Grading Our Goals for Greeting—Are We Doing it Right?
Scripture's repeated commands to greet one another aren't just talking about visitors. If we limit these commands to visitors only, we would be trivializing what the command to greet one another is really all about.
Of course, visitors should be welcomed; there’s no question about that. But the command to greet one another addresses deeper relational concerns.
Friendliness is fine, but fellowship is our goal.
The goal for our greetings is that they are authentic and heartfelt, graced by God and unhindered by the sabotaging behaviors of self.
When we think of a greeting, we usually think of a pleasant exchange of polite words. “Hi! How are you?”
“Fine, just fine, thank you,” comes the expected reply.
So, is this what God is so concerned to preserve? I don’t mean to demean the cordial language of public life, but it does seem somewhat superficial, doesn’t it?
Levels of Communication
You are aware that we communicate with each other on various levels.
First, there is the ritual level. On this level we exchange our hellos and good-byes, attempting to be polite, social, and friendly.
What we say on this level is reserved for acquaintances, for the most part. It certainly has no depth, no matter how well-intentioned these communications may be.
Another level of communications is what we might call pastimes. This is elevator talk, or the kind of talk we may engage at social settings.
Such communications have more substance than our ritual exchanges, but, as such, these reveal little of a person’s heart.
For men, this talk may include sports, politics, or some hobby. It is typical for men to be comfortable with this level of talk as long as they have “topic security.”
For women, this talk might include family, travel, or craft ideas. Not to be stereotypical, we acknowledge that the conversational range for women may be greater than what appeals to men.
Still another level of communication is intimacy. Intimacy involves the sharing of the inner life, especially those thoughts and feelings at the deepest part of one’s heart.
Intimacy discloses aspects of our life that other levels of communication conceal.
But because intimacy involves vulnerability, and perhaps risks rejection, many people prefer these other levels (the ritual or pastime) or, worse still, no communication (an activity or withdrawal).
Many men like the activity level. They can work side-by-side with other men all morning, say very little, and fill their small quotient for relationship.
The hello-nice-to-see-you-you-all-come-back level of communication is fine, as is the sharing of various experiences and opinions. But foundational to the Bible’s fivefold command to greet one another is this call to intimacy.
In more than one instance the command to greet one another includes the words “with a holy kiss” (I Corinthians 16:20; II Corinthians 13:12; Romans 16:16).
I Peter 5:14 speaks similarly, instructing us to greet one another with the kiss of love. This kiss is to convey genuine affection, an exuberance triggered by seeing this person again.
Faking Friendship
The “kissy, kissy” greetings of Hollywood, where faces turn and kiss the air, is as fake as it looks. We certainly don’t want that!
When thinking about greeting with a kiss and this issue of sham intimacy, we immediately recall how the kiss of Judas masked a breach of friendship, and hideously hid a fresh alliance with evil.
Wanting no more of that, John Henry Jowett wrote:
To use a kiss in the ministry of betrayal is like using a sacramental cup to poison a friend. The very worst form of devilry is that which garbs itself in the robes of an angel of light. Evil which wears its own clothes is sufficiently repulsive, but it is not nearly so repulsive as when it counterfeits goodness, and decks itself in adornments stolen from the wardrobe of virtue.
Even today there are those puckered lips which speak evil in secret:
those bright eyes which hide dark thoughts,
those sweet tones borrowed from the theater and not from truth,
those warm embraces that make physically closer two hearts that are not close.
All these stage a sham that declares Judas didn’t die after all!
We certainly don’t want that in the church!
We also don’t want the erection of relational barriers, which, even though invisible, block the spontaneity and joy that the kiss was supposed to communicate.
If something like this is going on in our churches today, what do you suppose the greeting between two such people would be like?
Would it have the spontaneity of joy that the kiss of love is supposed to convey? No, it wouldn’t, for the undealt with past has taken the air out of those tires.
Due to this emotional investing in the negative, there would be something in the intangibles that would hold each person back.
Are you now beginning to understand why the Lord gave this “one another” command five times?
It is because the meeting and eating we do with each other will mean nothing—unless, in the Lord’s love, we start greeting each other in the right way, wherein all that dictated distancing has now been dealt with successfully.
