The Exchange Of Peace (Biblical)

Most contemporary Christian liturgies include an exchange of peace, in which worshipers greet those around them with expressions such as "The peace of the Lord be with you." The exchange is usually accompanied by physical contact such as a handclasp or, where appropriate, an embrace. This act is of ancient origin and was originally known as the "kiss of peace"; other terms for it are "passing the peace" or "sign of peace." It often takes place at the beginning of the service of the Lord's Table as an expression of the reconciliation of believers with one another through their common reconciliation with God in Christ.

In concluding his letters to local churches, the apostle Paul several times urged his readers to "greet one another with a holy kiss" (Rom. 16:16; 1 Cor. 16:20; 2 Cor. 13:12; cf. 1 Thess. 5:26). Peter likewise ended his first letter, "Greet one another with a kiss of love. Peace to all of you who are in Christ" (1 Pet. 5:14). This gesture was a sign of the reconciliation and unity that mark the lives of believers within the body of Christ; it was a symbol of the peace of the community of the new covenant. Admonitions to peaceable living appear in the Epistles, as in Paul's description of the transformed life in Romans 12 (Rom. 12:18), his remarks on dissolution of marriage with a departing unbeliever (1 Cor. 7:15), and his concluding exhortations in the second letter to the Corinthians (2 Cor. 13:11).

The New Testament concept of peace (eir?n?) is based on the Hebrew shalom and embodies not simply the absence of strife but, more importantly, the wholeness, blessing, and salvation that are the benefits of the Lord's covenant and of the koin?nia, or mutuality and communion, that flow from life in Christ. Peace—together with joy in the Spirit and righteousness, or faithfulness to God's covenant—forms the substance of the kingdom of God (Rom. 14:17). The worshiping community of those made new in Christ is to be the embodiment of the peace of Christ, in whom the divisive walls of human culture, tradition, and ethnicity, epitomized in the Jew-Gentile dichotomy, are broken down (Eph. 4:13–19). John declares that lack of love, or lack of commitment to the welfare of others, is inconsistent with commitment to God: "for anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen" (1 John 4:20). Such commitment finds expression in gestures and deeds of peace within the worshiping assembly. The link between peace, symbolized in the "holy kiss" or "kiss of peace," and the Lord's Supper may be seen both in Jesus' action on the night of his arrest and in Paul's teaching on the Last Supper. In his discourse to the disciples in the Upper Room, Jesus concluded his promise of the coming of the Holy Spirit with these words: "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives" (John 14:27). Appearing to them after the Resurrection, perhaps during an evening meal, Jesus spoke the greeting of peace: "Peace be with you!" (John 20:19). In celebrating the Supper of the Lord, early Christians would have recalled the association of their common meal with the declaration of the Lord's peace. Paul, in his exposition of the Lord's Supper (1 Cor. 10:16–17; 11:17–34), views the broken bread as symbolic of common participation or koin?nia in the "body of Christ" (1 Cor. 10:16). By the "body" he means not the literal flesh of Jesus but the "one body" of the Spirit (Eph. 4:4), which is Christ's church. Eating the meal as an act of individual consumption, in a factious and self-centered manner, invalidates it as the Lord's Supper (1 Cor. 11:18–21). This failure to "recognize the body" therefore brings judgment—spiritual exclusion from the covenant and its blessings—upon the careless (1 Cor. 11:29). The exchange of peace at the Lord's Table is a sign of "recognizing the body," the community of faith. It is the recognition of the worshipers' awareness "that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, which is the blessed company of all faithful people" (as the 1928 Book of Common Prayer so well expressed). The greeting, or kiss, of peace became part of the service of the Lord's Table by the middle of the second century. Justin Martyr (Apology I, 66) describes it thus: "We salute one another with a kiss when we have ended the prayers. Then is brought to the president of the brethren bread and a cup of water and wine." The form of the exchange of peace has been subject to variation due to cultural differences regarding appropriate forms of physical contact. Originally it was a type of kiss, a customary gesture of close relationship found frequently in the Bible (for example, Esau and Jacob, Gen. 33:4; Joseph and his brothers, Gen. 45:15; Jonathan and David, 1 Sam. 20:41; the Ephesian elders and Paul, Acts 20:37) and still observed in Eastern cultures, having no sexual overtones and being exchanged between members of the same sex. In the early church, men and women probably worshiped in separate sections of the assembly and did not kiss or embrace unrelated members of the opposite sex. The ancient Christian practice of exchanging the sign of peace fell out of common usage for many centuries but has been restored in the liturgical revival of the twentieth century.