After videos of people scraping their keys across certain electric vehicles, the other most popular images on social media these days seem to be those of “street preachers,” either standing in the commons of some institution of higher learning, or on a street corner. The street-corner variety almost always seems to be at night, and in a rough part of town.
None of the preachers seem to be Catholic. I have mixed feelings about that. The rational (or less courageous) part of me thinks these preachers are crazy to expose themselves the way they do, and I have yet to see one of these videos where the person they are speaking to falls on their knees and begs God for pardon of their sins. The quick, short attention span street theater usually ends with the preacher being cursed at, mocked, or in some instances physically attacked.
But on a spiritual level, I feel a little envious of these bold proclaimers of the Gospel.
True, their version of the Gospel may not totally align with the full understanding and truth that resides within Mother Church. But they have the courage of their convictions. They have taken the order, not the advice, of Jesus himself and decided to preach to all nations, which includes that gaggle of college students on their lunch break, or some toughs (both male and female) who have just stumbled out of a bar at two o’clock in the morning.
The college version of this usually involves young people a little too smug in their disbelief who try to “catch” the preacher in some kind of biblical contradiction they heard in their Comparative Religion 101 class. But there is another class of adversaries that comes across many times as simply demonic: people who seem to take great delight in telling these preachers that they don’t need Jesus or have any desire to know him. Some happily tell the preachers that they are looking forward to going to hell. Those statements are usually followed by drunken cheers from nearby friends also in the same state of being overserved.
Remarkably, I have not seen one of these preachers take a swing at some of the viler and physically threatening lost sheep they encounter. And I have not seen one of them run away when a guy who looks like he got kicked out of the Hell’s Angels for being too aggressive gets in the preacher’s face with eyes violently open and muscular body ready to strike.
Again, I am not that brave, nor do I know if street preachers make any difference at all. But the amount of verbal abuse they take and the fact they willingly march themselves into various kinds of lions’ dens is something to respect.
Are there other ways to preach the Gospel? Most assuredly. St. Damien of Molokai “preached” by living among the lepers there, eating next to them, saying Mass for them and fighting for their dignity. St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta “preached” by scooping up the desperately sick and nursing them back to health, or by picking up the dead from the gutter and giving them a dignified burial.
We all have the opportunity to “preach” at work, at home, or wherever life takes us on any given day. The problem is we are too timid many times.
We do not have to challenge a drunk coming out of Monahan’s Fine Food and Spirits on a Saturday night (or morning) or take incoming slings and arrows from a college sophomore who just discovered Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins. That is unlikely to bear much fruit.
But maybe years later, when that drunk is now sober and a father of a couple of kids, and that sophomore realized how much smarter old people became as he put on years, will encounter one of those timid and weak Catholics at a job. Or maybe in the stands at their kid’s Little League game. And maybe there, if we have the courage, they will see God’s word in action and their ears may open.
And who knows, maybe if us timid types show just enough Gospel in our words and our actions, those who once mocked and even threatened those “crazy” street preachers will harken back to a time when some guy standing on a street corner told them how much Jesus loved them as they had staggered out of a bar, or college classroom; and that mustard seed planted back then just might sprout.
