Feet are ugly. That’s what someone suggested to me the (other day. Feet are ugly. I can’ t remember why that subject came up, but she insisted that feet are bony, unkempt, twisted, weird, and much the worse for wear after forty or fifty years of use. She said, if I recall correctly, that God must have been joking when He made feet: feet are ugly. In fact, feet are more than ugly; they are ugggglee! Got that?
So let’s think this morning about how to have beautiful feet. I’m quite sure this has been one of your lifelong ambitions -- to have beautiful feet.
I’m watching your eyes go down as some of you check out your lower extremities! You did wear shoes, didn’t you?
Now I did think about asking everybody to take off their shoes for this sermon. I did think seriously about taking my own off. We Kentuckians, you know, always feel uncomfortable wearing shoes. But I figured that on a warm day, with questionable air conditioning … well, you can finish that sentence.
How to have beautiful feet. Are you hearing this morning from the preacher or the podiatrist? From Dr. Smith or from Dr. Scholl?
Paul in Romans quotes the prophet Isaiah, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news. " The good news of which he speaks is the news of salvation, the good news about what God in Jesus Christ has done for us. Paul is speaking about the importance of everyone’s hearing that good news; he is also speaking about our responsibility to be the bearers of the good news.
Listen to this absolutely unarguable series of questions: “How are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, ’How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’"
You get beautiful feet by using them to carry bring good news.
I want to talk with you this morning about evangelism. Evangelism is the name we give to our responsibility for sharing the good news with others. I want us to think about our individual, personal responsibility to share the faith.
And I want to do so by arguing that when we share that good news, not only will we serve the needs of others, but we also will feel personal fulfillment. When we make the effort to offer Christ and His love to others, we will have done something for them, of course; but we will also have done something for ourselves. I’ll put it this way: bringing the good news to others will give us beautiful feet.
I
Now I’m aware this morning that evangelism has a poor image. The very word evangelism sends shudders up and down the spines of some people. There is a negative quality about this business of convincing or persuading others to become Christians. We need to face that negativism and deal with it.
So the first step that Dr. Scholl, or, I mean, Dr. Smith, wants to recommend is that we clean up our smelly feet. Wash our ugly feet. One of the reasons we have such a hard time sharing our faith is that we know that something smells in our lives, and that until that is dealt with, we’re not going to be good news for anyone.
What does the world think of when it thinks of evangelism? It thinks of overbearing, know-it-all types who sound as though they are against everything that is fun. It thinks of sex scandals and of money-grubbers. It thinks of steamroller organizations and ultra right-wing politics. It thinks of mindless tract-pushers who don’t care about people, but only about winning arguments and humiliating their victims. Evangelism has had a very bad public image. Like weary feet on a summer day, it smells.
The other day Mrs. Currie invited me to attend a seminar on conflict management. She thought, and rightly, that I would find some of the ideas taught there very useful around the church. But not five minutes after I arrived, one of the seminar leaders, trying to help us learn to respect people, said, "Don’t preach to people. Nobody likes preachers!" Ouch! What is worse, I even thought I heard an Amen out of sister Currie! You do know how to hurt a guy!
But you know what the teacher was saying. He was saying that no one can hear a good news message if the messenger uses a bad news style. No one can hear a good news message if the messenger himself is bad news.
How do we get beautiful feet? The first step is to wash our feet and get rid of the smell. How do we become effective evangelists? The first step is to make certain that our lives are consistent with what we believe. The message cannot be heard if the messenger does not embody it. The feet cannot be beautiful if they are not clean.
While I was on study leave, as you know, there were a number of different persons in this pulpit. I’m glad you had the opportunity of hearing a half dozen or so different preachers. But I’ve found something interesting. I have listened to every tape that was made of those sermons. And, at the same time, various ones of you have told me what you heard, or what you thought you heard. What you thought you heard, in some cases, is not at all what was actually said. In fact, I can identify instances in which what folks quoted to me is exactly the opposite of what the preachers actually said! What’s going on? Some of us heard the message in the light of whether we trusted the messenger! If you didn’t trust one of our guest preachers, you also didn’t trust, you didn’t even hear accurately, what that person said.
If you and I are going to be effective evangelists, we must embody what we say we believe. If we are going to have beautiful feet, good news feet, we’ll need to begin by cleaning them up.
II
Now, after that, we’ll need to do something else to be acknowledged for our beautiful feet. We’ll need to expose them. We’ll need to uncover them, to air them. It’s summertime, time to go barefoot. We’ll not be known for beautiful feet until we go ahead and expose them.
One of the issues with evangelism is that even though our lives may be in order, no one knows about it. No one knows what makes us tick. We fail to interpret and expose who we are and what we are about. We are such private people. Such inhibited, private people. We do not share our witness with others because we do not like to expose our vulnerable selves.
