Standing on the Corner
The Rev. Canon George M. Maxwell, Jr.
The Cathedral of St. Philip
Atlanta, Georgia
08 July 2006
Proper 9 – Year B
It surprised me at first.
I took my son, Peter, to the doctor’s office for an appointment last week and the nurse thanked me.
I went to my favorite lunch spot later in the day, and the manager thanked me.
I stopped by the grocery store on my way home and a friend who was also picking up a carton of milk thanked me.
They had all run the Peachtree Road Race on July 4 th and were thanking me for blessing the runners.
None of them were Episcopalians and they each had their own story about what happened when they ran by the Cathedral. But, they all thought that we had done something meaningful for them. They all thought that we had brightened their celebration. And they were appreciative.
Realizing how little we had really done and how many people we affected made me think about what we could do if we put our minds to evangelism.
Now, I realize that the mere mention of the word evangelism makes many of us uncomfortable. We suddenly see images of white shirts and black ties selling Bibles door-to-door, or saffron robes accosting passengers at the airport, or big hair and diamond rings describing divine visitations on television. It’s not that we’re against these things, really. It’s just that we think they’re a bit tacky!
Evangelism, though, is bigger than these images. Evangelism is the proclamation of the good news that Jesus Christ died for our sins. It is the telling of our story. It is why we are here. And, it seems to me, that to truly understand our story is to want to share it with someone else. Of course, the way we share it says a lot about the way we understand it. The way we tell the story, in other words, says something about what we think the story means. The Word may tell us what to say, but the Spirit tells us how to say it.
I am going to suggest to you that evangelism -- the telling of our story – should have three principle characteristics. It should be public; it should be personal; and it should be joyful.
Evangelism should be public.
When I say that evangelism should be public, I mean that we should be telling our story outside of church. Evangelism, at its heart, is an open invitation. It is an invitation to live a particular way of life. It is an invitation to see Jesus as God acting in the world, and to join a communion of people who are dedicated to learning how to want what God wants, and care about what God cares about.
And, of course, this invitation may be accepted in many different ways – which may not include joining the Cathedral, becoming a member of the Episcopal Church or even deciding to become a Christian.
Although it may seem obvious that evangelism should be public, I think that we are often tempted to avoid talking about our religious faith outside of church. It is sometimes easier to think of religious faith as private feelings or experience. After all, we’re in a pretty big building on a pretty prominent site. People know we are here. If they want to know what we are about, they know where to find us.
And if we don’t say anything about our faith, then we don’t have to risk being embarrassed or offending anyone. We don’t have to worry about spending the entire dinner party talking about church politics. We don’t have to worry about trying to explain things like power being made perfect in weakness. And we don’t have to worry about apologizing for all those things that the church has done wrong in the past.
But, when you stop to think about it, how can we not talk about our faith?
If we really do think that we have found evidence of God, how can we keep that a secret?
Keeping our discovery of God a secret would be like falling in love and not wanting to tell anyone about it.
It is true that people sometimes talk about their faith in ways that are arrogant, judgmental and manipulative. This is the modern equivalent of the boasting that Paul is admonishing the Corinthians about.
And we can’t avoid the connection between religion and violence that we see in the world around us every day.
But, that doesn’t mean that we stop talking about our faith. If anything, it means that it is even more important that we do talk about our faith – as long as we do it in ways that people will be able to hear.
And that is why I think evangelism should be personal.
In the early church, people wanting to join the community were often asked to live with the community for a time before they tried to learn the creed or other doctrines of the faith. The leaders of the early church knew that the words of faith have meaning only against the backdrop of the community’s way of life. In other words, people were asked to experience the way before they started thinking about it in abstract terms.
When I say that evangelism should be personal, I mean that it should be a witness to how God has touched our lives. This is the authority over unclean spirits that Jesus gave the disciples when he sent them out to proclaim that all should repent.All we need is the story of how we learned to give of ourselves, and what happened to us when we did it. It should be the story of how we learned to see things through the eyes of the victim. This truth, gently offered, will be enough to cast out demons and heal the sick.
Think about all we have to say. We can tell about how we felt blessed when we were given the opportunity to support our Katrina families. We can tell about how we coped with our own vulnerability when we visited our neighbor’s sick child in St. Joseph’s hospital. We can talk about how we learned to listen by following a routine of daily prayer. We can talk about how our politics were affected when we got to know people at Emmaus House who were attending under funded schools, unable to make a living wage or permanently dependent on government programs.
When evangelism is personal, it is something we do with someone else, and not something that we do to them.
When evangelism is personal – when we are able to stay in our roles as witnesses -- we are less likely to fall into the trap of trying to convince someone of something. It isn’t as important that we are right, and we don’t feel like we are trying to win an argument. We are less likely to try to get someone to do something. We don’t feel like we are trying to sell anybody anything. We are be less likely to make moral judgments. We don’t feel like we are trying to make anyone feel worse than they already do.
When evangelism is personal, we are able to show what words like grace, forgiveness, compassion, reconciliation and healing mean before we ever have to find other words to define them.
And this is why evangelism is joyful.
To really evangelize is to realize that our lives are not entirely our own. The Gospel calls us to share them with others. And, if we share them gently – if we tell our story in ways that others can hear -- then the sharing is renewing.
People talk about evangelism as saving souls, but it seems to me that evangelists aren’t trying to save others as much as they are trying to serve others. God will do the saving – often in ways that we can’t begin to imagine.
When we do it right, evangelism is joyful the way finding just the right birthday gift for someone you care about is joyful.
Public, personal and joyful.
The last words you will hear today will be “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” How would you life be different if you heard these words as a call to evangelism?
You won’t have to wear a white shirt and black tie, a saffron robe or big hair and a diamond ring. But, you will have to speak up about the difference that God has made in your life.
Don’t do it for the Cathedral. Don’t do it for the Episcopal Church. Don’t even do it for Christianity as a whole. Do it for God.
Who knows, you might find yourself with 55,000 new friends!
Comments? Contact George Maxwell at: GMaxwell@stphilipscathedral.org