A Roman Catholic priest, a Baptist minister, and a Jewish rabbi go into the woods for a walk. Upon their walk, they find a bear. The Baptist minister says, “watch this,” and he goes down to the riverbank and begins to preach to the bear to the point where he ends up baptizing the bear. The Roman Catholic priest lifts an eyebrow and says, “oh yeah?” and he goes down to the bear and begins to explain the mysteries of the faith, and after he’s done, the bear takes his first communion. The two Christians stand at the top of the hill as the Rabbi goes down to the bear, not to be outdone. He talks to the bear for a little bit and then the bear roars and mauls the Rabbi. The priest and the minister run down to the Rabbi, who is able to eek out, “I guess I shouldn’t have led with telling him about circumcision…” 
The joke plays with how easy we perceive conversion to the different religious traditions mentioned. Of course, the reality is that when we are talking with our non-Christian friends about our faith, it may seem just as easy to Baptize a bear or even tell one about circumcision. Still, a lot of the time, the difficulty is more with us than it is with “the Bear”. We have all sorts of reasons to not talk about our faith with people – we fear rejection, we fear making Christianity look bad, we fear having to act extra piously around this person the next time we see them rather than being ourselves, we fear all sorts of things. Maybe Baptizing a bear isn’t so bad after all.
Yet here is the thing. The problem with the joke is that it makes everything about the presentation, and it’s not. We believe that the Holy Spirit is at work in the hearts of the people who we have the opportunity to Baptize, and that we are the vessels of that Spirit. Little Abigail Chi isn’t going to be Baptized today because of any presentation, but because of the Body of Christ at work in her life. We have to show up, God doesn’t work without means, but it is up to him. Maybe once we start figuring that out, we’ll start seeing ourselves Baptizing a few more bears.