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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
What is the fixation on feet? On Holy (or, “Maundy”) Thursday, I had to smile to myself as the Old Testament Reading mentioned a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness, that was, as it were, under the God of Israel’s feet (Exodus 24:10). For, some months ago my sister and I were discussing that very statement of Moses in Exodus and how it and other such statements anthropo‑morphize God (Stendebach, TDOT 13:321), that is, attribute human characteristics to God. Then, in today’s Gospel Reading, women took hold of the resurrected Jesus’s feet and worshipped Him. Of course, the Divinely-inspired St. Matthew is not anthropo‑morphizing, for Jesus truly is God in human flesh, both before His crucifixion and after His resurrection. The Holy Spirit did not inspire narration of Jesus’s resurrection but rather inspired narration both of resurrection announcements and of His post-resurrection appearances. Today’s Gospel Reading’s single verse that uniquely reports that the women took hold of Jesus’s feet and worshipped Him tells us important things both about the women and about Jesus, and our considering those things this morning informs us about our “Worshiping the Resurrected Jesus”.
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, the mother of James and Joseph, were among the women who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to Him, who on Good Friday were both looking on from a distance at Golgotha, and then later sitting opposite the tomb (Matthew 27:55‑56, 61). As we heard in today’s Gospel Reading, after the Saturday Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Sunday, the two went to see the tomb. And some combination of women saw the tomb, alright, just not with Jesus in it! An angel of the Lord told them that Jesus Who was crucified had risen, as He had said that He would rise, and the angel sent the women to tell Jesus’s disciples that Jesus had risen from the dead. Later, Jesus met and greeted at least some of those same women, perhaps on their way from Jerusalem to Bethany to tell the angel’s message to the disciples there (confer Wenham, Enigma, 95-96), and, having come up, the women took hold of Jesus’s feet and worshiped Him. The women did not seize Jesus as the authorities did three days earlier, literally placing themselves over Jesus (Matthew 26:50), but rather the women took hold of His feet and figuratively placed themselves under Jesus, submitting themselves to and revering Him with affection and joy (Weiss, TDNT 6:629; Gibbs, ad loc Matthew 28:8-10, p.1610 with n.55). The women likely fell to their knees (ESL #4352), and the women may have taken hold of Jesus’s knees, as the Greek word for “feet” can refer to the whole leg and its individual parts (Weiss, TDNT 6:628). That Jesus had feet, knees, or a physical body at all makes clear that Jesus was resurrected bodily, especially important if the people of that day thought that ghosts did not have feet, legs, or any other flesh and bones (confer Luke 24:37-40; John 20:24-27; Davies & Allison, ad loc Matthew 28:9, p.669; Gibbs, ad loc Matthew 28:1-10, p.1603, and ad loc Matthew 28:8-10, p.1610 with n.55).
We usually think of Jesus’s feet or ankles as bearing the marks of the nails that might have been pounded through them in order to help hold Jesus onto the cross (Luke 24:39, 40). I used to show my New Testament students a picture of someone else who was crucified’s skeletal remains with a nail driven through the heel. Of course, Jesus was on the cross only because of the sin of the world, including the sin of the women who took hold of His feet, and including your sin and my sin. By nature, we place ourselves over Jesus; we refuse to submit to Him; we disrespect Him; and we are hostile to Him. For such and all of our sins, we deserve both death here and now and torment in hell for eternity. So serious is our situation that Jesus one time said that, if our foot causes us to sin, we should cut it off and throw it away, for it is better for us to enter life crippled or lame, than with two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire of hell (Matthew 18:8; Mark 9:45). Our feet are hardly what cause us to sin, however, but our feet are more like instruments that we use in order to carry out the sinful desires of our hearts and minds (Weiss, TDNT 6:628). But, the Holy Spirit calls us to turn away from our sinful hearts and minds; from the things that our sinful hearts and minds lead us to think, say, and do that we should not think, say, and do; and from the things that our sinful hearts and minds lead us not to think, say, and do that we should think, say, and do. If we do not so repent, God’s messengers are to shake the dust off of their feet, figuratively if not also literally, as a witness against us (Matthew 10:14; Mark 6:11; Luke 9:5; 10:11). But, when, with repentance and faith, we figuratively put ourselves at Jesus’s feet, then He forgives us, as during His ministry He helped those who fell at His feet (Mark 5:22; 7:25; Luke 8:41) and healed those who were put at His feet (Matthew 15:30). Truly, as the Lutheran Confessions based solidly on Holy Scripture say, the highest worship of the Gospel is seeking and receiving the forgiveness of sins (Apology of the Augsburg Confession, IV:154).
