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Feet that Bring Good Tidings Text:
Matthew 9:35--10:8 Our Lord commanded his disciples, saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And, behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.” But the Holy Scriptures of God's Word say clearly that no one—neither you nor I nor anyone—can become a disciple of Jesus on our own power, that is, we cannot believe or come to Christ, unless the Holy Spirit “calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies” us and keeps us with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. He calls us through the spoken, taught, preached and proclaimed Word of God as he called St. Matthew in simple but profound words saying, “Follow me.” As soon as he calls an individual, however, we discover there are no spiritual soloists, no independent ecclesiastical contractors, no secret agents, no one who relates directly to the Head, that is, Christ, apart from the rest of the body, that is, the Church (1 Cor. 12:27). Therefore today we consider that second catechism word after the Call, namely, how God “gathers” us into the Body of Christ, the Church.
Last Sunday we heard the call of St. Matthew. Today we discover that Matthew was to be only one-twelfth of the New Israel, the Twelve Apostles. Jesus, of course, as any real human being, had only two feet planted firmly on the ground. For his world-wide mission, then, he appointed twenty-four more feet to run the Gospel marathon, and through these twelve to add hundreds, thousands, millions and billions of feet to trample out the vintage so that his truth may march on throughout the world.
It was through Isaiah the prophet that the Word of the Lord came, saying, “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'” [Isaiah 52:7 (ESV)]. Those feet belonged, first, to “the watchmen,” the prophets of old who delivered the Word of Law by which sinners discover their need of a Savior, and the Word of Gospel that called them to trust in the promises of God.
These feet bring “good news.” At our recent Voters' Assembly last Sunday the question was asked what the term “evangelical” means in the name of most of our Lutheran churches as in “St. Mark Evangelical Lutheran Church.” It is from two words in Greek, “eu” meaning “good,” and “angelos” meaning “message” or “Good News.” The “Good News” is the Gospel of God that proclaims the peace that overcomes the conflict of sin, salvation that comes from God as a gift. The beautiful feet “of him who brings good news” belong to Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God—those feet that traversed dusty roads from the Jordan River through Galilee to Jerusalem to a hill called Golgotha where those beautiful feet were pierced with a nail and attached to a cross of death. But those feet were raised again from the dead, stood on the ground outside of the grave, were grasped by a weeping yet joyful Mary Magdalene, appeared before frightened disciples behind locked doors and were the final part of his body they saw ascending behind the clouds.
Now those “beautiful feet” refer to those Jesus has commissioned as his messengers, his Good News agents, representatives and ambassadors. Now Jesus gathers for himself these twelve as eyewitnesses. This is the first and only time these disciples are called “apostles” in Matthew's Gospel. The word “apostle” means those who have been commissioned and sent on a mission. Now, when we speak of the prophetic and apostolic scriptures and the one, holy, Christian and apostolic Church we confess that it is under the same authority of Christ through the apostles that the Church's pastors and the priesthood of all believers are likewise sent on Christ's mission. Now the “beautiful feet” refer to all who bear the Good News of salvation to the world. The hymn says it this way: How beautiful the feet that bring Good tidings of our saving king! [LW 319:3]
Feet are made for walking. The Biblical image of feet implies that the message of salvation, the Good News, needs to be carried, delivered, brought to folks that need that salvation. That, of course, is because of the Biblical truth that no one can, by their own reason or strength, come to salvation on their own. The salvation needs to be brought and delivered to those lost in darkness.
Who is “lost in darkness”? Certainly all mankind are lost in darkness under the curse of sin. Isaiah spoke of Christ when he wrote how God sent His Son “as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness” [Isaiah 42:6-7 (ESV)]. In Christ, he said, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined” [Isaiah 9:2 (ESV)]. The original promise of a Savior through Abraham was for all the nations of the world, and the last, great commission of our Lord was to reach all the nations. But what do we see here when he first sends out his apostles?
“These twelve Jesus sent out, instructing them, ‘Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel'” [Matthew 10:5-6 (ESV)]. If salvation is meant for all, why this initial restriction leaving out the Gentiles and the Samaritans? As Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well, “salvation is from the Jews” [John 4:22 (ESV)]. It was not yet the time for worldwide evangelization. For the great mystery of God's plan was that the Christ should suffer many things and be rejected and killed “by the elders and chief priests and scribes,” God's own people [Luke 9:22 (ESV)]! Through the hardness of heart and unbelief of the very people he came to save God brought about the necessary suffering and sacrifice of blood that would release the whole world from the condemnation of sin and death!
Beautiful feet bring the truly Good News of life through death. The gift of reconciliation with God and eternal life came only through the innocent, bitter suffering and death of Jesus Christ. In a similar way that Good News, the call of the Gospel, when it comes to a person means, first, the death of the old Adam, the old, sinful nature, and the rising to life of a new nature of God's own creation, as the Apostle Paul said, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” [Romans 6:3-5 (ESV)]. With Paul the believer also says, “through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” [Galatians 2:19-20 (ESV)].
But now, while the gift of salvation is a very personal thing, each Christian is gathered as a member of the Body of Christ, his Church, the communion of saints, that is, a fellowship of holy people in holy things. Those holy things are the means of grace, Word and Sacraments.
As the necessity of Jesus' coming death and resurrection put restrictions on the disciples' initial preaching mission only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, so the Divine Service, while it is held in public, is the workshop of the Holy Spirit where the Faithful are gathered in communion with their Lord to be strengthened and to grow in faith. From the very earliest days it has been the practice of the Church to welcome and invite all to the preaching of the Word. But when it comes to the most intimate sharing in the sacrament of the altar, only baptized, instructed and examined Christians are admitted. This is called the historic practice of “closed communion.” In fact, in the early Church, after the service of the Word and before the service of the sacrament, the unbaptized and uninstructed were required to leave and the doors were shut. It is a fundamental misuse of the Divine Service in our day to make it over to be merely a tool of outreach evangelism. In fact, because of this misunderstanding and misuse the sacrament of the altar is violated in one of two ways: either by disappearing all together or by allowing everyone and anyone to participate, thereby endangering many to “eat and drink judgment” on themselves [1 Cor. 11:29 (ESV)]. The Divine Service is not primarily a tool of evangelism. It serves a much bigger and deeper purpose.
To be “called” by the Gospel and “gathered” into the fellowship of Christ's Body, the Church, is to be transformed from “your former manner of life,” “to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” [Eph. 4:22, 24 (ESV)]. While this fellowship is in the world it is not of the world. It is a fellowship of faith in the Gospel, as St. Paul said, “you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit” [Eph. 2:19-22 (ESV)]. Called by the Gospel we are gathered here in holy convocation to be strengthened by the Lord and sent as his beautiful feet carrying the invitation of the Gospel to the whole world, the Good News that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. ____________________
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