GIVING AND RECEIVING PEACE

We think that the absence of conflict and war equals peace. The Bible is much more nuanced. Peace does mean that there is no war. It also means well being, prosperity for your clan, your crops, and your cattle. It means harmony and contentment. Shalom is a great gift from God and a great challenge for Israel. Sometimes it holds out the olive branch of amnesty and forgiveness. Other times it means resting the land during times of Jubilee.

When the Risen Christ appeared to his disciples, he promised them peace. Even though he bears the marks of torture and the scars violently etched into his flesh, he offers peace. This peace is freely given, not as the world gives peace, but as God gives peace. Vengeance yields to mercy and hatred is replaced by peace. Those following in the footsteps of Christ are bearers of biblical peace. Peace and reconciliation are kissing cousins.

We give and receive the peace of Jesus Christ before we receive the bread and the cup of the eucharist at the Lord's table. We express this in a ritual gesture of an embrace, a handshake, or a kiss. Originally the gesture was a kiss. The Sacred Kiss was an exchange of breath. What inspirited one Christian was symbolically conveyed to another by the exchange of spirit and breath. However, the Sacred Kiss ran the risk of becoming profane. Eventually it dropped out of the ritual. Since 1969 it has been restored. The exchange of spirit has been replaced by a gesture of peace by means of a handshake or embrace. Apparently we moderns similarly risk profaning what is sacred, too!

Since the exchange of peace occurs before table sharing, it conveys a sense of reconciliation, of conscious peace makings, of getting relationships right so that the slate is clean. The hands are open to receive both peace and eucharistic food and drink. The handclasp of peace replaces the fist of violence and the terrifying menace of aggressive behavior. Instead it warmly engages the hands of migrant farms with the hands of university professors, the hands of children with the hands of grandparents, and the hands disfigured with pain with hands soft and smooth. Peace sharing cannot be an insincere or empty gesture. If that were the case, if the peace given were counterfeit and mendacious, than the kiss would be that of Judas. What passed for life would be death dealing.

We usually think of peace making in smaller, manageable units, such as between a few people. But peace is literally sought by thousands of peoples everywhere on earth today. Those whose lands are covered in crimson from wars, those whose hands are raised in rage from frustration because there are no jobs and no justice, and those whose hands cover their stained faces, seek some kind of peace. How disruptive it must be to in the U.S., a place of plenty, and have to move again to follow pathways of political and economic migration. There are, conservatively, twenty million political refugees and eighty to a hundred million uprooted refugees in the world today. This is unprecedented in world history. Small tokens of peace, exchanges of hands repeated in many small groups are signals of a global movement towards world peace. This ritual gesture is powerful and humble a move toward peace and hospitality.