In my mid-twenties, I was working in the city, commuting up the north shore line.
It was usually a quiet, unprepossessing trip, full of people who carefully didn't make eye contact and who tried not to say anything more than the barest minimum to each other. Mobile phones had not yet achieved internet status at the time, and so people read their papers or a book or stared blankly into space as they girded themselves for the day ahead.
Except this one morning.
A young man - maybe my own age, maybe a bit younger - got on my carriage at Chatswood. Taking a position near the stairs, holding firmly to the provided handles, he raised his voice for our attention and began...a stand-up comedy routine. He had a nice voice. The jokes were dad-level - that wincingly funny angle of 'oh no dad, please'. His voice carried through the quiet carriage, intruding on a peaceful morning commute. And there was no escape for anyone who didn't have headphones on. (And headphones or earphones were a far less common proposition in those days.)
We were on a train headed to work. We had no choice about being there - not if we wanted to earn money. Sure, some people smothered laughs at his routine, but my own thoughts at that moment were, I didn't sign up for this and I have nowhere to go.
The thing about that train carriage was that there were another six stops to the city, and I didn't know how long he was going to make jokes, but I wasn't in a mood to take them.
I can't remember what I said. I remember that it was short and polite and very much annoyed. I sympathised with his enthusiasm and his vigour, but at that moment if I'd had a neon sign to put up over my head, it would have read something like: DO NOT WANT.
He apologised and piped down. The guy standing next to him said quietly that he enjoyed the humour. The train ride continued, and he got off a few stops later.
Maybe under other circumstances, I might have been more forgiving. After all, the guy was passionate about what he was doing, he was enthusiastic, he was pretty funny in that dad-joke kind of way. But I didn't have the capacity for it then, and if I didn't, doubtless many other people didn't either, although none of them would have been so bold as to say so. Don't rock the boat, don't interrupt him, put aside your own discomfort to make him feel at home...
No. Sorry. A stand-up routine on a street or a platform, where people can move away? Yes. Sure. All good.
A stand-up routine with a bunch of people who are pretty much the definition of a captive audience? No. That's inflicting something on people that they haven't paid for, haven't asked for.
I think of that morning sometimes when my friends complain that they can't "tell the gospel" at their workplaces anymore.
I think of people who just want to get through their day, who are tired and grumpy, who haven't signed up for this, who didn't ask for it. I think of people who have no choice but to listen to a co-worker whose enthusiasm might be enjoyable outside of work but whose insistence on preaching the gospel inside an office space leaves no choice but for the recipient to stand up and say "No. Enough. I don't want to listen to this now. I signed up to work, not to be preached at."
What we offer to people as individuals, on their own time, in spaces where they have the choice to listen or the choice to shut it down gently. And I think of being preached at by someone who might have my best interests at heart but who has all the sensitivity of a brick when it comes to my comfort levels, or who tells themselves "it's the gospel, of course it's going to make them uncomfortable".
And I think that we are doing a great news no favours at all when we force people to listen.
In the same way, I think we are doing a great news and a great freedom no favours at all when we require people to follow Christian standards for our own comfort levels, but that's another conversation entirely.
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