There's No App For Greeting

I'm gonna read. This is a really weird Sunday at CTK. So if you are here, this is your first Sunday, don't judge it all by what happens in this service. But we're gonna read five short passages just one after the next. If you would join me, it's our practice to read God's word out loud. So we're not even gonna read the citations. We're just gonna go from one to the next. Okay? So would you join me as we read God's word. It's printed in your bulletin on the screen.

Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ send you greetings. All the brothers and sisters send you greetings. Greet one another with a holy kiss. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints send you greetings. Greet all the brothers and sisters with a holy kiss. Greet one another with a kiss of love. Peace to all of you who are in Christ.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Do you get the point? Who here is a good kisser? I know you're not supposed to ask that question in church. You've never been asked that question in church. Anybody a good kisser? Come on. You don't need to be embarrassed. Okay. Come on. Yeah. Alright.

Do you enjoy those Bible readings? You know, it's not my normal practice to pick verses from various books. We usually take a passage and we work through it. And so if you're annoyed by this today, humor me for once. Okay? We're just gonna try this one time. But I want you to get the point: God loves holy kissing. God loves it. For this to be repeated in all these epistles by a couple of different authors, and for this to be—it's not just a sign off at the end of the letter. It's really important. Who we greet matters. How we greet one another matters.

So here's my outline. Again, if this is troubling to you, just come back another Sunday. We'll be back to normal. Okay? But who to kiss, how to be a good kisser, how to be a bad kisser, and then the best kisser. Okay? Hang in. I'm sorry. I'm kind of cheeky. I've been in a business meeting all week for our denomination.

Who We Are to Kiss

Now of all the passages we read, the one from the book of Romans has the most context around it. Years ago I preached through the book of Romans. We came to this. We talked about this very subject. And the book of Romans, the last chapter there, chapter 16, gives this interesting catalog of all these names—all these different names whom you and I don't know. But the study of those names tells us who we're to greet. There are 26 names in this group and there's a lot of diversity.

First, there's ethnic and racial diversity. A bunch of these names are clearly Greek, probably gentile, and a number of the other ones are Jewish. And yet Paul, who's a staunch Jew—he calls them in that passage, my kin, family. There's class diversity. There are two names here, Aristobulus and Narcissus, who are described as of the household of Caesar. They are serving in the royal household. High class. And then there are two other names, Urbanus and Ampliatus, who are of the household of Narcissus. They were household slaves. Class diversity.

There's gender diversity. Of 26 names in this list, nine are women. And Paul doesn't greet the women like at the end—like, "Hey bros, and now a couple of the women I want to nod to." No. He calls the women in this passage his fellow workers in the gospel, co-laborers. And they're peppered throughout. And clearly he thinks it's appropriate in some way to give the holy kiss of greeting to men and women.

Now this is what's so remarkable about this. We're like, "Okay. Yeah. I get it. Kissing passages." There's a writer, commentator on particularly the passage in First Peter that says this: The New Testament is unique in all the books of the first century, all the documents of the first century. The New Testament gives instruction to a mixed social group to greet one another with a holy kiss. Nobody was doing this. There was not such a level playing field anywhere else in the first century like the church.

In other words, there is for us to apply this morning a radical, timeless, countercultural welcome we're called to live out as God's people. This is really important.

How to Be a Good Kisser

So how to be a good kisser? This is point number two. Lake Street Dive has a great song called "Good Kisser," and it's about a girl who's kind of talking to her ex-boyfriend. She says, "If you're going to tell them everything, tell them I'm a good kisser." So how do we become good kissers in the church?

Don't you want to be a good kisser? The answer says yes. Come on, people. Hang in with me. Alright.

I know this is weird and it may make some of you uncomfortable. I'm doing this on purpose, and I want to feel a little of the discomfort of this passage. Because it's easy for us, I think, to explain away parts of the Bible that feel really distant to us. Like, "Oh, we don't do that anymore." Careful. This is important.

