A kiss conveys the force of love, and where there is no love, no faith, no affection, what sweetness can there be in kisses? St. Ambrose
What an awesome retreat this past weekend! Those who weren't there missed out on something special (even if you had a really good reason for missing).
So, I've been reading Leonard Sweet's
Postmodern Pilgrims and the introduction in particular struck me. He talks about kissing; not PDAWT kissing, but rather the significance of the kiss in Christianity. Sweet indentifies "two great kisses in Christian theology": God's kiss of life in Adam and Christ's "kiss" that breathed the new life of the Holy Spirit into his disciples.
Sweet argues that kissing was adopted as an early Christian practice (possibly from Christ himself) to symbolize the passage of the Spirit. William Klassen agrues that the early believers "saw themselves as 'in Christ.' That new level of reality was being affirmed in the freedom of quite innocently greeting each other with a holy kiss. They risked the slander of those who were outside looking in."
Think about Judas' betrayl of Jesus with a kiss. Others betrayed Jesus (Peter, Thomas), but Judas did so with a kiss. It's doubtful that Jesus needed to be identified; everyone knew who he was. When Paul instructs us to greet each other with a holy kiss, he reminds us that we are all loved by God. Sweet relates:
In Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov there is a tale in which Jesus comes back to earth during the Inquistion and the Grand Inquistor puts him on trial for all of his failures. After the Inquistor makes a full and complete case against Jesus, filled with canny arguments and shrewd charges, it is Jesus' turn.
Jesus' only response is to go over to the grim and menacing attacker and kiss him. No dazzling reasoning, no wonder-working displays. The essence of Christianity lies in this simple but profoud act. Am I saying that we should go around kissing each other? Not really, I'm not comfortable shaking hands with some people. I'm asking the question: why don't we?
