Kissing Christians | Randy Garcete

Thank you, greetings to everyone this morning.

It's good to see you all here this morning.

While I get set up here, since we didn't have a break, i'm just going to ask you all to maybe stand and like greet some of the people right around you.

Have you seen the Mitaka Lady?

Yeah, we are a little bit off, yeah, oh oh, take a look.

Lot of stuff.

Okay, all right, we're going to go ahead and turn it down a little bit now.

Okay, boy, you guys almost ran away with me or from me with that.

There I get why Steve said no break, because it gets a little out of control.

But a couple of weeks ago actually it's been about a month ago Chris taught a lesson on the last chapter, on First Thessalonians.

Towards the end of the chapter we briefly talked about the Holy Kiss and Paul's instruction to greet the brothers with the Holy Kiss And at our next pastors meeting we were sort of talking about it, how that we didn't feel like we really had that much time to talk about it, and Paul Miller was like one of us needs to preach a sermon on the Holy Kiss, and Sean and I sort of both looked at him and was like you know, and Paul said you know what He asked me.

He's like Randy, would you be willing to preach a sermon on the Holy Kiss?

And I reluctantly said yes.

But as I dug in, i've just had a lot of fun studying this topic.

It's just been a very interesting studying process And just maybe my story with the Holy Kiss.

When I was 16, i was baptized and became a member of a church that practiced, that taught and practiced the Holy Kiss, and it was something that I it was practiced, especially during special services like communion or ordinations and that type of thing, and it was something I was never exactly super eager about, to say the least, especially amongst my friends and I.

We would, you know, almost like, at the very least we weren't eager, but inwardly, sometimes I would almost feel like this It was awkward, it felt strange.

Some of us church buddies just called it the Holy Miss, but as I've gotten older, it was.

It's one of those things that we've I've seen, especially in our own church.

I've seen us sort of come away from it, and what I wanted to do is look at what was this greeting all about?

What did Apostle Paul mean, and Peter as well?

What were they saying to do And does it?

is it something that we still should be doing today And, if so, how?

What does it mean for us exactly?

What's the deeper meaning behind it?

How many of you grew up in a church or come from a background where the Holy Kiss was practiced?

Okay, okay, so it's.

This isn't new for for most of you.

How many of you come from a background, church background, where the Holy Kiss was like it was just never practiced.

You don't even, you didn't even know it was a thing.

Raise your hands As a child, okay, even as a child.

Okay.

So, a handful of people, okay, very good.

So I'm excited to take a deeper look at this, this topic, today with you, and I'm just going to say from the from the start that I'm wrestling with some of these implications for us today myself, i I am excited about what it means at a, at a, at a core and a deep level, but I'm very much still seeking and searching God.

What does this mean?

What does this mean for us today as a, as a church, as a people?

How many of you greeted each other with the Holy Kiss here about two minutes ago when I asked you all to greet, greet?

I'm curious if it's something that's still happening.

Nobody, okay, all right.

Well, that's going to change at the end of this, at the end of this service.

So I invite you all to come to this with an open mind and an open heart.

I know for most of you, if you're like me, you're sitting here already thinking of all the reasons why we shouldn't practice the Holy Kiss today.

So I invite you to to loosen those thoughts and come to this with as open of a mind as as possible.

Some of you come from backgrounds where the Holy Kiss was just like pounded into you and you were like you, just you were like that meme that you should know keep your repulsive lips away from me.

Like some of you have had that pounded into you and then, therefore, it's just like no, i can't believe he's preaching on the Holy Kiss today.

It's like okay.

So I invite us all to come with with an open mind and open heart and see what God has for us.

I want to start off by talking about the, just the, the overall, the gift of touch.

It's when you really back up and look at the, at the gift of touch.

Physical touch is a.

It's an amazing gift that we have that we can use to communicate ideas with each other and to each other nonverbally.

You think of a high five when you're, when you're playing a, playing a game, and one of your teammates you know scores a run.

Give him a high five like that.

That communicates something.

I think about putting your arm around a crying child to comfort him.

You don't, you don't have to use words, you're just just that simple act of physical touch communicate something super, super deep.

Or think of cuddling a little toddler on your arm, in your arms, on your lap, like some of you guys are doing right now.

