Beautiful Feet - 5th Sunday after Penetecost

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, July 13^th, A+D 2025
Our Savior’s and Our Redeemer Lutheran Churches
Hill City and Custer, South Dakota
Beautiful Feet

Grace Mercy, and peace to you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. 

   Beauty is seen with the ear. 

   So, this is a Higher Things conference-week sermon, which always presents a number of special challenges.  As usual, there are lots of things we could talk about in our readings, from the good Samaritan, to the lofty language of Colossians, to that review of the law and we heard in the Old Testament.  There’s also lots of thoughts and ideas for teaching, swirling around in my head from the worship and the preaching and the singing and the teaching that went on at the Higher Things conference at Concordia University in Seward, NE.  And of course, I could just talk about Joy and Bergen, Sonja and Logan.  But that wouldn’t be all that interesting cause they pretty much just behaved wonderfully, and we had a great time,

   Higher Things conferences are all about the truth of Christ’s Gospel.  What is the truth of His gospel? What is the real reality of that good news?  This morning, we are going to consider this, not by using anything in particular from Higher Things, or even from our three readings, although we will get into them eventually.  But, I want to focus on the Gradual that I read between the Old Testament and Epistle readings.  Particularly, on that first line:  “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring the good news.” This comes from Paul in Romans 10 who gets it from Isaiah in chapter 52.  As a good Lutheran will do, we will simply ask the question. “What does this mean?”  What exactly did Paul and Isaiah mean by this?

   It’s helpful perhaps to break it down a little bit, so maybe the first question we could ask is who brings the good news?  Well, that’s the Sunday school answer, isn’t it? It’s Jesus.  But not just Jesus.  Jesus and those who are with Him are the ones who bring the good news, each according to his or her vocation.   Jesus’ vocation, His calling from the Father is to be the one and only Savior.  The Apostles special calling from Jesus is to be the foundation stones of the Church, and to record the Scripture of the New Testament. There are also pastors, and deacons and missionaries. They have special callings to be good-news-bearers.  There are also parents, who are called to bear the good news to their children.  There’s all the family members, as we speak the gospel to each other.  And friends and coworkers, and wherever God places us.  Every Christian has a calling to speak of Jesus and to give the reason for the hope that we have. 

   But as we think about that, and as we think about all the people who God calls to speak the good news, we do need to ask the question: “Are our feet really all that beautiful to look at?”  Even just consider the feet of Jesus the Savior Himself.  He walked around in sandals in the dust, his feet undoubtably weren’t really all that great to look at.  So, what are Isaiah and Paul trying to tell us when they say that those feet truly are beautiful? 

   All the feet of those who bring the good news are beautiful, of course, because of the message, because that’s how things work in this fallen world.  If we want something truly be beautiful, especially for an eternal basis, we need to apply that Gospel, the Good News to it.  And so the beauty of their feet is heard in the ear of their hearers. 

   So, we know who’s bringing the good news and how it is that their feet are beautiful.  But, what is this Gospel? What is this Good News?  Now we might take for granted that we all know the answer.  I think all too often that does happen, and so we again and again we repeat the answer, being very careful to guard this truth. What is this good news? Well, of course this good news is the way of salvation.  It is expressed in many ways in the Scriptures.  At our youth conference this last week, it was spoken of in terms of Jesus making All Things New.  All that is broken and ruined in this fallen world, including us, will be made new.  This is the Way of salvation.

   How does it work?  Here we get into the challenges of living in this world as a sinner, even living in this world as a redeemed sinner: it’s natural for us to wonder about how the way of salvation works.  We worry about how that way of salvation works because the threats of the Lord‘s law are serious, they are eternal.  It is Natural to be like that lawyer, and to wonder how it is that this way of salvation comes to us.  The lawyer is even a more obvious example of the way that we all are somewhere in the back of our minds.  Even though we are baptized believers we still like to think that we must do something to earn salvation. The lawyer asked specifically, what must I do to inherit eternal life. We have the thought in our heads that we must be required to do something.  Certainly it can’t be for free.

