Of Bearhugs and Holy Kisses
Last Sunday was my 53rd birthday. It was also my first full day back from a business trip to Portugal, so I was feeling the full effects of a 7-time-zone case of jetlag. I was hoping to just make it through my birthday breakfast and the church service without snoring.
I was standing around before service with a couple of guys - some of whom I knew, and a few I didn’t - when it came out that it was my birthday. I did the usual dissembling - 53 is no big deal, it was nothing, it doesn’t really matter. What happened next wrecked me.
My friend Nathan looked my in the eye and said, “It matters to us.” And then he wrapped me in an enormous bearhug. It nearly brought me to tears (the gesture, not the bearhug itself). Thinking back upon it now, I find myself tearing up a little.
What was it about that gesture, those words, that touched me so deeply that Sunday morning? Why have I been cherishing that memory all week?
It is noteworthy that in four of Paul’s 13 letters1, the church is commanded to greet one another with “a holy kiss.2" Peter gets into the act as well3. Needless to say, this custom is seldom practiced today. I can’t think of another command that is given five separate times in the New Testament that is just blown off as irrelevant by the modern church.
Maybe it’s the logistics that scare us. How is the kiss performed? Do we line up? Is it one of those European air kisses in the general airspace of both cheeks, but with no actual contact? Or is lip-to-cheek contact required? For that matter, is - shudder - lip-to-lip contact required? Is tongue allowed? (OK, now I’m just messing with you.) The fact is that we simply do not know how the kiss was practiced. We do know that it was often done as part of the liturgy.
What’s inescapable was that the kiss was an intimate act, a family act. We would have no qualms today about kissing a sibling on the cheek at a family dinner. Isn’t the church just that - a family gathering? I am gathered with brothers and sisters who are every bit a part of my family as my two sisters. The command to greet them with a holy kiss isn’t about lip contact, but about the familial bond that is to characterize the body of Christ.
As a practical matter, I don’t think resurrecting the kiss is possible, or advisable, in our day and age. Too many people have been abused or traumatized to make such an practice a good idea.
Some Christian traditions practice a custom known as the Passing of the Peace. In the Southern Baptist churches of my youth, this was watered down to a time where you shook hands with people in the congregation while the piano played. But it was rushed and decidedly unpeaceful, and there was no real connection:
“Hi, Brother X. How are you doing?”
“Fine, just fine. You?”
“Fine.”
Never mind that Brother X had been laid off that week, or that Sister Y was waiting on her biopsy results. Everyone was “fine.” The niceties are preserved.
The Passing of the Peace changes the purpose of the time from fake life updates to something more - dare I say, holy. You are pronouncing the shalom of God over someone. “Peace be unto you.” Brother X and Sister Y could use some peace in their circumstances.
My Presbyterian church doesn’t do the Passing of the Peace (or the watered down greeting time that is the bane of introverts everywhere). But I wish we did (the former, that is).
What Nathan did for me last Sunday was a sort of a personal Passing of the Peace. By looking me in the eye and telling me that my birthday mattered to him, he was telling me, “I see you. I love you. You matter to me, and to God.” And by following it up with a very non-perfunctory hug, he was reinforcing that intimate message with a gift - the gift of familial physical contact.
Because sometimes, a handshake or a pat on the back or a sidehug just won’t cut it. Some things require a ginormous bearhug, delivered by a loving brother - or a holy kiss.
Yes, 13 letters. I, like most scholars, do not believe Paul wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews.
Romans 16:16, 1 Corinthians 16:20, 2 Corinthians 13:12, and 1 Thessalonians 5:26.
1 Peter 5:14.
This is beautiful, John. I've experienced moments like this in my own church. They are special. And they're beautifully in line with the embodied ministry of Jesus. Thank you for sharing.