Friday, August 26, 2022

 

Friday, August 26, 2022


Psalms 137; 138

2 Chronicles 33:21-34:13

Romans 16:1-16


Greet one another with a holy kiss.


What does Christian fellowship look like? Your answer might be different depending on where you worship and in which roles you have served. We are given plenty of opportunity to be nasty to each other, but in looking to Christ, we instead look for opportunities to show love. And so, in greeting one another, the church in her first generation of believers kissed one another with a holy kiss.


Kissing outside the family is, in Anglo and Anglo-influenced culture, weird. The Normans might have tried to introduce it when they invaded the home islands in 1066, but if they did, it didn't take off. Kissing as a normal greeting remained a firmly Continental quirk. Perhaps our cultural distance can give us some insight as to how special it is.


If husbands and wives kiss each other in one way, and parents and children kiss each other in yet another way, what emotion and intent might kissing between believers be communicating? There is certainly a sense of intimacy and shared experience. Paul describes some of his friends in this list as “family”. Another translation would be “compatriot”. Paul (and ourselves) sometimes describe fellow believers as “brothers and sisters”, a term derived from the Greek word “adelphoi” which used to be translated as “brethren”. (This term has such strong connotations of fellowship and unity of purpose that an entire denomination has decided to describe itself as such.) It seems we struggle to find words to describe the strength of the bonds of fellowship between us, because we are so close in a union that is also “holy”: separate, distinct, the beautiful ideal. Our fellow believers, wherever we find them, are precious to us, and so that demands certain patterns of behaviour we should aspire to.


We can also work backwards from this principle. The way we treat one another is an extension of how God treats us; which is, fundamentally, an ever-abiding, bottomless cup of love. We kiss one another because God first kissed us. If ever there was something in this material universe that communicated an invisible spiritual truth of our relationship with God, surely it is the holy kiss.



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