Take My Feet (April 3, 2011)

The little hymn sings, "Take my feet, and let them be swift and beautiful for thee"

                                                        

Praying for fast and pretty feet seems, well, shallow, if the biblical allusion is not explained. The words make sense, however, if one is familiar with Romans 10. Paul, writing about the need for proclamation of the gospel, says,

For whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved. How will they call on him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in him whom they have not heard? How will they hear without a preacher? And how will they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: ‘How beautiful are the feet of those announce the good news of peace, who announce joyful news of good things!’

Paul, to underscore the importance of the proclamation of the gospel, uses an excellent bit of imagery from Isaiah to illustrate. He is quoting a passage from Isaiah 52, where Isaiah is dealing with the problem of Israel’s exile. Looking forward to a day when Jehovah would set straight all that was wrong in the world, Isaiah drew a picture of a return, a time when God’s people would no longer be oppressed. He pictured the news of Jehovah’s triumph spreading, as news did in those days, on the swift feet of messengers the victory and reign of Jehovah throughout the earth.

How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the bringer of good news, who makes known salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your god reigns!’  The voice of the watchmen! They lift up their voice; together they sing: for they will see eye to eye when Jehovah returns to Zion. Break forth into joy, sing together, you waste places of Jerusalem, because Jehovah has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jersualem. Jehovah has made bare his holy arm to the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our god.

The prophet, of course, is not excited about the visual attractiveness of feet. The ‘feet of the bringer of good news’ is the poetic image of the coming glorious day of Jehovah. It is the solution to the problem of exile. For Paul, the true end of exile, the victory of God, and the proclamation of the victory of God were all being worked out through the spreading of the gospel. This, for Paul, inaugurated the reign of God (or, kingdom of God) which the prophets had looked forward too.

Now, when we sing

Take my feet, and let them be swift and beautiful for Thee

we know what we’re singing about. We are praising God for bringing us back from the oppression of the world, we are thanking him for establishing his kingdom among us, and we are asking him to make us effective bringers of that good news to the world around us.