Romans 10:5-15
“How Beautiful are Your Feet?”
By: Rev. Kenneth E. Sauer, Pastor of Parkview United Methodist Church, Newport News, VA
www.parkview-umc.org
There was a man who normally went barefoot, but once, when he had some money in his pocket, he went to the city and bought a pair of shoes and socks.
After this, having money left over, he went to a pub and got drunk.
As he tried to make it home, he was only able to stagger out of town where he lay down in the middle of the street.
A car came along and the driver yelled at the man to move or he would drive over the man’s legs.
In his condition the man looked at the unfamiliar shoes and socks and replied: “Drive on; they aren’t my legs.”
How many of us have thought of feet as being beautiful?
They aren’t something we commonly regard as particular points of beauty, but they can be turned into something more beautiful than all the gold in the world—when used for the right purposes!!!
In our Epistle Lesson for this morning the Apostle Paul tells us: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”
Why does the bringing of Good News cause our feet to be transformed into things of beauty?
We live in a world which can be both beautiful and ugly.
The other night I came into the den and asked Jeanne to turn the channel to CNN—“I just want to see the news real quick,” I told her.
“The news is depressing,” was Jeanne’s reply.
And she is right.
All and all, the news we get from the world is depressing.
We are told about war, terrorism, murder, rape, abductions…things that make us uneasy…
…things which make human life seem very cheap…
…and human beings very evil!
The news we often receive from the reporters and anchors—the evangelists—so to speak, of the world cause us to fear, leave us with less hope than we had before we heard it, and certainly can bring on a certain depression.
When I was in the news business we had a saying: “If it bleeds, it leads.”
Which means that the more awful and shocking the story, the more time we gave to reporting it…
…and sensationalizing it…
…and milking it for all it was worth.
Bad news brings good t-v ratings.
I don’t know why, but it is true.
I read somewhere, fairly recently, that the number of violent crimes has not necessarily increased over the past 20 years or so—but most folks think it has.
And why is this?
It’s because this is all we hear about on the news.
And the news is on…right in front of us…24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
I think that one of the worst things that has occurred over the past twenty or so years is cable t-v!!!
We get a lot of bad news…
…a lot!
And we have come to expect it, I suppose.
A Don Henley song which came out several years ago tells it like this:
“I make my living off the Evening News,
Just give me something-something I can use,
People love it when you lose,
They love dirty laundry.
We got a bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who comes on at five,
She can tell you ‘bout the plane crash with a gleam in her eye,
It’s interesting when people die—
Give us dirty laundry.
Can we film the operation?
Is the head dead yet?
You know, the boys in the newsroom got a running bet.
Get the widow on the set!
We need dirty laundry.
You don’t really need to find out what’s going on,
You don’t really need to know just how far it’s gone…
We can do “The Innuendo”
We can dance and sing,
When it’s said and done we haven’t told you a thing…
…Give us dirty laundry!”
The feet which get a sort of glee out of bringing us down, gossiping, verbally raping us, if you will…
…are not beautiful feet at all…
…the only feet which are beautiful are those feet which bring us a completely different kind of news!!!
Paul tells us in our Epistle Lesson, “The word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,’ that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
That is the completely different kind of news—that is the Good News!!!
And we aren’t going to get the Good News from CNN, FOX, MSNBC, CBS or ABC…
…the Good News comes from the mouths of those who believe on the Lord Jesus.
The Good News comes from the mouths of those who have been transformed by it!
Many Christians emphasize the importance of believing in the heart about the Lordship of the Risen Christ without stressing the necessity of confessing Christ with our lips and our lives.
Encasing Christ in the private domain makes Him available when we need Him without the discomfort of having our faith challenged in the public arena.
Is this not very, very selfish?
According to Scripture, real faith or authentic faith always becomes a matter of public record.
Believing in the heart always leads to profession with the lips and our lives.
Christian faith is never a private matter!!!
It is the Good News which is meant to be shared by all—to all!!!
This past week I was asked to speak at the Retired Men’s Club, of which, Walter Goode had been a member.
