The Feet Man

This poem reminded a friend and I so much of what we really are doing when we sin that I just had to post it. Today a teacher hand us this poem and we listened to the author read it. It was amazing, so powerful, not only to put yourself into the sandals of the solder who nailed Jesus to the cross...but then to realize that that really is you. We as humans are all in the business of sinning. Before we became Christians our foreman was the foreman for the business of sin. He told us that we had to keep going if we wanted to keep our jobs. The good news is that we didn't. Those of use who have chosen Christ are no longer on Satan's assembly line. Praise God!

The Feet Man

The worst job I ever had was nailing
Jesus' feet to the cross on the
assembly line at the crucifix factory.
Jesus! I'd never thought of myself
as religious before that, but when
I had to strike those nails-- I figured
it up once—more than two thousand times
a day, my mind began seeing things:
little tremors along the skin, jerks of
those legs that were bonier than
models' legs, his eyes imploring,
forgiving. I swear, if a tiny drop of blood
had oozed out of that wood at my pounding,
I wouldn't have been surprised at all.
I was ripe for a miracle, or a vacation.
All I got was worse: with each blow
of the hammer, I flinched, as if I
were the one getting pierced. Doing
that job day after day was bad enough,
but doing it to myself—my arms
spread out from one end of my paycheck
to the other—was crazy. I began
to sweat constantly, though the place
was air-conditioned. It wasn't long before
the foreman took me aside and told me
I was taking my job too seriously, that
if I wanted to keep it I had better calm down.
He was right. I pulled myself together
like a man and put all pointless thought
out of my head. Or tried to. It wasn't easy:

imagine Jesus after Jesus coming down
at you along that line, and you with
your hammer poised, you knowing
what you have to do to make a living.

Philip Dacey 1991