I put on my dress shoes this week. Since I have been working and leading online worship from home, I haven’t had many occasions to put on socks and shoes in quite a while. My happy toes have grown accustomed to spreading out in the wide footbed of my sandals and were confused by the sudden constricting apparatus which enveloped them on this dress shoe day.
I don’t know what I thought would happen physiologically from wearing sandals for the last three months, but when my feet were all wrapped up on a hot summer day, they felt claustrophobic. Is that possible? It was as if the bones, cartilage, and muscles were longing for their newfound freedom.
I’ve been thinking about feet this summer. Everywhere I look, people are on the move. I’ve noticed a rapid rise of evening walkers in our neighborhood. I’ve ventured with my family to several area bike paths and witnessed runners and bikers exercising, connecting, and relaxing as the sun sets on another day. I’ve watched people march in peaceful demonstrations around the globe and celebrated those who continue to walk and run 5Ks to support their favorite cause. Each is going somewhere. One step at a time, they are in motion.
The Rev. Michael B. Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal church, tells a powerful story about holy feet in his book, Crazy Christians: A Call to Follow Jesus.
A few days before I was consecrated bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina in June 2000, a group of pilgrims left Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Greensboro, North Carolina, to walk almost 60 miles to Duke Chapel in Durham…They walked the highways and the back roads in prayer and reflection and witness as the diocese prepared to welcome me as their bishop. Little did I realize at the time that their spiritual pilgrimage would prove to be a parable of who we are as disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.
As they walked, they walked in the steps of Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims…They walked in the steps of Mahatma Gandhi’s Salt March to the Indian Ocean. They walked in the steps of those who marched across Selma’s Edmund Pettis Bridge in 1965. Above all, they walked in the steps of Jesus of Nazareth, who summons disciples of every generation with the words, ‘Follow me.’ Their pilgrimage was part of other pilgrimages of the past, because in their walking they showed that discipleship is really about what you do with your feet.
Take a look at your feet. Where have they carried you? How have they led you throughout life? Give thanks for those places and occasions. Now, consider what you are doing with your feet. Where are you headed? Are they leading you into new territory? Are there unknown paths you’ve discovered or wish to explore?
Frederick Buechner believes that our feet can give us some good information about ourselves and our priorities. “I say if you want to know who you are… you could do a lot worse than look at your feet for an answer. When you wake up in the morning, called by God to be a self again, if you want to know who you are, watch your feet. Because where your feet take you, that is who you are” (The Alphabet of Grace, pp. 24-25).
In the coming weeks, we’ll be talking about where we are headed as Lord of Life this year. Which are the well-worn paths we’ll follow and which are the new trails to discover or create? As you can imagine, the protocols and uncertainty of the coronavirus have us re-imagining our shared ministry life, but we continue to seek faithful ways to worship, serve, and learn together as we follow the way of Jesus.
On the road again,
Pastor Lowell