The Evangelist

During early and mid 1990s, as a full time college student in New York city and living on my own, I was in desperate need of a nighttime job. My search ended at the regional hub of United Parcel Services located on 43rd Street and 11th Ave, when I was hired to load and unload tractor trailers during the midnight shift. Everybody I knew was against me taking that job because it involved walking through Times Square at 11 o'clock at night. I was only a year or so removed from getting off the boat into the United States, and many feared that I don't have the street smarts to survive walking through the red light district to get to work. Times Square was the center of everything that is considered "dirty" by family oriented people, the place was humming with prostitutes, adult movie theaters, drug dealers, drug addicts and those who seek carnal pleasures. Never a man who listened to  unsolicited advises, I took the job. After making my way through the "sinners" for the first several week, one thing I learned quickly, though the place could be used as the cover picture for mayhem, there exists an underlying order and everybody notices everything. In the beginning, I was approached by everybody from transvestites to pimps in fur coats; a week later, I walked through there as if I am invisible, not even a runaway teenager who just got off the bus from the Midwest solicited my business. I too began to recognize familiar faces in the crowd, it was mostly the same people standing at the same spot every night wearing the same dress.


Another thing I noticed during that time was two young guys standing on a street corner, these guys were there everyday, regardless of rain or shine, heat or snow. One guy read the Scriptures, one verse at a time from a Bible he was holding, and the other guy repeated the verses in a much louder and more authoritative voice. They were there when I went to work and also when I came back from work. I never heard then giving sermons, but stood there reading the Word out aloud. All those years, I never noticed anybody paying particular attention to them, they never had a crowd gathered around them unlike the adult book store that faced them. It seemed like having no listeners never bothered them, and I never could understand their motive. Eventually, I even began to hate them; I thought they were lazy, just wasting their life over something nobody cared about. I related myself better with the prostitutes on the same street, at least we "worked" all night, and unlike these guys, those ladies (and some men in women's clothes) threw me a smile on rare occasions.

The last time I went back to Times Square, I had my wife and three kids with me. We marveled the flashing lights of brand new theaters, restaurants and children's toy stores. We watched Lion King and ate at a McDonald's. A Loews Multiplex has taken over the place of the adult movie theater and book store. The place was filled with families who came out to spend the day, and tourists from all over the world; somehow all the "dirt" was gone from that place, there was nothing there to bring back the memories, not even the guys with the Bible. The Word of the Lord also disappeared along with all the sinners, prostitutes and addicts.

Looking back at it now, am I too naive to think that those guys had something to do with the revival of Times Square. The word evangelist means an angel or messenger bringing good news. Doesn't that make those guys evangelists, preaching the Good News to those "Who have eyes and do not see, who have ears and do not hear" (Jeremiah 5:21), tearing down the bricks and mortars of the houses of sins with "the word of God.. living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword..." (Hebrews 4:12). I have no idea whether those guys were Catholic or Protestant, Pentecostal or Lutheran; I have no idea if they were graduates from a seminary or a Bible school; all they did was read out the Bible, word for word. Somehow they were convinced that the Word, not them, could make a difference to what they were looking at. Somehow it did.

Again, I can't help but to notice the irony with the Times Square scenario; with all the riches and the prosperity that took over the impoverished, the Word of the Lord has also lost its place. Is this what Jesus meant when He said "Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous but the sinners" (Mark 2:17). But who is the righteous? Does doing well in life equate to being righteous in God's eyes? We need to be careful about ignoring the Word, just listen to Moses as he readied Israel to cross Jordan river to the Promised Land, "For this is no trivial matter for you, but rather your very life; by this word you will enjoy a long life on the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess" (Deuteronomy 32:47). That was Moses' last piece of advise to the people he led for forty years, an advice the Israel never took to heart. Israel, in their prosperity, ignored the word of the Lord to live a life of self-indulgence, and tyranny and destruction lingered over them in a land where milk and honey flowed abundantly.

Throughout our life, we will encounter evangelism in many shapes and forms. Whether it be the guy on the street corner reading out the Bible aloud or our parents saying the evening prayers at the comfort of our home in soft voices; it could be the homeless man holding up a sign at the traffic intersection or one our obnoxious co-workers; God sends out angels to knock on each one of our doors, hoping that one day we would let the Word into our hearts, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, then I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me" (Revelation 3:20). Be glad if you still hear this knock; to quote St. Augustine, "Be not afraid of the God who knocks on your door, be afraid of the God who passed you by".