“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
For Bishop Cynthia Moore-Koikoi, this verse brought to mind a popular television ad campaign shown throughout her Western Pennsylvania Conference area: The Good Feet Store.
In those commercials, she said, customers testify about their lives before and after purchasing the company’s life-transforming arch supports.
“After donning their professionally fitted supports, their lives are changed in an instant,” she joked, even adding a legal disclaimer to clarify that she was not trying to promote the business, only to point out the power of its testimony-based marketing campaign.
But there really is a lesson to be learned from The Good Feet Store. Perhaps, she said, we need to be a Good Feet Church.
Moore-Koikoi noted West Virginia’s opioid epidemic, the state’s high rates of overdoses and poverty, and the racism and violence that plague the country.
“You know the pain of the people you serve,” Moore-Koikoi said, comparing the pain of West Virginia’s people to that of the Israelites who also experienced spiritual and emotional pain, “so much pain that they didn’t even know how to worship anymore.”
“Many of you are still asking ‘How do we do this in this strange land of lingering COVID and competing family priorities?’ How do we proclaim peace when we don’t even have peace in our sanctuaries? How do we bring good news when all we post on Facebook is bad news?
“I’m here to suggest that maybe a way that we can bring healing to the land is for us first to trust in God and to trust that God can heal the land,” Koikoi continued, “to trust in the promise that God made that God would heal the land. Maybe what we need to do is simply testify to how good God’s been to us.”
Koikoi suggested we need to share our stories and the news of our personal miracles, like the people in The Good Feet Store commercials, and to be on the lookout for the places where the promises of God are being fulfilled — like the sentinels in Isaiah 52.
Moore-Koikoi called on those attending the West Virginia Annual Conference to be a light in the darkness, to exude hope, to actively seek to alleviate the pain of the community, and to be “a church that gives the community all the support it needs.”
“Shout for joy … so that all might see the salvation of God,” Moore-Koikoi said. “It all begins with one Good Feet story, and those who are dying might have life.”
Thursday’s Opening Worship service also included a Native American greeting and land acknowledgement from Elle High from the Commission on Native American Ministries, an anthem and hymns lead by the Conference choir under the direction of Dan Stokes, Holy Communion, and an offering to be distributed to the Dig Deep Appalachia Water Project, the Reparations Fund of the United Methodist Foundation of West Virginia, and the Africa University Tractor Fund.
The benediction recalled the message of the Isaiah 52 scripture and Moore-Koikoi’s sermon using locations specific to the Conference region: “From the hills of Cabwaylingo to the mountains of the Monongahela National Forest; from the Southern Coalfields to the Northern Panhandle; from the New River Gorge to the Mason-Dixon Line; from the banks of the Ohio to the South Branch of the Potomac and every place in between—how beautiful are the feet of those who announce peace, who bring good news, who proclaim God’s salvation, and who cry out, ‘Your God reigns!’ Go forth: proclaiming peace, sharing the good news, announcing salvation, and making known God’s power and presence among us! Amen.”