You're, there's something about the way you're holding that child, the way you're touching it, that communicates something super, super deep.

In the 1940s there was an Austrian doctor named Renee Spitz who studied the effects of touch on infants One in thirty to thirty years And what he found was that he compared infants that were raised in like an isolated hospital crib, who received almost no physical touch at all, and he compared them with, with with children that were raised by mothers who were were holding them and and I Guess, raising them with with mothers were present in their lives.

And he found that 30% of the infants kept in the hospital ward died before the age of two.

And And he found that those that survived, they They survived with, with fairly serious developmental, behavioral, psychological, cognitive issues as they grew older, while none of the babies raised by their mothers died or had pronounced issues as For sure as developing humans, as developing as we developed when we're young.

The the need for physical touch and for human touch is is a.

It's a profound need and without it We actually almost become we've come defective and crippled in a sense.

I Read an article in.

It was the called the Tokyo Weekender.

It's a Publication on, i guess, life in Japan and There's an article in their titled skinship, in Japan a touchy subject He had too much fun with that but in this article they talk about this, the, this, this decline in in Human interaction and physical touch in the country of Japan for a large group of the population There's, there's a, there's an increase and a rise in in profound isolation and loneliness and and just a decline in just social, non-sexual human touch To where it's.

It's even uncommon for for children to hug their parents And as a result of this and this, this, this need that's arisen, businesses have opened up that sell, that try to make up for this, that that try to make money off of this.

I guess There's fluffy robots are sold to the elderly as a way to compensate for that lack of human touch.

You can rent a friend to go shopping with you for the day and That's all fun and games until you run out of money and then you're, you don't have a friend anymore.

You can go to a cuddle cafe where you can just cuddle with other lonely strangers like yourself and And some of you are chuckling and it's, it's, but it's in the middle of that It there's a, there's a profound sadness that people need physical touch.

They're longing for that in a healthy, non-sexual kind of way.

You can go to an ear cleaning cafe where a stranger will cradle your head and gently clean your ears.

I Need, i need to go to Japan.

That that's actually sounds like a good deal.

But the point I'm trying to make is that, as humans, god created us with it, with a, with a need for human physical touch.

Mark Green in the Good Men project talks about this, this idea, in our society today, where non-sexual and Platonic physical touch is so lacking.

He says we walk in the vast crowds of our cities alone in a desert of Disconnection, starving for physical connection.

We crave touch.

We are cut off from it.

The result is touch isolation.

Profound idea there.

I Wanted to look a little bit at just how, how God Touched man throughout scripture and I don't want to get too, too deep into this, but just a couple, a couple things to point out.

And and that is in Genesis, when God creates, basically creates the world, creates the earth.

He speaks everything into being, he uses his words, He speaks it into being, except for for one part of his creation.

What part of his creation is?

Am I, i guess, what everything God created, he, he's spoken to being, except for one thing.

And what was that?

Man?

Adam, yeah, says God formed Man out of the dust of the earth.

And I don't know what that brings into your mind.

Oh, what, what you picture by?

just picture God physically forming a human out of the dust.

And then it says God breathed into his nostrils an Incredibly powerful, intimate physical experience.

He created Adam and Eve in a very intimately physical way.

In The New Testament we see the beauty of touch in the ways that Jesus interacted with the people in his life.

He, jesus, touched the leopard to heal him.

He could have just spoken it and said you're healed, but he touched the leopard and In the Jewish context that was basically made him ritually unclean.

He allowed a weeping woman to wash his feet with her hair.

He held little children in his arms.

He rubbed mud in the blind man's eyes and healed him.

And When Peter cuts the ear off of the of the soldier, jesus touches his ear and heals it.

Like all of these things are things he could have done By just speaking it, and I think it's profound that Jesus, in all these of these accounts, jesus, uses physical touch to communicate that you are loved, you have worth and You're valuable to me.

Fast forward then to the, to the epistles.

We come to Paul and Peter's letters, where he instructs the church to greet each other with a holy kiss, to use a very specific kind of physical touch to greet each other.

And I want to look at that a little bit, these passages here.

And the holy kiss was we'll get into this a little bit later but was basically a non-romantic, non-sexual kiss between believers.

That expressed a deep affection and a deep affection, a brotherly affection for each other.