And how we think about this matters. Don't joke this way. Don't say, "Well, surely this means Paul is talking about in our context shaking hands." Now, I am not literally calling you to start kissing one another on a Sunday. Don't worry. But I don't think a fist bump is exactly what's in line for what it means to apply this today.

I'm going to, of course, remind you that we need in the church to be really careful and wise. Some of you are already like, "You better give caveats." Yes. I'm giving caveats. Right? We need to respect social norms. We need to ask a person consent before we give a hug. "Can I give you a hug?" We need to be careful with propriety. All that. Yes. Caveat out of the way.

But the social import of kissing matters. And I want you to think about what a kiss implies. A kiss is intimate, and it's risky, and it's potentially embarrassing, and it's warm. So whatever way we determine what it means to apply this in our context in the twenty-first century, there needs to be something that conveys that kind of warmth and that kind of welcome in the way that we greet one another. That matters.

The Loneliness Epidemic

Now, can I remind you that we live in one of the most lonely moments in modern history? One of the contributing factors to that—and it's rightly a corrective—is that all touch is deemed dangerous. And of course, there have been abuses in lots of churches and lots of leadership settings where people have touched other people inappropriately. Absolutely. If you work in a classroom, social services, church, office environment, you've got to be careful about how any touch is construed. And we need to be really careful about how we think about that.

But one of the unintended consequences of this is that some people are never touched. I mean, some of you are parents with little kids and you're touched all the time. You're like, "I would love to not be touched for a few hours. Leave me alone. I can't even be myself in the bathroom. Somebody's touching me all the time." But that's not everybody. Everybody needs physical touch.

A study a couple years ago by Carnegie Mellon confirmed that a healthy embrace lowers stress levels and boosts your immune system. Another study said that individuals who frequently embrace had lower levels of blood pressure. Warm embraces have been found to increase the production of oxytocin in the body.

On an episode of a podcast that I really like called Hidden Brain, they describe the loneliness epidemic in America. And a man who was so not touched ever that he would take to holding and hugging a pillar in his house—a load bearing pillar in his living room—just to feel something. He said, "I know this is ridiculous. I know this isn't the same thing, but I just am lonely."

And we know people who are lonely. This is why they bring animals into assisted living. And there are people who never get touched, and that's a hard thing. And that may not rise to the level for you of a four-alarm fire, but this really matters.

And here's my question: What if the gospel actually calls us to and provides for something that we desperately need in this area?

The Welcome of the Church

As a church, I want to remind you, people always evaluate a congregation by its welcome—by how we greet one another. Before they get to hear a sermon or evaluate the children's ministry or the music, people walking through the doors of a church always evaluate a church on the basis of its welcome. "Did anybody remember my name when I came back? Or have I been going to the same church for nine months and people still don't know me?" People evaluate our God on that as well. They make conclusions about our God based on the welcome of believers and what we're like.

So one practical outworking of the gospel is a warm physical touch. Now let me show you where I'm getting that.

Romans 16 takes place at the end of the book of Romans, and almost all the epistles of the New Testament work this way. They all have a greeting, a theological treatise, and then a therefore. And the therefore is sort of the hinge of the book—it turns to practical applications.

In the book of Romans, this is in Romans chapter 12, verse one:

Therefore, in view of God's mercy, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. — Romans 12:1

Do you hear how personal that is? We think of that as like, "Okay, that's about fighting sin."

What if that's also about offering my body as a living sacrifice by the way I greet someone else? I know that's kind of a weird interpretation, but I think that's in line exactly with the book of Romans. Because this theology is true: here's how I use my body to express God's welcome to other people. And this is a way that we need to be not conformed to the pattern of the world, but transformed by the renewing of our mind.

Three Ingredients to Being a Good Greeter

So three ingredients to becoming a good kisser. You ready?

First is you have to love people. God loves people because people are made in his image. I had a church planting mentor when I was planting a church in Philly who used to say this all the time: "You know what God finds beautiful? A subway car full of people. You know what God finds beautiful? A crowd waiting in line at the DMV." We're like, yuck. This summertime, you don't go to find a crowd somewhere. You go to take pictures of trees and beaches, and you go to look at mountains and you want to be out away from people because that's what we think is beautiful. God thinks people are beautiful because they're made in his image. That's what he loves. And if we're people who rightly understand the gospel, we're people who love people made in God's image.

