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Music has always been a big part of my life. As a teenager in the 1970s, one of my favorite contemporary Christian musicians was Paul Clark, and one of my favorite albums was Hand to the Plow. Not only were the songs on that album more “meaty” and discipleship-oriented in comparison to what else was available at the time, I also loved the artwork on the front jacket. It showed the two hands and wrists of an elderly man grasping the dirty, wooden handles of an antique farm plow. The skin on those wrists was weather-beaten and callused, almost leather-like in texture. If that album (excuse me, compact disc) were released today, the promoters might choose a more attractive image—perhaps the performer all dressed up for a photo shoot, laughing, looking austere, or doing something cool. I’m glad the rugged hands were used, because they communicated the album’s theme so well.
The Christian life has a lot more to do with weather-beaten hands than with nicely posed pictures. And the same is true of the preaching of God’s Word.
In Romans 10, we have just seen the apostle Paul refer to the importance of the gospel, and, in conjunction with it, the importance of the preacher who communicates it to others. Paul compares the act of preaching to the “beautiful feet” of a running messenger who delivers a king’s message to his subjects.
Think on the nature of that beauty. Those feet were not deemed to be beautiful because they were cosmetically perfect. (Indeed, even the best of feet are not usually considered the most attractive parts of the body.) Their beauty came precisely from their determined performance that demonstrated the value of the message being carried. If that same runner had heard the message, but then flopped down in his La-Z-Boy to watch television, I doubt Paul would have been impressed with his feet.
As we proclaim the gospel in this postmodern world, we need to get away from the beauty of Madison Avenue Christianity, which delights in cosmetic impressions, in order to regain the true “beauty” of which Paul speaks. This is especially true for those of us who are deeply concerned about guarding the gospel from being watered down by the more popular messages of our day. We must be equally zealous to show the value of the gospel by the sacrifice we bear as we carry it to others. It’s one thing to show the value of something by putting it on display in a sterile museum behind protective glass, and it’s quite another to declare its value by having it become weather-beaten from daily use. Our Lord would certainly prefer the latter.
In short, the Word of God is best preached not at a distance but up close. The key to Christian proclamation is demonstration and incarnation. Are your feet a beauty to behold?