   All of these ways that we wonder and worry about our salvation reflect our gut expectation that we must earn it in some fashion.  This is our expectation because that’s simply the way that daily life works. Life works this way no matter what area you want to talk about: you must do and give in order to receive. There is no free lunch in this world.  If you want to be successful at work, you must work hard. If you want to do well at school you must follow the rules and do good work.  If you want to be loved by your neighbors, you should love them first.  This is how this world works, and there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with this.  It’s quite fair that we should do something to earn something.

   There is nothing intrinsically wrong or unfair about this arrangement, but there is a big problem, of course, which is that sin infects us. Our sin has ruined this way of doing and receiving that is really completely fine.  If sin had not entered into the world, we would naturally do things in love for our neighbors and we naturally receive back from them all that we needed.  But what we do naturally now is not so wonderful.  What we do naturally now is try to get and not to give.  What we do naturally now is to be selfish and not to be loving as God has called us to be. We know we can’t do it and yet we still haven’t lost the idea of self-justification. It’s just that the ability to achieve that justification, that rightness with God, this we do not have.

   So you might ask the question why, then, since we can’t achieve this justification, since we can’t justify ourselves, why does God still say so much about us doing the right things?  Why does he spend chapter after chapter and Exodus and Leviticus giving rules for how Israel was to live, not to mention Jesus and Matthew chapter five and six, not to speak of many other places. 

   Why does God call us to do so much, as we see in the Old Testament reading?  Don’t glean your fields right up to the corners and you leave some crop behind for the poor and you love your neighbor as yourself and you do good to him. It’s really a description of true social justice discussed, of how God‘s people should live together, discussed in our Old Testament reading.  In our epistle Paul talks about calling the Christians to live in a manner worthy of the calling that you’ve received.  Even after we become Christians we still have that burden of a certain way to live.  Why does God keep bringing this up, when He knows that we can’t achieve it? 

   Well first of all God speaks about how we should be and how we should live because it’s good and right.  This is the blessed life: to love your neighbor as yourself and to love God above all things.  It’s good and right, and the closer we can come to it, the better life in this world will be.  But, most importantly, God speaks about His law and His requirements and how we should live because we have to be separated from that innate idea, that false hope, that we can justify ourselves.  And, in this regard, Jesus’ exchange with the self-justifying lawyer is a wondrous thing.  It is maybe the best example in all of scripture of Jesus separating a self-righteous person from that false idea, that false hope. 

   I want to read again just the first paragraph of our gospel reading.      And behold, a lawyer stood up to put [Jesus] to the test, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" [26] He said to him, "What is written in the Law? How do you read it?" [27] And he answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." [28] And he said to him, "You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live."

   God‘s expectation for the way that all people should live, summarized clearly and perfectly, from the word of Moses quoted by this Jewish lawyer.  But the lawyer can’t just accept it.  He wants to justify himself.  I think there’s a partial admission in what he says next that did he know he really couldn’t do it, that he really didn’t have the ability to love his neighbor as himself.  Certainly his next words give proof that he doesn’t have the heart that God requires, the heart that naturally loves what God loves and wants to help all those around him.  He hears God‘s command to love his neighbor as himself, he even speaks God’s command, but He wants it to be limited. He wants to cut it down. He’s willing to try hard to love his neighbor, but he wants that list of neighbors to be a little narrower.  So he asks, “Who is my neighbor.” Can I cut it down to people I like?  Can I limit it to people who are easy to love? 