Second ingredient, you have to have a sense of humor. Do you ever go in for the hug, handshake, and you don't know what we're doing? It's embarrassing. This week I saw several old friends and I'm like, I'm not sure what you want to do with me. But a sense of humor—like, I act like an idiot. Who cares?

Third, you have to have a deep security of who you are in Christ. This isn't about how I perform. This isn't about how I come across. This isn't even about me. It's about expressing the welcome of God to another person. So that's how to be a good kisser.

Bad Kissing

Let's talk about how to be a bad kisser. I'm going to apologize—a little cheeky this morning. So there's some bad kissing around and I have two categories. We're going to talk about who we kiss that's bad kissing and some bad kissing syndromes.

First bad kissing category: We just greet people like us. We only greet people who are like us. We look at the world and we evaluate other people on the basis of how they're dressed, whether they're put together. Is this a person that I think is worthy of my time and energy? Or am I willing to greet people who are different from me?

We're going to study First Samuel this fall where God tells us he looks at the heart. He looks at the inside, not the outside. And it's a problem where we are in a city where we tend to just be with those who are like us. So let me magnify this. Who do we need to greet?

Yous. That is young adults. Yous—this is teenagers. Some of the most interesting people in this church are teenagers. But this is what happens a lot of times, and I have this on good authority from six sons who've grown up in this congregation: "Where are you going to college?" Nobody wants to answer that question. No teenager I know—the least important interesting thing about them is where they're going to college. They don't want to tell you about that. Ask them things about what they like to do and what they're involved in. Ask them if they watched similar shows than you. Come up with something, people. Greet the Yous among us. It really matters.

POWs. Now I'm not talking here about prisoners of war, although we can make some connections. We're talking about pastors' outstanding wives. Everybody in this church seems to know who I am and James Sutton. A lot of you know Elliot Grudem as well. But nobody seems to know our spouses very well. And it's not just a CTK thing. One of the most invisible and difficult roles in any church—and you can ask this, in fact you'd make a lot of friends if you asked pastors' wives this—"How hard is it to be a pastor's wife?" It is impossible. There are people who have known my wife here for fifteen years who don't talk to her. These are people who would love to get to know you. Their names are Susan, my wife Katie, James' wife Casey, Elliot's wife Lindsey, Paul's wife. It's really important.

POCs: People of color. One of the things that's really important about how we greet is we greet people who are ethnic minorities. Four Sundays ago, a woman came to our church, an African American woman, sat in the back here and nobody talked to her. And Danny introduced her to me and he said, "You know, nobody said hi to her this morning." Shouldn't be.

MMWDGWs. Married men who don't greet women. This is an outgrowth of the Billy Graham rule in churches.

So can I just say if you're a married man, not every woman around you is a sexual predator? They are nice people and greeting women is one of the things that I look for in an elder candidate. As a man who can look a woman in the eye and have an intelligent conversation with her. That's really important.

Finally, last one, Baptists. This is very CTK specific, but we are about to receive the deed to this building. We're gonna continue to have a long relationship with the Little Baptist Church that owns this property now and is giving it to us, and they'll continue to worship here. I preached for their church last Sunday, and there was a woman sitting right here in the second row who's 95, who was a lifelong golfer. She was fascinating. I love talking to her. She's like, don't you just can't you just wait to go to heaven? I can't wait to see what heaven's gonna be like. And I was like, oh my gosh, what a dear person. But the Baptists that are right now having Sunday school next door, they want to know you. And I hope you'll take the time to get to know folks from Temple Baptist. It really matters.

Kissing Disorders

Let's talk about kissing disorders. Now I have several of these. First one, chronic sitting syndrome. This is during gospel hospitality where you don't get up. I'm working on this. I'm going to have electric wires put in all the pews and I've got a little clicker that I'm going to use that's just going to encourage you to stand during gospel hospitality. No one sits unless you have trouble standing during gospel hospitality. You got it?

