Street Preachers with Puppets, or Half of a Story of Grace

God shows up in the most unexpected places.

You don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to prove anything. All you need is Jesus.

About twenty years ago, a young Christian in Vienna spoke those words to me. Even back then, street corner evangelism was virtually unheard of in Austria. As an American, why I had to travel halfway around the world to hear those simple words continues to baffle me.

But there I was (poetically? ironically?) in the literal shadow of St. Stephen’s Cathedral, a colossal monument to Austria’s historic Catholic influence. Thanks to a smattering of childhood churchgoing, I was familiar with Rome’s religious imprint. But as a college exchange student who hadn’t been to mass in years, I definitely wasn’t in Vienna’s city square out of a zeal for Catholic history. As it happens, I don’t remember what brought me down there that day. But what I still recall clearly is that amidst the shops, clatter, and tourist hordes, a group performing with marionette puppets caught my eye.

I stopped to listen. It quickly became obvious that they were religious and that their purpose was to convert people. But for some reason I stayed and listened anyway. Their message was concise, only lasting a few minutes. It’s familiar to all whose Christian experience has an evangelical flavor:

God is holy and morally perfect. But you have sinned and separated yourself from God. If you stay on this path apart from God, you will go to hell when you die. But God made it possible for you to be reconciled to him by sending his Son, Jesus Christ, to take on flesh and live on earth as a man. Jesus lived a perfect, sinless life of love. But he was ultimately put to death on a cross by those who opposed him. God then raised Jesus from the dead on the third day. Now by trusting in Jesus, your sins can be forgiven. By God’s grace, you can be assured a place in heaven when this life ends.

It didn’t stir anything in me at all.

But I paused long enough for a couple of nice people my age to come up and talk to me. I remember three sentences from that short conversation:

You don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to prove anything. All you need is Jesus.

One of the evangelists invited me to church and handed me a card with the address. I accepted it politely, went back to my dorm, and casually told the story to some friends. Because that sort of thing was so rare in Austria, it prompted a bit of fascination. But none of us took the message seriously. I don’t remember anyone reacting strongly to it or expressing offense, probably because the ideas struck us as too odd and outdated to take seriously. The conversation quickly shifted to something else.

Then, for the next three-and-a-half years, I forgot about that experience.