Liturgy-The Kiss of Peace

When I was sixteen years old, I had my first real date. Her name was Kathy Muholovich, and if you can imagine a teenage Olive Oyl with spectacles, you've got the picture. Awkward, lanky, geeky, and giggly-as far as I was concerned, the perfect woman.

We had gone to a B.J. Thomas concert together with some young adults from our church. Now, you may or may not recall that B.J. Thomas, most familiar for sinigng "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head," had just become a Christian in the mid 70s, and the Evangelical world was abuzz with our most recent acquisition. He was also shipped across the country for a series of small concerts geared to the Christian market, on display like the rare animal he was. We had gone to see him at the Chicago exposition, and he was, to this sheltered sixteen-year-old, electrifying, singing about his love for Jesus with his shirt open to his navel and gold chains swinging in the disco lights. What with all of that and Kathy's hand brushing my knee now and then, it was one sexually charged evening, I can tell you.

After the concert, the young adults dropped us off at Kathy's house, and we lingered a moment at our goodnights. As I'd hoped and prayed, Kathy was just as curious and excited as I was, and as I froze in uncertainty, she bent down and kissed me full on the lips. My head swam, my knees buckled, and time stopped as I was struck by the sweet drug of adrenaline-and not a little testosterone.

An instant later, she whispered, "Goodnight," and ran off to her porch. I turned and trudged off into the snow towards my car, still spinning. But now, I was swimming in possibilities. What did that brief, wonderful kiss really MEAN? Did she love me? I hoped so. Did she want my body? God, I hoped so. Did she want to get married? That was a scary thought. Was it just a kiss of friendly fondness? No, it couldn't be, could it? Was it just an act of pity? Horrors! Perish the thought.

I had a hard time getting to sleep that night, for obvious reasons. You see, there was this sweet kiss to relive over and over again. And I didn't know what it meant.

The early church was similarly confused by the meaning of a kiss-in this case, the kiss of peace; what we in our parish call "the passing of the peace." Christians have never been of one mind when it comes to this ritual. Although most Christians in the church's history have practiced it, they have had very different ideas about exactly WHY all this kissing was going on. Let's explore some of the more popular opinions.

Is it an expression of affection and hospitality?
This seems to be the earliest meaning discernable from the surviving documents. St. Paul wrote in his epistles to the Corinthians and Romans, "Greet each other with an holy kiss." Paul was trying to foster a sense of community, unity, and amity within his congregations, and instructing them to kiss when greeting each other must have seemed a natural and paternal bit of advice. And since we read in ancient Roman sources the famous quote, "How those Christians love one another" it seems Paul's exhortation was successful; even their enemies could not help but take note of the affection in the early Christian community.

And for people seeking solace in a hard world, entering the world of these ancient believers had to be like entering heaven itself. In a culture where social station was everything, the egalitarian affection found in the secret churches was a loud and clear welcome such as few had ever experienced before.

It was, I should note, an extremely chaste love, as Athenagoras warns in the second century that the kiss "should be given with the utmost care, since if there be mixed with it the least defilement of thought, it excludes us from eternal life." This is probably in reaction to the libertine Gnostics, for whom the Kiss of Peace had degenerated into an orgy, and a quite literal one at that. In later centuries the chastity of the kiss of peace was safeguarded by making a rule that only men could give it to men, and women only to women. Since many Christians, like Jews, separated the sexes during worship, this would have happened by default had it not been an explicit rule in some places. I hasten to add it would not have been a very efficacious rule in San Francisco today, nor, I would imagine, in Greece at the time of Athenagoras' writing.

But perhaps the Passing of Peace is just a transition into fellowship?
This seems to be the case in some places by the second century. Justin, writing in that period, tells us that at the conclusion of the prayers the people saluted one another with a kiss. This was a time when the Liturgy of the Word was held on Saturday, being as it was an analog of the Jewish synagogue service, and still held on the Jewish Sabbath. The Liturgy of the Eucharist was held the next day, on Sunday. In Justin's day, the Sabbath Service, the Liturgy of the Word, ended with the Prayers, then the exchange of peace. This was the perfect transition, apparently, into coffee hour.

But for some communities, it constituted an assent to the prayers.
Tertullian, who died in the early third century, criticized those Christians who eschewed the Passing of Peace, saying, "What prayer is complete from which the holy kiss is divorced? What kind of sacrifice is that from which men depart without the peace?" It was, to him, inconceivable that common prayers might be held in which people did not affirm their love and unity with one another. It also seemed to suggest that if a person can affirm peace at the end of a prayer, that means that that person agrees with the prayer, has participated in it fully, and seals it by passing on the peace of Christ that they themselves have received. In other words, for Tertullian, the kiss is a big, fat, sloppy, "Amen."

