Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! Amen. Merry Christmas! The Word of the Lord comes to us from the prophet Isaiah: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns’” (Isa. 52:7, ESV).[1] Right of the bat, I gotta take issue with Isaiah. In our Old Testament lesson today, he mentions beautiful feet. But I don’t think there’s anything beautiful about feet.
Feet are kind of ugly and nasty. And in the case of teenage boys, feet are smelly too. Some people’s feet have corns and bunions or ingrown toenails. Or the calluses on their heels are as thick as cow hooves. To be quite honest, I don’t like looking at other people’s feet. And I don’t like them looking at mine either. My toes are pretty gnarly, since I’ve broken 9 out of 10 toes (ever single one except the big toe on the right foot). Remember the Christmas that I had to hobble around in a boot? That wasn’t fun. My feet are certainly not beautiful.
And what about the shepherds who visited the stable on that first Christmas night? Do you think their feet were beautiful? I highly doubt it. Besides all the usual foot problems that we suffer from, they didn’t have the best footwear to protect their feet. They didn’t have gen insoles or arch supports. They wore sandals made of leather or leaves and trampled through fields full of sheep manure and other unsavory delights. Their feet had to be some of the dirtiest, nastiest, ugliest feet that ever tread upon this earth.
And yet the shepherds’ feet were the very first feet to carry the message of Messiah’s birth to the rest of the world:
“When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.’ And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them” (Luke 2:15-20).
Do you see what happened here? After the shepherds hearkened to the herald angels, they went to witness the wonder and the miracle of Jesus’ birth, of the Word-made-flesh who came to dwell among us (John 1:14). And their joy was so great that they could not contain it. The story was too good to keep to themselves. So they went and proclaimed the Gospel of peace—on beautiful feet. Because no amount of mud or muck can mar the message of the Gospel.
So I guess that Isaiah was right after all. “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns’” (Isa. 52:7). Later in that chapter, the prophet writes that “the LORD has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations” (Isa. 7:10a). Throughout the Old Testament, the figurative language of God “baring” his arm signified a show of strength. God’s power was on display through some miraculous act of salvation. But ever since the Word became flesh, God literally bares his arm, for in Jesus Christ, God has arms and legs, hands and feet, fingers and toes, eyes, a nose, eyelashes, and even little, wiggly ears. Jesus is God with skin on—and skin in the game. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
Now I want you to think back to another night—not the night of our Savior’s birth but of his betrayal. That was the night of his arrest, when he prayed in the garden, when he ate the Passover with his disciples, and when he took off his outer garment, wrapped a towel around his waist, and bent down to wash the feet of his disciples. Their feet were not beautiful—not yet. But they were the feet that would one day carry the Good News of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection to every corner of the world. They would become Christ’s witnesses, “in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). And so their feet would become beautiful because of the wonderful Gospel, the Good News, that they would carry to sinners in need of repentance, forgiveness, life, and salvation—sinners like you and I.
The very next day Jesus’ feet were nailed to the cross. His are the most beautiful feet of all time, because even covered in dust and blood, they carried the Good News that God loves sinners and sent his Son to die for them. Jesus was born to die for us. The Word became flesh so that flesh could be beaten and whipped and mocked and shamed and nailed to the cross for us and our salvation. And truly, Jesus bared his arms on the cross, when he stretched them out spreadeagle for all the world to see.
If you receive Jesus as Savior and Lord, and if you believe in his Word, then you have the best news the world could ever hear. Not bad news, old news, or fake news, but good news: the Gospel of peace. And if you believe that Word, then you have the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation in Jesus’ name. Now you have a message to share and tell others. And if you carry that message instead of keeping it to yourself, then you will also have beautiful feet. So when you depart from this place today, go, tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere that Jesus Christ is born. And he has the most beautiful feet of all. Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! And in the name of Jesus. Amen.
[1] All Scripture references, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.
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