   He hasn’t heard the beauty of Jesus words. So, Jesus takes it farther and responds with the story of the good Samaritan.  In this story Jesus is of course, giving an example of a wonderful person who gives selflessly to someone he doesn’t even know.  But, most importantly, Jesus ratchets up the requirement. Jesus makes it clear to the lawyer, and to us, just how difficult, just how expensive is God‘s call for us to love our neighbors. Jesus even goes on to disparage people that we would naturally think are holy and good.  A priest, who serves at the altar of God’s Temple, and the Levite, whose whole life is dedicated to taking care of that Temple. They are of no use. They’re not good neighbors.  Neither of them measured up to God‘s command to love their neighbor as himself.  They had excuses, probably, they didn’t want to become unclean before they served.  But God wants people to be saved. He’s not as concerned about perfection in his temple as he is about the perfection of love. 

   Jesus then goes on to paint the picture of a truly righteous man, and rub it in a little more.  He uses the example of a Samaritan as the righteous one who is the good neighbor.  This is extra hard, because the Jews hated the Samaritans.  As you might remember, the Jews and the Samaritans were cousins, the Samaritans are the leftover Jews from the 10 tribes of Israel, who were exiled from their land.  Most of them were exiled into a Assyria, and disappeared.  But, some were left behind in the land, and  intermarried with the pagans around them.  Then they took the teaching of Moses and they contorted and twisted it so they had a version of the Jewish faith of the faith of Israel, but everything was changed around.  The Jews hated their half-blood cousins.  So, to twist the knife, Jesus chooses a Samaritan and lifts him up as the one who truly loves his neighbor.  This is the standard: not just loving your family, not just loving people you like, not just loving people who are difficult to love.  Love also strangers, you’re your enemies, love people who are dying.  This is much harder, because they will require a lot out of you.  Jesus says, “do whatever it takes to love the people that God puts in front of you in your life.” This is the standard Jesus teachers. 

   After revealing what a good Samaritan does, and Jesus turns to the lawyer and asks: “Which of these three proved to be a neighbor to the man who was dying on the side of the road.”  We notice the lawyer couldn’t even say the name Samaritan.  He simply says the one who showed mercy.  Well, Jesus allows this weak answer, this avoidance of saying the name, because He is now going for the kill-shot: “You go and do likewise.”

   Did you see the Gospel with your ear in this story? Did you hear any good news in what Jesus said to the lawyer?  That’s the question we started with, what exactly is the Good News? What is this message of salvation?

   One character in the story certainly receive good news, right?  The man lying half dead on the side of the road, he received a free gift.  He was about to die, and a stranger comes and rescue him, washes his wounds with oil and wine, binds him up and puts him on his own animal, to carry him to an inn, and takes care of him.  He provides for his future care and promises to come back and take care of him again.  So the wounded and the wounded man, he’s the one who certainly received good news.  In this we see that the Samaritan is not only lifted up by Jesus as an example of how you should fulfill the law of loving your neighbor, but Jesus is also of course giving us a picture of Himself, a demonstration of the gospel.

   The good news is that Jesus is your Good Samaritan, the one who was rejected by his own people, by the people of Israel, by His own Jewish tribe.  But he came and is the good Samaritan who came and found you and me half dead on the side of the road.  He did all that it took to save us.  He took our wounds and our sins and our problems on Himself and carried them to His cross to wash them away forever.  And He has come to you and to me.  He has washed you at the font. He’s healed you of all your wounds.  He carried you to an inn, giving you a place to be safe in his love until He returns.  That place of course is His church, a place to be gathered and continue to be served by Jesus our Good Samaritan.  So, Jesus truly is the one with beautiful feet. Jesus truly is the one who has given this good news in His own life, death and resurrection.  And then has He has His good news carried on to others.

   Our feet may not be all that attractive; we don’t need to test that out.  But the feet of every gospel speaker are beautiful for what they bring to our ears and for what you bring to the ears of others.  Beauty is seen in the ear of the one who hears what our Good Samaritan has done for us and for all people.  Hear this, see this: you have been washed, you have been cleansed, you have been healed. You have been carried to the inn that is the church of God, given a place to wait for His return.  So, you can rejoice, you can rest, and you too can serve your neighbor because you know that your Good Samaritan to serve you perfectly, in the Name of Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.