Isaiah 52:7-10
Hebrews 1:1-4, (5-12)
John 1:1-14
Psalm 98
Homily by Fr R Christopher Heying
How beautiful on the mountains are the feet. . . .
From the incomparable beauty of that powerful echo of Genesis in the opening words of John’s gospel—in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God–from such words to words about feet, even beautiful ones, may seem counterintuitive.
Yet ordination can yield surprising insights, and one such insight for me has been about feet. Prior to being ordained, beyond noting splashes of color here and there or the occasional toe bling, I am not sure I paid that much attention to feet.
But as a newly minted priest I discovered just how terribly self-conscious many, if not most, people are about their feet, especially that first Holy Week when I tried to coax them out of their shoes so they would come forward and allow me to wash their feet on that night we remember Jesus not only took bread and wine but water and a towel and bid us follow his example.
There may be no more tender moment in the church year than when we remove our socks and our shoes and bare our feet before God and everyone else, and allow another person to take them into his hands, pour water over them, dry them with a towel.
Among the most poignant images of 2013 may be that of Francis, the new pope, kissing the feet of a young Muslim woman at just such a Holy Week service at a juvenile prison in Rome.
Yes, this night, God got feet, real feet with real toes, even if they were quickly hid from view by the swaddling clothes to protect from the cold air on that night when there was no room in the inn.
The Word through whom any and everything that was made was made, this Word becomes a part of that very creation as a human being with feet and toes that wiggle.
No longer then could God be for us an abstraction, an inert idea, a higher power about which to philosophize or hypothesize. No, God is here, as a person to encounter, even touch, a person with feet.
Word of God, Son of David, Son of God, Son of Man, Messiah, Christ, Savior, Emmanuel, God with us, Jesus with feet, feet that would walk both on land and on water an estimated 21,000 miles over the course of the some thirty-three years.
God in human flesh walking to share good news with the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to heal the lame, to restore sight to the blind, to set the captive free, even to raise the dead to life again.
Dry, dusty feet going to a hill on the outskirts of Jerusalem where they become wet with blood when nails are driven in, as God in Christ reconciles the world to himself by giving his life for us, dying to destroy our death and rising to restore our life.
But when doubts arise, there he is again offering to let us touch his feet with the marks of his crucifixion very much there.
O, this holy and wondrous night, when we remember God got feet, just like yours and mine.
But so too do we remember that all those who receive him, who believe in his name, he gives power for them to become children of God, with feet now filled with new purpose, to carry us forward to share good news with the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to set free those in bondage, feet by which to go and share with others the light, the love, the very life of God of which we are ourselves are living evidence.
Teresa of Avila (1515–1582), a sixteenth-century Carmelite nun and spiritual master, said it this way:
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
This holy night we celebrate God became flesh of the Virgin Mary and got feet.
This holy night may we also celebrate God becoming flesh in you and me, now using our feet to share God’s light, God’s love, God’s life even to the ends of the earth.
As Isaiah saw then, may we see now, but with more urgency because of its importance and greater clarity because the feet of which we speak are now our own:
How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion and indeed to the whole world, “Your God reigns.”