This is Trinity Sunday, and the assigned text from 2 Corinthians includes a benediction that includes all three persons of the Trinity: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”

            That benediction indicates that from the triune manifestations of God come grace, love and communion. Together, those qualities form the foundation of the fellowship of believers. We cannot be the body of Christ without grace, love and communion.

            Because those three words refer to godly qualities, however, we sometimes don’t do a very good job of translating them into actual behavior in the church. Perhaps that’s why, in this same passage from 2 Corinthians, Paul also gives a more earthbound instruction about life together in the church: “Greet one another with a holy kiss,” he says.

The holy kiss

            Yes, I know we live in a different age and a different culture. For us, kissing in church has different implications from what it had in Paul’s day. He lived in a time when churches were still small groups meeting in private homes and in a culture where the act of kissing one another was more like a handshake is today. The kiss of greeting, which Paul deliberately calls “holy,” was a way of offering the hospitality of God to one another. It was neither sensual nor sentimental, and it was not exchanged between members of the opposite sex. It was usually given on the cheek. But it was a personal act of welcoming, of offering the hospitality of God to someone who’d come to worship him.

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