It became deeply, deeply meaningful in the church settings of the early church.

It was practiced for hundreds of years after the New Testament in various different ways.

But I want to look at these passages and I invite you all to open your Bibles to Romans 16.

I'll just make a couple brief comments.

We're going to sort of go through these fairly rapidly because they all are fairly similar.

Chapter 16, paul is ending his letter.

He's writing to a church that is made up of Gentile believers and Jewish believers and basically trying to figure out how do we do church as a group of people that are so vastly different from each other?

How in the world do we do this?

He gets to the end of his letter and he gives a long list of greetings.

He says you know, greet all these different people for me.

He comes down to verse 16 at the end of this list and he says greet one another with a holy kiss.

All the churches of Christ greet you.

So one thing to note here as we go through these is look at the word holy.

Holy is mentioned in almost all of these and then all the churches of Christ, i think, is.

I just want to emphasize those two things.

Holy basically meaning this is a set apart, it's non-sexual, it's non-lustful, it's a set apart and a sanctified type of expression.

Going on to 1 Corinthians, chapter 16, turn to that as well, please.

1 Corinthians 16 · chapter mention

1 Corinthians 16 comes to the end of his letter to the church in Corinth.

And what were some of the problems that the church in Corinth were facing that Paul talks about?

Like it's a whole list of things.

What are some of the problems that the church in Corinth is facing, that Paul is writing to them about No head coverings.

Okay, there was one back here.

Several issues okay, there was a man who was having sexual relations with his father's wife.

Chaos in meetings.

Okay, almost sort of maybe a little bit like here, but not quite Okay Sectarianism there's a lot of factions and infighting, and some are say I'm of Paul, others say I'm of Apollos, anything else, what's that?

Okay, food offered to idols.

So a lot of the pagan idol culture coming into the church.

Okay, some of the others are just lawsuits, just a lot of fighting.

And then there's also the rich and the poor trying to come together and have church together Slaves and masters, jews and Gentiles.

And he gets to the end of this letter to this incredibly complicated church situation.

He says this verse 20, all the brothers send you greetings, greet one another with a holy kiss.

Okay, there again we see all the brothers, we see greet one another with a holy kiss.

It's set apart, non-sexual, and we'll get into this a little bit later about what that actually meant for the church here.

Second Corinthians 13.

Turn to that as well, please.

There's five portions of scripture in the New Testament where this holy kiss is commanded.

Second Corinthians 13, 11 through 13.

Many brothers rejoice, aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace And the God of love and peace will be with you.

Greet one another with a holy kiss.

All the saints greet you.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit will be with you.

All There again.

Greet one another with a holy kiss.

All the saints greet you.

Turn to the first Thessalonians, 5, 23 through 26.

This is a church that Paul had deep, deep feelings for.

It was one of the churches that he had planted and he had just a real, deep connection to this church.

And he uses the language of family a lot in this letter.

Just a couple things I might actually point out.

Previously, in chapter one of first Thessalonians, in verse six or in his opening to this letter, he says and you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you receive the word in much affliction with the joy of the Holy Spirit, he says.

In chapter two, then, in verse seven, he says But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children, he's.

This language is a language of deep affection for this church, deep, a deep love for this church.

Chapter five, then 23-26.

He says Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely.

May your whole spirit and soul and body and if you have a pen or pencil, actually just if you feel like highlighting it circle those words or underlie them Your whole spirit, your whole body, the soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He who calls you is faithful, he will surely do it.

Brothers, pray for us.

Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss, and one more in 1 Peter 5, verse 14.

1 Peter 5:14

And Brother Paul, brother Sean is actually preaching through this letter right now and look forward to hearing a little bit more about what this letter is all about through him.

But at the end of this letter, peter comes and says something very similar to what Paul has been instructing.

He says Greet one another with a kiss of love, peace to all of you who are in Christ.

So there he uses the language a kiss of love instead of a holy kiss.

One more thing to point out here in 1 Peter 1, the first part of his letter, he again uses this language of brotherly love and this earnest love in 1 Peter, 1, verse 22.

1 Peter 1:22

He says Having purified your souls by obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly, from a pure heart.

And this command for the holy kiss was given in the context of a church.

Churches that were supposed to express a deep affection for each other.

