Walking in Faith

How Lovely are the Feet

When the local newspaper did a story on my pilgrimage after I returned, it included a picture of my one badly blistered foot. That photo attracted as much commentary as anything else in the article. When I show slides of my journey, that particular picture always elicits strong visceral responses. People are caught off-guard by such glaring attention to a part of the body we often overlook or even hide. That picture sparked thousands of words.

Feet got a lot of attention on the Camino. I have not spoken as much about that part of my body in over four dozen years of life as I did in those thirty-one days. Pilgrims discussed muscle pains, tendonitis, socks and footwear. In the past I have not always fully appreciated my wife’s eagerness to describe her latest experiences as an operating room nurse — especially not over dinner! — but on the Camino I and others keenly detailed our most recent physical symptoms. We often compared theories on blisters and their prevention and treatment. Nothing seemed guaranteed. Even experienced hikers Carole, Eléanor or Wendy — who had trekked Nepal, Mongolia and the Appalachian Trail — got them. It was not uncommon to comment on sprains, sores and even blister leakage while sharing a meal. One day an unlikely looking pilgrim, a twenty-something American woman who carried herself like a model, caught me off-guard by asking for counsel: “What do you recommend for treating an open wound where I accidentally tore off all my skin?”

In restaurants, pilgrims casually pulled off muddy shoes and smelly socks and matter-of-factly examined aching feet, while enjoying whatever food or drink that establishment offered. As I’ve said, rules were different on the Camino.

Somewhere along the way, our culture grew embarrassed about, perhaps even ashamed of, feet. When I went to pastor my last congregation, I could not understand why they were proud of being one of the first area churches to abandon a centuries-old Mennonite ritual of footwashing. I tried to reintroduce this sacrament but encountered resistance. The church I now attend still practices footwashing twice a year, but many members elect not to participate; they vote without their feet, as it were.

Compared to Bible times, our feet are pampered with better footwear and options of pedicures and by the fact that we hardly use them. (Statistics suggest that Americans walk just a few hundred yards a day, less than a mile and a half a week.) Perhaps we’re ashamed of our feet because we do not put them to the good purpose for which they are intended.

On the Camino I grew increasingly aware of how much press feet get in the Bible. Think of the attention to their anointing. Or the footwashing that Jesus initiated. Because that culture was used to walking, often long distances in hot weather with relatively poor footwear, it is no surprise that this part of the body receives so much scriptural exposure.

I learned to treat my feet with lotion before, during and after hikes. I liked this. I felt as if I was anointing and honoring them. And they surely deserved it. They had worked hard and accomplished much. They were worthy of wonder. As Thich Nhat Hanh often observes: not only walking on water is a marvel, even walking on the earth is a miracle.

Thank God, then, for feet!
A favorite verse in Isaiah reads:
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, “Your God reigns.” (Isaiah 52:7)

In fact, the Scriptures regard feet as an important metaphor for bringing and carrying the truth. It does not take much imagination to know that the feet of mountain travelers in the Isaiah passage were probably blistered and battered, smelly and sore, twisted and torn as well. And yet they were surely lovely indeed.

Jesus’ feet merit much spotlighting in the Bible. In Luke 7 a sinful woman “stood behind him at his feet,” then took an alabaster jar and proceeded to “bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with ointment” (v. 38). How often those appendages are mentioned in just a few verses. Elsewhere people fall at Jesus’ feet (Luke 8:41). Mary, and others, “sat at the Lord’s feet” (Luke 10:39). When Jesus is encountered after his resurrection, the two Marys “took hold of his feet, and worshiped him” (Matthew 28:9). And when Jesus proved that he was truly alive after the resurrection, he presented both his hands and his feet (Luke 24:39-40). Adoration, worship and honoring of Jesus often include and focus on his feet.

It is not just Jesus’ or others’ feet, of course, that get so much attention in the Bible, but more specifically their function. What they do — walking — is vital to Christian faithfulness.

We’ve Come This Far by Feet

My belated interest in walking — which did not bloom until I was middle-aged — helped me see its importance in Scriptures. Until then, I had no idea that this was a major theme and metaphor there. Walking is an essential human faculty. It is deeply connected to who and how we are, and to who and how God made us.

Thus says God, the LORD,
who created the heavens and stretched them out,
who spread out the earth and what comes from it,
who gives breath to the people upon it
and spirit to those who walk in it (Isaiah 42:5).

This humble, elementary mode of exercise is related to having God’s Spirit and being able to breathe; it is mentioned in the same poem as the lofty subject of God’s creation of heaven and earth.

