A pet peeve of mine is when the preacher at a church tells the congregation to turn to the person next to them and say something. “Turn to the person next to you and say, ‘You are beautiful!’” The next week it’s, “Turn to the person next to you and say, ‘Greater is He that is in you!’” Maybe you love those moments, and they can be a good way to engage an otherwise passive congregation, but to me it just feels really inauthentic. I’m forced to say specific words, and I’m not given any time in advance to consider those words. So, it might surprise you to know that I am a big fan of having a time in the worship service every Sunday where you turn to someone near you and say, “The peace of Christ be with you.” Some people call this “passing the peace.” In churches that do this well, you aren’t forced to stick to the script. You can say, “Welcome to worship in the name of Jesus!” Or you can say, “So glad you are here!” The congregation is given three minutes to mingle a bit, to ask the other person a question, or give a hug. If your church is perceived as being cold or stiff, this is a way to raise the temperature and loosen up.
Formally greeting one another is not a waste of precious worship time. It’s a command. Five times we, the church, are commanded to “greet one another.” On the last page of his epistle to the Romans, the Apostle Paul commands us, “Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you.” (Romans 16:16) Notice that the command is to the entire church, not merely to the well-trained greeting team. Greeting teams are great. They didn’t use to exist. The walk from the car park to the pew used to be a lonely walk interrupted only briefly by an awkward usher at the front door who pressed a paper bulletin into your hand. But now, before you can step in out of the rain, the friendliest people on the planet are inviting your children to youth group, handing you a goodie bag, beckoning you to the barista kiosk in the foyer, and managing to squeeze out of you every possible piece of demographic data and contact information that will enable them to follow up with you by Wednesday. That’s professional greeting. It can be hugely helpful, and it is usually quite sincere. But what the apostle has in mind is something different.
Paul wants every Christian, not just the extroverts on the special team, to greet and to be greeted. Greeting one another is reciprocal. It’s not merely about letting the newcomer know they are valued. An old-timer might arrogantly think, “I don’t need to be welcomed here; I own the place.” But Christ owns the place. We are His guests. Greeting one another reminds us of that.
On the last page of Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, he writes, “All the brothers send you greetings. Greet one another with a holy kiss.” (1 Corinthians 16:20) Perhaps you’ve seen pictures of Russian Orthodox believers giving each other two kisses on the cheek and you’ve thought, “I am so glad we don’t do that at my church.” Every epistle in the New Testament is culturally situated, right? So, we regularly consider what the underlying principle is as we attempt to obey the command. There is room for cultural accommodation. A “holy kiss” might legitimately be expressed as a warm handshake, a holy fist bump, or a half-hug. Not everyone wants a hug from a stranger. And some people need to take extra precautions against catching the latest cold from well-meaning church members. But a verbal greeting is usually doable. A genuine smile, some eye contact, a signal of shared humanity – this all contributes to community. Every other thing we will do in the worship service – praying, hearing the Word preached, giving, singing, sharing in the sacraments – will be better stamped with the imprint of unity and fellowship if we take a moment to welcome each other.
Guess what appears on the last page of Second Corinthians? “Greet one another with a holy kiss.” (2 Corinthians 13:12) Before we write off the “holy kiss” as a cultural custom that we can replace with a handshake or a smile, we should ask, “What is it about a kiss that the apostles were wanting to see embodied in the church?” In one word – “affection.” We usually know if affection is being faked or if it’s for real, and when it is real, it is life-giving. Clubs, teams, workplaces, and classrooms can all survive without affection, but a church cannot. Love is not merely a spontaneous thing that you do in your own sweet way at your own sweet time. Paul thinks the outward sign of love can be commanded. Taking time in the worship service to express the sign of affection gives everyone the opportunity to truly be affectionate. Kisses will probably not be appropriate in our culture any time soon. But some gesture of affection is not only appropriate, it’s deeply needed.
By the time we get to 1 Thessalonians 5:26, we are no longer surprised that Paul is closing out by saying, “Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss.” If we want to appreciate how important it is to welcome each other at church, consider that this greeting command occurs more often than the command to sing together at church, which is why it probably belongs in the worship service itself. In almost every church I visit, I see people lingering, embracing, praying together, crying together. A lot of real one-another ministry is taking place in the thirty minutes after the benediction. That is fantastic. But it does not touch 100% of those assembled. If a brief expression of Christ’s love and peace is offered during the service, everyone is covered, and that brief exchange might increase the likelihood of a more substantive conversation later.
Some of us are so market-driven that we think of the worship service as prime time for grabbing new repeat customers. Turning the church into a business betrays the church’s deeper calling, but the evangelistic impulse is commendable. The posture of the biblical church is one that welcomes the non-Christian. For them, our greeting is a miniature version of the free offer of the gospel. It sets a tone of invitation: we are glad you are here; we hope you keep taking steps towards Jesus. But notice that these apostolic greeting commands are aimed not at the outsider but at the brother and the sister. The greeting is not a technique or method to increase our market share. It’s a genuine display of the fact that we are family. Finally, the greeting command is not merely Paul’s thing. The Apostle Peter closes out his first letter saying, “Greet one another with the kiss of love. Peace to all of you who are in Christ.” (1 Peter 5:14) What Peter adds is the offer of peace. True peace, biblical shalom, is not just the absence of war but the presence of loving and respectful community. Peace seems so unattainable that we might think it is fruitless to exchange words of peace. But words are more powerful than we think. The sound waves may be quickly absorbed by the furniture and disappear into the air. But the impact on someone’s heart can be permanent. Throughout the week, we are bombarded with words: the commercial pitch, subtle insults, and predictions that we will never amount to anything. Let it be that when we arrive at church, we are greeted with words of welcome, belonging, affection, and peace. The words Peter wants us to exchange are not empty words of wishful thinking. They are words offered to those who are “in Christ.” When the crowds caught up to Jesus in Luke 9:11, “He welcomed them and spoke to them of the kingdom of God and cured those who had need of healing.” What ended in healing began in welcome.