After the New Testament period, the early church, the first several centuries of the church, continued to practice the holy kiss And we see sort of an inside look here at what a church service was like in the second century, in the mid-100s I think it was Justin Marder writes, when they ended the prayers, we salute one another with a kiss.

There is then brought to the president of the brethren bread and a cup of wine mixed with water.

So they would do this in a variety of different ways, but here we see that it seems like they practiced it or they saluted one another with a kiss after prayer right before they went into communion.

This was sort of the pinnacle of the service, where they're coming before the communion table to partake of the blood and the cup and the bread And they express this ritual kiss of brotherly love.

Later, st Augustine in the fourth century says When the sacrifice is finished, we say the Lord's prayer, which you have received and recited.

After this, the quote Peace be with you is said, and the Christians embrace one another with a holy kiss.

This is a sign of peace, as the lips indicate.

Let peace be made in your conscience.

That is, when your lips draw near to those of your brother.

Do not let your heart withdraw from his Hence.

These are great and powerful sacraments.

So we see the practice of the early church, of how they had two instances where they practiced this holy kiss in their services as almost a ritual expression of Paul's command in the New Testament.

Just a couple points.

I wanted to bring out maybe four aspects of the holy kiss that we can learn from the scriptures and from history.

The first one is that the holy kiss is a physical expression of a spiritual reality.

The holy kiss is a physical expression of a spiritual reality.

In the modern West, the times that we live in today, so much of our Christianity or of our religion or of our spirituality is done in our heads.

It's very much a head thing.

As long as you believe the right thing.

All that matters is what you believe and what you think about something.

But God created us in his mind, soul and body.

And the beautiful thing about Christianity and about the church and, i guess, the New Testament and following Jesus, is that so much of our spirituality is not just in our heads.

There are some very physical aspects of our faith And there are seven examples, i think, that illustrate this that we practice that are physical practices that convey a deeper spiritual meaning.

Some of these things are baptism We use water to wash, to be baptized In communion.

We drink wine, we eat bread.

All of these things are very common physical things in our world that convey a deeper spiritual meaning.

We convey humble service by washing each other's feet in communion A deeply humbling and sometimes a little gross depending who you're washing I'm just kidding, but it's a very physical, gritty kind of thing that conveys a deep spiritual reality, unity.

We have love feast, where we eat a meal together to convey this deeper spiritual reality of our spiritual unity.

Marriage we have the sexual union of a husband and a wife coming together And this physical expression of a deep spiritual reality that two have become one Husband and wife have become one.

We see the headship order practiced through the very physical application of the headship covering the veiling of the hair through the head.

Healing James instructs us to heal by anointing with oil, and all of these things are just like.

Well, is it the oil that heals us?

Is it God?

We're not going to get into all of that, but the point is that these very physical practices are convey these multi-layer meanings that are incredibly deep and connect with us in deep ways, and I think the eighth thing that I would point to is the holy kiss.

It's a very physical practice between believers who love each other deeply, that have a deep affection for each other, and that the act of kissing in a non-sexual, a platonic, affectionate type of way conveys this truth, this deep truth that we have a deep love for each other.

Secondly, the holy kiss expresses kinship.

The holy kiss expresses kinship And this idea, i love this idea.

I read a book called Kissing Christians by Michael Penn and he studies this whole topic in the early church And he makes a case that the early church adopted the language of kinship and of family to convey the idea that we are a new family in Christ.

We are in Jesus, we become a family of brothers and sisters who have a deep kinship relationship.

And he makes it the case that the early church adopted the kiss, which was a common greeting between family members of the Greco-Roman society.

He studied I think it was over 900, he looked at 900 different cases throughout the secular Greco-Roman writings or letters where they talk about a kiss.

I think 56% of those instances were between unmarried lovers or something like that.

I think 25% were in a family context.

So it was a common way to greet a family member And he makes a case that the early Christians took this secular, almost like Greco-Roman family greeting and adopted it to express the reality that we are spiritual brothers and sisters in Christ, that we are brothers and sisters in the family of God.

It doesn't matter what your standing was in society before, it doesn't matter where you came from, it doesn't matter who you were before you came to Christ.

Now that you are in Christ, you are my brother, you are my sister, and I will express that with a kiss, physical kiss that expresses my deep, brotherly, familial love for you.