I used to think that the reason it was so hard for me to share my faith was that other people were too private and they didn’t like my raising spiritual issues with them. I used to think it was other folks who had all the inhibitions about spiritual conversation. And that was supposed to make it hard for me to open up.
But you know what? That’s not true. That’ s backwards. It is we who are Christians who are the private ones. It is we who are believers who are the inhibited ones. We do not raise spiritual issues with others, not because it’s too private and personal for them. Not really. It’s too private and personal for us.
Several years ago I started going to a new barber shop. Barbers love to chat up their customers. They are full to the brim with opinions on sports, politics, cars, the weather, whatever. And since I was new in his shop, the barber, having made raucous comments about everybody from the pope to the president, started asking me some questions. "You’re here during the day. Are you retired?" I answered, "No, but I can set my own schedule." "Well, I guess you don’t work for the government, then?" "No, I don’t". "You work out here in Wheaton?" "No, I work in the city" "Oh yeah, downtown?" "Well, no, Takoma Park" "I see you’re wearing a tie and jacket; you a lawyer, maybe?" "No, I’m not a lawyer". On and on it went, until he flatly asked me, "Well, what is your work?" What was going on there? Why couldn’t I just come right out and say, "I’m the pastor of a Baptist church, and I’d like to get to know about you and your relationship to Christ?" Why couldn’t I say that?
You know. I know. We are so protective of our own privacy. There are some things which we hold so close and we don’t want to get in to them. There’s no real, solid reason. There’s no real danger involved. Had we at that point gotten into a spiritual conversation, I could have held my own and then some. But I chose to be private. I chose to be comfortable. It wasn’t about the barber’s comfort; it was about my comfort.
Well, men and women, it’s summer time, and time to go barefoot. Time to expose who we really are; time to be vulnerable. I really did toy with showing you the resplendent glory of my 9-D’s this morning, but the inhibitions took charge again. I read once upon a time ... and don’t you dare ask me where I read it ... that many of the women who bare it all for the skin magazines will take off everything but their shoes! Exhibitionists though they may be, the last vestige of privacy is their feet! I hasten to add that I have not taken a personal survey to check out that statistic, nor am I commissioning anybody here to research it!
Imagine! Exposing everything, except the feet! I guess it’s just about like being willing to talk to anyone at any time and any place about our feelings, our political opinions, our tastes in music, the latest sports events, movies, everything … except about our Christ. Exposing everything except the good news.
And yet, "How will they believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, ’How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’" It’s time for us to expose our feet, it’s time for us to be vulnerable. How will anyone know whether your feet are beautiful if they are always hidden?
III
Finally, friends, the bottom line is that our feet are the instruments of our faith. Our feet are the instruments of our faith.
Our calling is not to come here and sit and be comfortable; our calling is to go and tread the city’s streets and be vulnerable. Our feet are the instruments of our faith.
Our calling is not to see the church as our private refuge from the storms, but to use it as a lifesaving station from which we launch the rescue boats out into the storm. Our feet are the instruments of our faith.
The Lord Jesus commanded, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to every person." He never said, "Come out of the world and hoard the good news for yourself." He never commanded, "Hide behind your private inhibitions and let others find the truth the best way they can." He said, "Go, preach; go." Our feet are the instruments of our faith. And sometimes the creeds we speak are put to the test by whether we will or will not walk.
Wellington Pitts has told me once about following his father around the neighborhoods of New Orleans, signing up voters. And not only did the Pitts and Pitts sign up voters, they trained them and coached them in passing the voter application tests. Some will remember that some states designed their tests to discourage and exclude black voters. Mr. Pitts comments that, after having worked so hard to win the right to vote, it’s disheartening now that a large number will not even walk across the street to use that right. What we value is measured by the length of our strides, not by the rhetoric of our lips. Our feet are the instruments of our faith.
Have you heard the story about the fellow who had made a career out of riding a bicycle on a tight wire across the roaring waters of Niagara Falls? Again and again he performed this trick ... I almost said, "this feat" … again and again, riding the tight wire in front of astonished, admiring crowds. One day he rode his bicycle back and forth three times, and then asked the crowd, "Do you believe I can do it again? Do you believe?" Of course they all agreed, "Yes, we believe. Do it again." "All right, then," said the cyclist, "Since you believe I can ride my bicycle across the raging waters and not fall, will one of you please put your feet over my shoulders and go with me while I ride?" Not one believed enough to try it.
It’s our feet, and not our mouths, which are the instruments of our faith. Feverish, fervent creeds may not be real. Only fervent foot faith is believable.
"Christ has no hands but our hands to do His work today. Christ has no feet but our feet to speed men on their way. We are the only Bible a careless world will read; we are the sinner’s gospel, we are the scoffer’s creed."
"How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!" Beautiful, yes, if they are clean, if they are exposed, and if they actually go someplace.