But perhaps the Kiss is an Opportunity for Reconciliation?
In St. Matthew's gospel we read, "If you bring your gift to the altar and there recall that your brother or sister has anything against you, leave your gift at the altar, go first to be reconciled with your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift" (5:23-24). In other words, before the gifts are brought forward-or as we would say, before the offering is taken-and before the Eucharist is celebrated, make sure there is no enmity between you. In previous times, Christians had a more magical understanding of the Eucharist than we do now, and before they partook of magical-and potentially harmful-mysteries, they searched their souls carefully. The Kiss of Peace was an invitation to such soul searching, and provided an opportunity built right in to the service for you to go to someone you were mad at, or who might be mad at you, and make up before you approached the holy altar together. As such, it is an invitation to reconciliation, making manifest that line in the Lord's prayer, "Forgive us our trespasses as we have forgiven those who trespass against us." Note the careful wording of this too-familiar prayer: God only forgives us to the extent we forgive each other. "Forgive US as we have forgiven those who sin against us."

This is the meaning implied in current Anglican and Lutheran usage. If you go to a Lutheran or Episcopal church today, you will note that the Confession of Sin has been moved from the beginning of the service to the end of the prayers of the people as a more immediate preparation for the Eucharist. Then the priest absolves the congregation, offers some "comfortable words" assuring all of God's good will towards them, and then proclaims the peace. No act of contrition is complete until we have forgiven those grudges we are holding onto, and the Peace is an invitation to let go and offer our own absolution to those who have hurt us, just as Christ has offered his to us. If you have no one to forgive, the peace is an embodiment of those "comfortable words," as we demonstrate God's good will towards us to one another-a kind of sacrament of forgiveness, reconciliation, comfort, and affection, all rolled up into one. Now that's a lot of symbolic import for a simple handshake to bear, and it is not surprising that much of this is lost on the average churchgoer. But then, that's what sermons are for.

For some Christians, the Kiss was an Expression of Mystical Union.
Very early on, the Kiss of Peace was given freely between all the members, regardless of gender, full on the mouth, as an expression of the mystical unity shared by the congregation. It was another symbol of union in that it foreshadowed and supported the common partaking of the body of Christ, which also united them spiritually. St. Cyril of Jerusalem wrote in the fourth century, "Think not that this kiss is of the same character with those given in public by common friends. It is not such: but this kiss blends souls one with another, and courts entire forgiveness in them. The kiss therefore is the sign that our souls are mingled together, and banish all remembrance of wrongs."

This meaning is perhaps displayed most poignantly by the early Christian martyrs, who, at the moment of death, would crawl to each other and kiss, that their lives might end not in ignominy, but liturgically, the fit and proper ending of the liturgy of the Word that was their life. This kiss at the moment of death was an affirmation that they died not alone, but in mystical union with Christ and with the great Communion of all the Saints.

Then again, there is the Kiss as a twisted expression of hierarchy.
In the tenth century, the kiss could not be passed on until it was passed to you from someone higher up in the liturgical or social food chain. No one could exchange the Kiss until the bishop kissed the altar, receiving his kiss from Christ. He then came down and offered it to the priests, who then offered it to the deacons, who then offered it to the rich laypeople, who then offered it to the poor. Now, one can see how, in a culture so saturated in the evil of social hierarchy, how this would be symbolic of God's passing the peace of the gospel down to lowly humans through the mediation of the god-man Jesus, who handed it to the apostles, who gave it to the bishops, who authorize the priests, who then dispense it to the people. Okay it's the way things worked back then, but it also denied and subverted the egalitarian Good News that IS the gospel as we understand it today.

Those are the many meanings this simple ritual has held over the centuries: affection and hospitality, fellowship, assent to the common prayer, reconciliation, mystical union, and hierarchy. It's a lot for such a simple ritual to hold. But it is not enough to know what it meant for others-the real question here is, "what does it mean for US?"

This ritual has been a point of contention ever since I came to this church eleven years ago. Having spent many years in Episcopal parishes, I was distressed when, in our former liturgy, the peace was simply given a passing nod without any ritual expression. This is a holdover from the 1662 Prayer Book Richard was familiar with, in which the Peace has only a verbal expression. The 1928 American prayer book with which most parishioners were familiar, omitted it entirely. Those of us familiar with more modern Episcopal, Lutheran, and Roman Catholic experience, however, felt robbed of a cherished ritual, without which our worship felt somehow incomplete, much as Tertullian did in his day.