At one time this club, which is made up primarily of those in their eighties and nineties, had 300 active members.
They now have 31!
One thing I became aware of was that we are quickly losing our last generation of people who, for the most part, made the church the center of their lives.
At this meeting, I didn’t have to ask people “If they went to church,” just, “Where they went to church?”
That isn’t the world we live in any longer.
We are now, most definitely, living in the post-Christian era!
Regular church attendance is no longer something that the majority of folks are involved in…
…therefore, there are many, many people who have not heard this Good News of Jesus Christ!!!
A few weeks ago, I stopped at the drug store after church. Still dressed in my suit and tie, the woman at the cash register remarked: “It’s good to see that some people still go to church.”
In a recent movie called “Super-Size Me”, which is about the fast-food industry a group of children were shown a picture of Mickey Mouse.
Most of them were able to recognize the most prominent of Walt Disney’s cartoon characters.
Then they were shown a picture of Ronald McDonald.
All the children knew who he was.
Last, they were shown the typical picture of “Jesus” that hangs in most Sunday school rooms across the country.
None of them recognized Him.
I’m telling you, my friends, hamburgers and cartoon mouses will not save any of us!!!
So it comes down to us.
I don’t know if we will ever again have a man like John Wesley to begin another “Great Awakening.”
I have no idea if Billy Graham is replaceable.
What I do know is that we are the ones who are given charge over, are given the responsibility of spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ!
If we don’t do it, who will?
Paul tells us in our Epistle Lesson, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
“How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in?”
“And how can they have believe in the one of whom they have not heard?”
“And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?”
“And how can they preach unless they are sent?
“As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”
All of us in this room this morning are called each week to come together here for worship.
And all of us in this room are sent from this place, each week, back into the world to tell others about the Good News of Jesus and God’s love made manifest through Him!
Are we doing this?
We live in a dying world.
And if we care at all about our dying world, we will tell those with whom we come in contact with about the Savior Who can make us live!!!
And not just that, we will go out of our way to tell others about the Good News of Jesus Christ.
We will carry invitation cards with us wherever we go and hand them out, and put them on cars, in stores, anywhere people are….
…we will take door hangers with us and put them on people’s doors…
…we will talk openly and passionately about the salvation, the transformation, the new life that is made possible only through believing in and confessing Jesus Christ as Lord!!!
It is our feet that Paul is talking about in Romans Chapter 10.
Are our feet beautiful because they bring the Good News to a world obsessed by bad news?
Are our feet beautiful because we proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ?
We often think that the only people who can bring the Good News are those who are ordained, who preach on Sunday mornings, those especially called pastors.
This is not true!!!
Everyone who knows the Truth is accountable to be witnesses on every day of the week!!!
We are all called to show how the Good News is working itself out, by showing itself forth in our lives.
Did not Jesus say to us all in Matthew Chapter 5: “You are the salt of the world…
…You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl.
Instead they put it on a stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.
In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”
Is my light, your lights shining…
…or have we hidden them under a bowl?
Jesus has told us that the harvest of the world’s souls is great, but the workers in the harvest field are few!
The Christian Gospel has not changed, even though we are living in the post-Christian Era!
People still need the Lord as much as ever!!!
The problem is that we are not doing our part in getting the Good News out!!!
If only, we would do what we have been called to do, then we could very well see another great revival.
God works through ordinary folks.
People like you and me.
God uses ordinary feet, and makes them extraordinary—even beautiful when we use them for the purpose of spreading the Good News!!!
Sometimes we think that the only way to be witnesses to the Good News is to find ourselves in some special place, to act in a way unlike the way we act every day, to say and do things that impress other people with how “Christian” we are.
In reality, we are to be witnesses of the Good News in our lives every day, wherever we find ourselves, acting the way we always act.
Not in some spectacular way, but in the normal actions which make up our lives as Christians who, as imperfect as we are, are nevertheless forgiven and striving to go on to perfection through the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of us.
We are to tell of the Good News in the places that we are.
We are to witness with our actions, with our lives, with our lips—with love!!!
We are to have beautiful feet!!!
Amen.
