Witnessing II

"How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news."

The Prophet Isaiah

This statement is an example of irony. 

I have a friend who is a wonderful painter and maker of furniture. His work is creative, meticulous and exquisite. His hands are gnarled, cracked, calloused. Like the lips of a jazz trumpeter or the larynx of an opera singer, our vocations brutalize. Yet the result is beauty, substance, contribution, joy, fulfillment and the like. 

These scars are physical and emotional. The Apostle Paul wrote: of "the daily pressure on me of my anxiety" for the sake of all the churches. Paul often notes the reality of his inner turmoil in heralding the good news of reconciliation with God through the atonement of Jesus. 

There is a burning friction that accompanies anything we will lay our hands and hearts upon.

Therein lies the irony of Isaiah's statement. The bringer of good news would have been one who brought it by foot. The feet of such heralds were the tools of their trade. The feet of those who brought good news would have been blistered, swollen, excoriated things. Caked in mud and filth and blood and puss, such feet would have been a ghastly, beautiful sight. 

The herald's news would, of necessity, cast a brilliant sheen upon the surface of such feet, gilding them beautifully and indelibly in the consciousness of the recipient. 

John Piper recounts a lecture he once hear J.O. Sanders give.

"He told the story of an indigneous missionary who walked barefoot from village to village preaching the gospel in India. After a long day of many miles and much discouragement he came to a certain village and tried to speak the gospel but was spurned. So he went to the edge of the village dejected and lay down under a tree and slept from exhaustion.

When he awoke the whole town was gathered to hear him. The head man of the village explained that they came to look him over while he was sleeping. When they saw his blistered feet they concluded that he must be a holy man, and that they had been evil to reject him. They were sorry and wanted to hear the message that he was willing to suffer so much to bring them."

Would that we could see the scars--within and without--
that we come by while living for the beautiful as possessing a beauty of their own. In this world of thorns, thistles, strife and cynicism, it is clear that the beauty of such scars actually surpass the more self-evident beauty of their accomplishments.

We would do well to keep in mind our peripatetic [lit. "walking around"] Lord and Savior, whose feet were swollen and filthy long before they were pierced. He "he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near". 

It would be safe to assume that if Jesus' resurrected body bore the crucifixion scars on hand and side, that his feet, too, are thus scarred for all eternity. They, too, possess a beauty which transcends the beauty of the pristine and whole.

Are your feet beautiful in this way? How about the feet of your soul? 

If not, could it be that we have never treasured the unique beauty of our Savior's feet? Should we do so, we might be found kissing them and cleansing them with our hair and tears.

"You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet."

"Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me ... And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her."

More on this later.

Selah