As with any liturgical change, however, adding the ritual expression of the Peace back into the liturgy has been distressing to many people. Some have told me it breaks the spell of sacred worship we have spent the whole Liturgy of the Word building up. The energy is dispersed, and it feels more like coffee hour than it does prayer-which is not to knock the sacramental import of coffee hour, which is an important ritual for most of us in its own right. Others resent the obligatory intimacy the ritual demands. While some of us are born "huggers," others are more reticent in their expression of affection, and are uncomfortable being coerced into an expression they may or may not feel.

Some appreciate its addition, but object to the unbridled exhuberance with which many in our congregation have embraced the ritual-it's become difficult to corral folks back into the pews so we can return to the liturgy. Today, I'd like to suggest that we try a more restrained approach, offering the peace to our immediate neighbors without moving from our places in the pews. That way people who would like to ride out the Peace unmolested by unwelcome exhuberance can simply take a seat at some distance from others and maintain the dignity of their worship during a much briefer exchange. In addition, perhaps Ken could find a very short piece of music to accompany the exchange that we use every week-perhaps as short as thirty seconds. That way people know when to stop hugging and chatting.

Nonetheless, even if we find a happy medium for the ritual, just doing it because it is an ancient part of church tradition is not reason enough to resume the practice. People used to lash themselves and wear hairshirts, too, but that doesn't mean we need to have a supply in the vestry.

Nor is, "but this is how we're used to doing it," a reason to reinstate it, for those who have so long done without it can use the same argument against the practice.

No, if we are to truly embrace this ritual as a congregation we must decide what it MEANS for us, and if the ritual truly supports and expresses this meaning. Many of us have been attracted to this church because we have found an unqualified welcome here. We may have felt unacceptable or even outcast in other communities, but in this congregation we have found such a collection of misfits that if you are weird here, my friends, you just fit right in. Kind of like Berkeley itself, in that regard. There aren't too many places you can say that about, and it is, for me, a point of pride. The Exhange of Peace could thus be, for us, an expression of that unqualified hospitality so evident in our church.

But if this is true, it cannot be merely a ritual, symbolic expression. This hospitality must be real if it is to be proclaimed. I was deeply chagrined several weeks ago on Easter Sunday, when I approached an out-of-town visitor at coffee hour. "We really enjoyed your service," he told me, "And you people seemed so friendly at the Peace." Then his face fell and he looked sad as he said, "But my wife and I have been standing here by ourselves at coffee hour for fifteen minutes, and you are the first person to speak to us." I felt deeply shamed by this, and offered a heart-felt apology. But my words count for little, it is our actions together as a people that carry the real weight.

For myself, the Gospel means nothing if it not the unconditional hospitality of heaven. We are called by Jesus to make God's hospitality a reality in the here and now, in this congregation. Not only at this table, but in every aspect of our lives. This is not a dressing down, my friends, it is a call to search our souls, to ask exactly what we are up to here, if we are not offering the universal welcome of God to the stranger in our midst.

For this ritual of offering God's hospitality does not end with the service, nor should it end at coffee hour. The hospitality of heaven is something we are to carry from this place where WE have experienced it into the world, where it is in such short supply. At the close of our liturgy, we proclaim and promise together, "Let us go forth to love and serve the world; in the name of Christ." The peace we give to one another is a gift that God gives to us, that we in turn offer to one another, and that we must then, if we are to be faithful, carry out into the world where it is so sorely needed.

The Banquet of Heaven that we celebrate in foreshadowing here at this table, is the time promised in scripture when wars will end, hunger will be forever banished, justice will reign over all the earth, and true peace surrounds all peoples in love. This magical scenario is not going to arrive with a blast of trumpets, descending out of the sky as the Evangelicals assert. The Banquet of Heaven will only arrive by the sweat of our brow, the work of our hands, the hard lessons of time, the education of ourselves and others, and the steady practice of love in small communities like ours.

"Cultivate these things in yourself," Lao Tzu says, "and you will have true goodness. Cultivate these in your family, and goodness will increase. Cultivate these in your community, and goodness will catch on. Cultivate these in your nation, and goodness will overflow! Cultivate these in the world, and goodness will fill the Universe" (54). Let us pray

Jesus, thou art the Prince of Peace, and it is thy gift of peace that passes all understanding that we seek to extend to those around us. Help us in our discernment around the Passing of Peace in our liturgy, that we may do what is meet and right, with integrity both towards our neighbors and ourselves. Give us patience and compassion in hearing one another, and let us extend real love to each other, regardless of what decision is reached. For if peace cannot reign amongst this small band of friends, what hope have we for the world? Help us to love one another, even as we have been loved by thee. Amen.

For much of the history of the Kiss of Peace I am indebted to Thomas J. Reese, S.J.'s wonderful article, "A Kiss is Never Just a Kiss," America, April 15, 1995.