In the Scriptures, inability to walk, being lame, is one of the most basic impediments to living fully. This disadvantage is as serious as being blind, deaf or mute. Many miracles deal with helping people gain the full use of feet and legs. When John the Baptist is in prison and needs further clarity and confirmation, Jesus responds by asserting that one vital sign of his messiahship is that “the lame walk” (Matthew 11:5; Luke 7:22).

We know about the restorative and healing potential of moving by foot. Sometimes when someone is steamed or out of sorts, we advise them to take a walk, cool down, get perspective. Many folks report finding clarity on dilemmas while going for a stroll. I have no trouble believing an old Latin saying often attributed to Augustine: Solvitur ambulando—” It is solved by walking.” In my life I associate walking with healing too. More than once this discipline carried and cured me in times of depression, anxiety, burnout and other crises. In recent years this practice reoriented me in prioritizing my life and trying to understand our culture.

This basic human faculty, then, is a metaphor for faithful living. This is intriguingly and evocatively suggested in passages that indicate God’s accompanying us:

As God said,
“I will live in them and walk among them,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people” (2 Corinthians 6:16).

God’s relationship with us originally involved ambling: “They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze” (Genesis 3:8). Conversely, Scriptures mention people whose connection with God is so closely intimate that there is only one way to describe it: “Enoch walked with God” (Genesis 5:22); “Noah walked with God” (Genesis 6:9). Others walked “before” God (Genesis 24:40; 48:15). They lived and moved in God’s presence and sight.

This language figuratively describes faithful living. It is associated with virtuous lifestyles: trust, freedom, righteousness, integrity, fearing God, truthfulness, an undivided heart, blamelessness, lawfulness, goodness, justice, understanding, humility and obedience. This mode of movement is intended to reflect God’s purposes and our life with God. Repeatedly, idols are mocked and derided specifically for inability to stride or stroll. “They have … feet, but do not walk” (Psalm 115:7); “they have to be carried, for they cannot walk” (Jeremiah 10:5); idols “cannot see or hear or walk” (Revelation 9:20).

There are other noteworthy aspects of this scriptural metaphor. In English we know that metaphorical feet can go astray, with a foot in our mouth or even in the grave. Like all God’s good gifts, symbolic rambling too can go awry and be twisted from its purposes. It is possible, Scriptures warn, to walk in darkness (Psalm 82:5; Proverbs 2:13; John 12:35; 1 John 1:6), blindness (Zephaniah 1:17), sinful practices (Colossians 3:5-7) or the flesh (2 Corinthians 10:3 KJV). The first verse of the Psalms counsels against those who step according to “the advice of the wicked” (Psalm 1:1). (We may not always notice such metaphorical language, depending on our translations. The New King James Version favors walk, while the New Revised Standard Version often employs other terms.) These are significant admonitions. But what is even more striking is the fact that wayward walking gets cited so infrequently, while many more Bible quotes remark on faithful footwork.

God promises we will be able to follow in fidelity in spite of obstacles, dangers and hazards. “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil” (Psalm 23:4). (I am old-fashioned enough to miss the stately King James Version “through the valley of the shadow of death.”) Or consider: “Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve me against the wrath of my enemies” (Psalm 138:7). A passage that I often used pastorally is: “when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you” (Isaiah 43:2).

God promises not only protection in faithfulness but also that we will be empowered; we will “run and not be weary, … walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31; see Proverbs 4:12). Those who “walk uprightly” will know rest and peace (Isaiah 57:2).

Over and again, choosing to follow God’s priorities is couched in the language of hikers and other trekkers. We are offered the choice of living by God’s purposes. “Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you” (Jeremiah 7:23).

A startling aspect of Jesus’ ministry to the lame is that he often did it with words alone. When he healed the Bethesda man in John 5, his counsel was simple: “Stand up, take your mat and walk” (v. 8). I wonder whether the man already had the faculty but did not know or claim it. Jesus called him to his true agency and ability.

Such counsel challenges us because clearly there is something amiss in how we live today. People these days complain of unprecedented busyness. These laments are not merely imaginary. We work more than ever; hours spent on our jobs have been growing steadily in recent decades. But does God intend for us to be constantly torn and tugged in different directions? Could it be that by trying to keep pace with a culture without speed limits we are out of step with the life that God longs for us to have?

Christ calls us as well to stand up and stride today: in faithfulness, in God’s purposes, in God’s light.