speaks to us the same words he spoke to the disciples, “As the father has sent me, I am sending you.” If that’s not enough to cause a tipping point, I’m not sure what is.
In a few moments we will come out from behind these closed doors. This week will the good news spread like an epidemic throughout our community? Will we be the ones to infect others? On Easter Sunday, on every Sunday, and every other day, when we behold the risen Christ, may we, like Thomas, proclaim “My Lord and our God.” Amen.
I did not grow up in a faith tradition that recognized the Lenten season, much less urged the giving up of something during the 40 days of Lent. About five years ago we began attending a small Presbyterian church in our community and we were introduced the Lent, really for the first time. This year, Lisa and I have decided to take up a challenge for Lent. We got the idea last year from our friends Will and Lisa. Here is the plan.
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