“How beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news!” Paul quotes that line from Isaiah 52:7. My feet are not beautiful, especially when they hurt like they are doing today. And yet they are beautiful when they come to preach the good news to you. The quality of our shoes or clothes means nothing to God. It’s what our bodies and shoes bring that mean anything to God. If your shoes brought you here today, that is good news – good news for me and also for you. This is step one in bringing good news to each other and to ourselves! And good news is meant to last, to inspire, to lead to new life and new hope and new faith and new love!
We owe today’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans (10:11-11:2) to this being the feast day of St Matthew falling on Sunday, November 16th, and to the wisdom of the Greek churches that created this reading specifically for the feast of St Matthew, instead of the previously existing reading (1 Corinthians 4:9-16). The reading started at verse 11 of chapter 10. “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” But how are we to believe? Paul raised that question right before where our reading started: The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart (that is, the word of faith which we preach); because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved. Paul quotes from the prophecy of Joel: “every one who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.” But Paul is making it clear that the only way we can call on the Lord and confess with our lips is if we belileve with our hearts.
‘Heart’ in the Bible means the entire being of who we are. Heart means the totality of who I am, who you, each of you, are. The Bible does not split a person’s identity. The Bible does not say: this is you as a Christian and this is you as one of the guys out getting drunk. The Bible does not say: Biologically you are this, but gender-affirming you are that. And it’s not just gender ‘dysphoria’. There is a lot of dysphoria out there, because we are so disconnected from our true selves. Our politics are often at odds with what the Lord teaches, regardless of whether we are on the left or the right. Our eating habits are often disconnected from our values or our so-called environmental awareness. Our favorite music is often completely the opposite of what we believe as Christians. Our language, our time management, our money management, our income tax honesty or dishonesty, our attitude to our jobs, to our families, how we treat each other. So much disconnectedness in our lives, so much conflict between our hearts and our mouths, between our hearts and what we claim to believe. So much ‘dysphoria,’ if you want to use that word.
So the beginning of the good news from my lips to you today is to tell you, you are worthy of so much more. Yes, we Orthodox like to say in our prayers how unworthy we are, it’s that old monastic self-abasement. But in the next breath we say to God, Make me worthy! Make me worthy, Lord to hear you today, to see the beautiful feet in the one who brings Christ’s good news to me. Make me worthy to receive the Body and Blood, so my whole being be united with you.
Look at Matthew the tax collector. The Lord goes up to him while he’s doing his tax business and tells him, “Follow me,” and Matt gets up, leaves his tax forms and goes with Jesus. The voice of Christ penetrated deep in to his own disconnectedness and Matthew jumped to be with the one who touched the core of his being. Today unfortunately the Lord has to rely on weak men like me to bring his good news. But I thank God that it’s not just me and my words that the Lord uses. Because every word and every action in this Liturgy communicates the Lord who is the incarnate Word of God. There is a reason why the Bible calls Jesus the Logos, the Word of God. The apostles and teachers of the Church took the ancient Greek ideas of the Logos as the reasoning power of humans and transferred it to God’s acts from the creation of the universe to the salvation of each one of us. The Word is creative, “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Our dysphorias and disconnectedness are pierced and healed by the Word. That is Jesus Christ. And like Matthew we are called to leave behind our pettiness and follow him.
Get serious, is the call. Eternity is on the tax table that Matthew walked away from. Eternity is on the spiritual form that shows your earnings and expenses – not just in dollar signs but in…..what? I had trouble finishing that sentence, so I texted Glenn and asked him how he would finish that sentence. He suggested, “not just in dollar signs but in the quiet choices of love and sacrifice that only God sees. That’s the eternal ledger of compassion, humility, and repentance that is tracked in heaven.” Pretty good I thought. I was looking for something shorter, like one or two words, but I guess he is just as wordy as I am. Most of you are too young to know or too old to remember a great add back in the 1970s. Ella Fitzgerald – I love Ella – shattering glass with her high note. And a recording of her voice on Memorex tape doing the same. And then the question in the add: Is it Ella or is it Memorex? So I couldn’t resist, I had to ask, is it Glenn or is it AI?
It was Glenn, but then we decided to put it to AI. You want to hear the results? These are the ways AI completed my sentence “Eternity is on the spiritual form that shows your earnings and expenses – not just in dollar signs but in…”
“…in the small obediences, the quiet repentances, and the daily mercies that slowly shape a heart toward God.”
“…in the ways you bore one another’s burdens, forgave the wounds no one else knew about, and chose love when it cost you something.”
“…in the unseen gifts you offered—your patience, your tears, your prayers, your kindness—laid before God like an offering.”
“…in the gentle arithmetic of grace: where sins are carried away, mercies multiply, and every humble act adds to the balance of a life turning toward Christ.”
“…in the spiritual transactions of the heart—where every moment of trust, every act of compassion, every whispered prayer is recorded in the Kingdom.”
Good stuff. Impressive gospel teaching, coming from a machine. But with all due respect to AI, Glenn’s sentence fillers were better. Think about it, though. The more Christ talk and questions we give to AI, the more we might train AI in the ways of the Lord. The gospel must reach everywhere, including new technology. Why not also the heart of AI? How beautiful are the feet – or in this case, the fingers – of those who train AI to speak the words of the gospel, the good news. The gospel is the message of peace between man and God, the peace between men and women. Why not also peace between man and the machine!?
(This was a sermon preached on Sunday, November 16th, 2025,, on the feast of Saint Matthew, the Apostle and Evangelist. The Epistle and Gospel readings replaced what would have been the normal readings on the Eighth Sunday of Luke.)
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