Thank you.

They would point to Matthew 12.

Turn to actually go ahead and turn to that, please.

I see time is running away from me here a little bit.

This is Matthew 12.

Jesus brothers and his mom come out to meet him.

Someone says hey, your mom, your brothers are here.

He replies to the one who tells him that.

He says who is my mother and who are my brothers?

He looks up, stretches out his hand.

This is verse 46 through 50.

He stretches out his hand towards his disciples and he says here, these people right here, these are my mother and my brothers, my sisters.

This is my new family, these are my true family members.

The early church would point to this passage and say that they would adopt this language in family terms and adopted it for the church.

A powerful reality that reinforced this kiss, reinforced the idea were a family, were kin.

Fourthly, or thirdly, that the Holy Kiss erases cultural barriers.

More than anything else, i think the Holy Kiss was physically, invisibly conveyed the idea that we all have a seat at the table.

It doesn't matter where you came from.

Before You might have been the town prostitute who was exploited, who was touched in all of the wrong ways, who was never touched with the true love.

But now you're my sister, you're part of my family, you're my family, you're my sister in Christ And you deserve to be touched with true worth, with true love through the Holy Kiss.

Imagine a slave in the Greco-Roman society who began to follow Jesus.

Maybe he was part of a congregation where maybe even his master was also part of that church.

And all of a sudden, this slave who had no standing in society, all of a sudden is elevated to the place where he's worthy of being kissed out of a deep affection and deep love.

It's powerful.

It's amazing how this Holy Kiss physically, in a way, erased these social barriers.

Think of, maybe, a soldier who would persecute another believer and who, down the road, became a Christian, started to follow Jesus, joined the church.

All of a sudden, i'm instructed to kiss all the brothers with the Holy Kiss and I'm like this guy destroyed my family.

Also, i'm kissing him.

It's powerful ideas that conveys just a belonging in the family of God.

And fourthly, the Holy Kiss is a practice for today And now.

Before you guys all pick up stones to throw at me, we'll get through this.

I want to talk about some of the objections that we struggle with Peter Neid.

He was a brethren writer.

He says I will venture to say that we have not in the Bible or Testament a plainer command of anything than that of the observance of the Holy Kiss.

I will venture to say we have not in the Bible or Testament a plainer command of anything than that of the observance of the Holy Kiss.

Okay, so we talked about how that the early church practiced it for hundreds of years.

Later, in the 1500s, the Anabaptists revived the practice in a very literal, radical way.

Many denominations in churches today admit or teach the reality behind the Holy Kiss and as a way that we should practice it within our own cultural context.

The physical kiss is still practiced in several Orthodox Eastern Orthodox churches, so I will get into this a little bit here.

Just some common objections.

I believe the Holy Kiss is a practice for today and I will admit that I'm wrestling with some of this myself, that these objections I've come up with are ones that I've thought myself and I've wrestled through myself, and I feel like I'm still wrestling with.

So three common objections.

The first one is very common.

I just heard this yesterday in a discussion.

But people are going to think I'm gay.

People are going to think we're a bunch of we're gay.

What do we do with this?

I actually want to spend a little bit of time on this one, because it's one that's probably the biggest objection, and I think, first of all, i think we should understand why.

Why do we think of the Holy Kiss in that way, like why is that our first reaction?

And I think it's important for us to understand the time, the place that we live in today, in our society.

So in America, physical touch amongst closed friends used to be a much more common thing before the 1900s.

If you look at pictures in the 1800s and earlier.

I'll just show you a couple here.

Same-sex friends would take go into the studio and take pictures together And you can just tell from the pictures they were way more comfortable touching each other than we are today as men.

And the reason for that is that in the 1900s, with the rise of the, of the, with the gay rights, the LGBTQ plus movement, we became paranoid as men especially became very afraid to appear, to appear to be gay, to be accused of looking gay, and so what we've done is we've lost.

We've lost.

We've become so paranoid of touching other men because we don't want to appear that way.

It was not always so.

Here's a couple pictures taken in the time of the 1800s.

So you see a bunch of buddies, very comfortable, even holding hands, and to us we look at that one, we're like what in the world, like this is like back in the black and white pictured era.

The reality is that in that time homosexuality as an identity was.

That concept wasn't even around yet.