One of the women in today’s Gospel Reading, who took hold of Jesus’s feet and worshiped Him, may have been a repentant sinful woman who previously had wet His feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed His feet and anointed them ointment (Luke 7:36-49). She was loved and forgiven, saved by faith, and so she loved in return. Such anointing anticipated Jesus’s burial (John 12:7). But, as the angel in today’s Gospel Reading said, Jesus Who was crucified (and buried) is risen! Sin, death, and the power of the devil are under His feet—they are His footstools, as it were—enemies that Jesus has destroyed for us (Psalm 8:6; 110:1; Matthew 22:44; Mark 12:36; Luke 20:43; Acts 2:35; Romans 16:20; 1 Corinthians 15:25, 27; Ephesians 1:22; Hebrews 1:13; 2:8; 10:13; confer Weiss, TDNT 6:629). Jesus’s resurrection is said to vindicate all that Jesus said and did (Hagner, ad loc Matthew 28:8‑10, 2:874-875, cited by Gibbs, ad loc Matthew 28:8-10, p.1609 n.52). Out of God’s great love for the world, including us, Jesus both lived the perfect life that we fail to live and paid the price for our failure to live that life. On the cross, Jesus died for us, in our place, the death that we deserved. And, Jesus’s resurrection in part showed that God the Father accepted His sacrifice on our behalf. Truly, we are loved, and, when we repent, we are forgiven. We are forgiven through God’s Means of Grace.
More than five years ago, at a brother-pastor’s installation service, I preached a sermon largely themed around his “beautiful” feet (2018 January 07 sermon). I had not seen his bare feet then, nor do think that I have seen his bare feet since (nor do I want to see his bare feet in the future), but I can tell you that Holy Scripture considers “beautiful” the feet of every messenger of the Gospel’s peace and salvation (for example, Isaiah 52:7; Romans 10:15). That Gospel is read and preached to groups such as this group, and that Gospel is applied to individuals with water in Holy Baptism, with the pastor’s touch in Holy Absolution, and with bread that is the Body of Christ given for us and wine that is the Blood of Christ shed for us in the Sacrament of the Altar. As our Lord humbly washed the feet of His disciples and told them to serve similarly humbly (John 13:1-17), so pastors today baptize people into the Church, forgive their sins with His authority (John 20:21-23), and feed them Jesus’s flesh and blood so that they have eternal life and will be raised up to that life on the Last Day (John 6:54). As Jesus left the sealed tomb in a supernatural manner, so in a supernatural manner He is really, physically present with His Body and Blood in, with, and under the bread and wine. Since His Body arguably in some sense includes His feet, at this Altar and its Rail, we, like the women of today’s Gospel Reading, take hold of Jesus’s feet and worship Him.
Like the Samaritan leper whom Jesus cleansed (Luke 17:16), we fall on our face at Jesus’s feet giving Him thanks, especially in the thanksgiving of the Sacrament of the Altar. As Mary of Bethany did, we, having sat at the Lord’s feet, are listening to His teaching (Luke 10:39; confer Luke 8:35?). We hear Him say that He has destroyed death, and we believe that He has destroyed death, even if we do not yet fully experience His victory over death. We know that because He is risen, feet and all, that we and all believers in Christ also will rise, feet and all. Now and for all eternity we praise His holy Name! Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +