free-range evangelization

JMJ
AMDG

Recently, I skinned my knee. My family and I were leaving church, and I was carrying my youngest brother pick-a-back, and he said "run" and the parking lot was empty, so I started running and got about ten feet before I tripped over my shoes and went sprawling with sixty pounds of brother driving me into the ground. I ripped up my awesome blue tights and my knee and wound up with a nasty scab that was yellow in some places and red in others and sometimes oozed stuff and eventually cracked off/was picked off while watching Downton Abbey. Now it's a patch of weird looking pinkish-purple skin and doesn't hurt any more but it's still weird.

(my brother, by the way, used me as a cushion and didn't get a mark on him.)

I work as a lifeguard and wear shorts when I guard, so my knee is on display for whomever comes in. Several of the regulars asked what happened to me, especially because I had it all wound up in an ace bandage. Band-aids and joints go together about the same as open wounds and gross pool decks. So, I told them each the story about how I tripped over my own feet in a parking lot. One guy, a man I hadn't seen before, asked if it was at the Y that I'd done it, and I said no, it was at church. And he asked me where I go to church and I told him. And then he talked about how it was good to see that I went to church, because it's really just awful how many people don't believe in God and I said yeah, it's really sad, and then he asked if I would pray for him, and I said sure. And then he said he'd pray for me, and asked my name, and as he started to paddle down the length of the pool he called out that he was praying for me right then.

And I don't know if he'll ever set foot in a Catholic church. I don't know if he will remember me talking about being Catholic. I don't know if he will ever wonder more about the church I call home and ask questions.

I know that it was an encounter that touched my heart. I don't know if it touched his, but I'd like to think so.

Because the point of evangelization, the point of the gospel, the very heart of it all, isn't winning debates. It's loving, and it's proclaiming the good news. It's having the guts to say "yeah, I go to church,", and it's not laughing at that joke and it's making the sign of the Cross in public and yeah, sometimes arguments and counter-arguments are necessary.

But you are not the point. When we die, there will be no scorecard of how many theological smackdowns you smote that co-worker with. There will be no awards due to how many people you fricking schooled on the Real Presence or the Virgin Birth or the papacy.

Even thought that's easier, isn't it?

It's easier to get angry and it's easier to set it up as a legal debate and it's easier to make it all a head game, but human beings have hearts and before any of that, we have to love and we have to be presented with things in a natural, human way if we are to really learn them and care about them.

And I think a lot of us think that you need to go to a far off place to evangelize, or have a theology degree. We think you need to be a confrontational person, or a really nice person.

Nope.

There is evangelization by means of the soap-box, by means of scholarly papers, but more important, I think, is the kind that comes slowly and naturally.

There is the messy kind, the human kind, the kind that comes in answering questions about that funny brown necklace you wear; the kind that comes in mentioning Mass when someone asks what you did over the weekend, The kind that comes of saying "I'm sorry to hear that," and then saying "I'll pray for you," and then actually praying. The kind that comes when you live life the way Jesus did and let the consequences of that come as they may.

And it's hard. It's very hard, but maybe it shouldn't be. Because it's like telling someone you got accepted to that school, or you're getting married, or you got that promotion, or he asked you out, or that meeting went way better than you expected, or you were able to get free ice cream; except it's so much better than that, because ice cream and acceptance letters won't last forever, but He will, and His love for you will.

Ask Him to let you see Him in the ordinary. Live like He is your best friend, the sort of person whose name comes up in casual conversation. Because even skinned knees can be an evangelization.