Homosexuality was a thing you did with somebody else.

It wasn't an identity, that that you had.

In the 1900s, the whole the rise of homosexual, homosexuality as an identity, as a person you are, came to the rise and therefore men in western society became way less comfortable touching each other In.

If you go to the eastern, the middle east, asia, some countries in Africa when I was in Thailand actually, i saw this quite a bit and to our western eyes it's a little bit like you're taking it back a little bit because you're not really expecting it amongst like just friends, buddies are very comfortable holding hands.

We're not.

It's just, it's been we've run away from physical touch between close friends because of that.

So I think I just point this out to say I think this is why we have the somewhat visceral reaction to the holy kiss.

It's a culture we live in and that culture has, i guess, we it's become very difficult for us to practice it without thinking about this.

So I guess a couple things I would point out with with the holy kiss is this is that we live in a shameless culture, in a culture that in a broader culture that doesn't really shock anybody anymore.

There is some of that, but we live in a shameless culture where nothing is really shocking anymore.

And to this I would almost say people will think I'm gay, so what?

Okay, i'll be careful how I say that too.

The reality is that when we practice this, we're practicing it in a local church setting, within our own body of believers.

And for some of you who've come in from the outside and have experienced or I've seen it, i'm sure you've had, like what's going on here, like what's happening here, but you're still here, like why didn't you run away?

I think most people, when they hear the explanation for it, you point them to Scripture and say this is what Paul said, this is how we practice it and why people understand, even if they're disturbed by it, as we sometimes are ourselves.

I think the second objection is but germs, and to that one I would say if you've had children, like I've become very comfortable cleaning my baby's diapers while eating breakfast at the same time, like it's just germs, don't scare me.

I think we live in a very clean society, a germaphobic society, where we're freaked out by germs And so that in our minds it's a mental thing, it's like I just don't want to do that, it's just gross.

I would say we wash each other's feet, we kiss our spouses, we clean up after our children's messes.

I think the holy kiss practiced on a Sunday morning, i think, is something we can overcome the fear of germs with that, i think.

Thirdly, this objection is one that I probably struggle with the most And I'm still trying to figure some of this out.

Question is this but isn't a handshake or a hug our present day cultural equivalent of the holy kiss?

So first century they had the kiss.

Today we have the handshake.

And this is when I want more discussion around, maybe after the service.

A couple of things I've thought about is would you, who are our parents, would you be willing to if I ask you to give up kissing your children and instead only hug them?

would you be willing to do that?

No, why not?

It's not the same.

Okay, okay, yeah, deeper affection, i would say I love kissing my children.

They are the most precious things to me, and a kiss communicates something subtly different than a hug.

There's a tenderness and a like, a very vulnerable almost.

It's a very tender action.

That basically says communicates.

You are extremely precious to me.

You are the most precious thing to me in the world.

I think the holy kiss can be that amongst brothers and sisters.

You are precious to me.

I value you so much because you're my brother in Christ.

By all means, don't stop hugging and shaking hands.

I think if you've experienced a hug by Conrad Troyer you would say yeah, please don't.

He communicates tender affection with his hugs.

I think we should be open minded to incorporating and embracing the holy kiss as well in our distinctly Christian greetings of affection.

John Piper says this.

He says when asked about the holy kiss, he says first, let's do it.

Surprising, you know he's a reform pastor.

He says first let's do it.

He says I mean, even if the hug and the handshake today in my culture are more common amongst Christians in the West, it still seems to me that we don't have to resist learning something from our cultures and places and times.

In fact, we might do well to broaden our possible expression of affection.

There are two men in my life who kiss me when I see them I don't see them but once or twice a year sometimes and they kiss me on the cheek after these months of separation.

There used to be three and now my father is in heaven, so there are only two now And frankly it means a great deal to me that these brothers put a kiss on my cheek.

Both of them are manly, thoughtful, self-controlled guys.

It means one thing You, john Piper, are precious to me.

I value our friendship very highly, though we don't see each other very often.

This is what it means As God's people, as people of God, we're going to experience tension with a broader culture.

We're just weird sometimes.

In the world's eyes We're just like we just do weird things.

That just doesn't make sense to the world.

We love our enemies, we turn the other cheek.

We forgive our enemies and those who hurt us.

We wear head coverings.

It's just weird in the world's eyes.

But what I would say is that we have a compelling message to a world that is lonely, isolated, that is increasingly over-sexualized and also pushing people into isolation.

I think we have a radical scriptural precedent that lays out counter-cultural implications And when it's written out in Scripture, i think we should try to live those out, regardless sort of of what the culture thinks.

We don't just do things differently than the culture just for the sake of being different.

But when it is spelled out in Scripture, i think we should be willing to push into that and willing to at least entertain the idea.

Maybe we should do this, maybe we should consider practicing this, since it's laid out in Scripture.

So we will end here very shortly.

Just a couple questions around how should we practice the Holy Kiss?

How should we practice this?

So, first of all, men with men, women with women, and it's interesting, there was a lot of variety in how the early church practiced it.

Early on, they did it between men and women, in some cases men and women kissing each other, and because of this some of them were accused of being sexually promiscuous.

They were also accused of cannibalism because they were drinking blood.

This didn't keep them from doing it Later.

Some churches kissed hands or feet, some kissed on the lips, others just on the cheek.

The point is this is that Peter and Paul, the scriptures, don't tell us exactly how we should do it.

They don't spell it out for us, which is frustrating because I wish sometimes we would have those things, like so many of the other commands.

The point is this is that the early church they practiced it in a variety of different ways.

They practiced the actual command to kiss.

So, men with men, women with women, closed lips, cheek to cheek, lips to cheek.

Please avoid kissing each other on the lips And I would say, push through the awkwardness, because, boy is it awkward.

If we're not used to it, it just is, but I would say it's something, that feeling of awkwardness can be overcome.

It's like watching somebody eat sushi for the first time.

It's just like there's just like.

I don't know about this, i'm just not sure, But like a year later you meet them down there, you go out with them for sushi because it's just like they just love it.

It's a bad analogy, but the point is this the awkward, the icky factor can be overcome, like that can be overcome.

So when should we do it?

When should we practice this?

I think, at the very least here again, paul and Peter, they don't say exactly how, when it should be done.

It appears that it means whenever you see each other.

I think, at the very least at Grace Point.

We should practice it And I would propose that we practice it at the very least at community services Okay, no stones are getting thrown at me yet, but this should be an ongoing conversation At the very least, community services, after feet washing, i think, when we greet each other on normal Sunday mornings And I'm going to go ahead and invite that for myself from you all If you feel comfortable doing that.

I think it's a radical thing, that is weird, strange in our culture, but it's a beautiful symbol and expression of brotherly love When you greet other Christians after a long parting, like John Piper was talking about his friends that he sees every now and then.

In closing, i think we should remember that we're in our culture, we're strange people, but we have a compelling message of Jesus, the message of the gospel, that Jesus came to bring about a new humanity, to fix broken people, to change lives from the inside out, and in doing so, we gather as people who've been changed by Jesus And we are part of his family.

Now I have fathers here, i have younger brothers here, i have mothers here, i have a family, and I think the Holy Kiss is a powerful, distinctly Christian, visible sign and practice expression that expresses that deep love for each other as God's family.

I'm going to close with prayer, but I would invite you all with a testimony time, especially some of you maybe who came in from the outside, who observed the Holy Kiss, maybe when you were younger.

What was that like for you?

And maybe what were those conversations like?

What was that like seeing it for the first time And why did you not just run away?

But yeah, i invite pushback, i invite discussion around this topic, because it's something that I'm trying to figure out myself.

Before prayer, i have actually asked Toby Miller to come on up and do a little demonstration of the Holy Kiss.

I haven't done this since I was like 16.

I love you, brother.

Let's bring it back.

Let's do it, It's worth it.

All right, let's stand for prayer, please.

Oh God, we thank you that we are part of your family and that we are brothers and sisters of a messy family, a family that makes a lot of mistakes and that gets a lot of things wrong.

But, father, we just want to seek to apply a deep brotherly affection for each other in a way that honors you, that stays true to Scripture.

I pray that you would give us wisdom and guidance in this area.

It's tough for us, it's awkward and it just feels strange, but I pray that, at the very least, a heart behind it of a deep love for each other, that we could experience that here at Grace Point, that we could practice this type of brotherly love.

May the Lord bless you in Jesus' name, amen.