Second, wallflower syndrome. Which is I'm waiting for you to come greet me. This is middle school dance. I'm waiting for you to come up to me. Nobody's going to come. So it's your turn. It's on you. Get over your wallflowerness and go find somebody. Find one person.

ITP syndrome. Now this is not ITB. This is not inside the belt line. ITP syndrome are people who are insider talk people. So they come up to you and somebody else talking and they reference something that only two of you know about. And immediately the person who's also part of this conversation is like, thanks. I don't know what you're talking about. I wasn't at that. I wasn't part of that years ago. And it's rude. Find a way to include people.

Dance cutting syndrome is when two people are talking and a third person's like, oh, I want to see my friend. They're talking and I'm gonna go up and stand next to them and I'm just gonna talk to my friend and I'm gonna pretend like they weren't talking to this person. I'm going to cut them out of the dance. I'm taking your dance partner, your conversation partner, and we're going away from you and we're leaving you out.

Finally, Irish goodbye syndrome. This is the Irish among us who slip out during gospel hospitality to go to the bathroom. Like the Irish goodbye. I'm out of here. Don't want to see. Look. Find somebody in the bathroom to talk to. And if you're doing it to yourself, if you're talking to somebody in the bathroom and it feels uncomfortable, you have only yourself to blame because you left the room.

Three Rules for Good Kissing

So don't despair. You can be a good kisser. I have hope for this congregation. I have three rules for you. I'm getting this from Rebecca McLaughlin for engaging with attending our church on a Sunday.

Number one, an alone person in our gathering is an emergency. Somebody standing by themselves. Somebody sitting by themselves. Can I sit with you? Hey, are you new? That's an emergency. And it's not my emergency. I'm putting this burden on you because this is a one anothering thing for all of us. That's an emergency for us.

Number two. Friends can wait. This is what happens. We go to church and we're like, I haven't seen someone in so long. You can call them. I give you permission. You can have them over. It's perfectly okay. But that's not the best time to connect when we're in here. Friends can wait.

Third, introduce a newcomer to somebody else. That means knowing a name and an interesting person.

The Best Kisser

In the musical Fiddler on the Roof, there's an old man named Tevye and he's got his wife and a couple daughters who are marrying off. And he's watching his daughters fall in love and get married off. And so he turns to his wife of twenty-five years and he says, honey, do you love me? And she's incensed by this. She's like, do I love you? I mean for twenty-five years I've washed your clothes. I've cooked your meals. I've cleaned your house. I've given you children. I've milked your cow. After twenty-five years, why are we talking about love now? Do I love him?

For twenty five years, I've lived with him, fought with him, starved with him. For twenty five years, my bed has been his. If that's not love, what is? And he says, "So you love me?"

Now what's remarkable about that to me is I think a lot of Christians are like that. If you've been in the church a long time, one of the biggest problems that I have as a preacher every Sunday is I wish I could come out and shake every one of you and say, Jesus really does love you and you don't believe it. We're like people who say, "I've been here. I've been serving. I've been doing all the things. I've been around the church for twenty five years." And yet it is not wrong for what Ruth wants—a personal sense of God's love. That's actually what I pray for regularly as I preach to this congregation. That you would know in your deepest bones that God loves you and delights in you.

Sometimes I think one of the reasons we don't kiss, we don't welcome, we don't greet in a warm way, is we're just not very sure of this ourselves.

The Best Kisser

An old preacher named Charles Spurgeon, the year before he died, went back and preached through the prodigal son story. He kept going back to it over and over again because you could tell it grabbed something in him that he could not get past. He did a whole sermon on the best kisser.

In the prodigal son story, the father looks down the road for his lost son, and when he sees him he runs and he kisses him. But Spurgeon imagines this scene going on and on. He says, when the boy came back to the house he kissed him in greeting. Then when the son sat at the table, the father just would keep getting up and going over and kissing him. He'd sit back down. He'd be like, "I'm okay. I'm done." Now he's got to get up and give him another kiss. He'd sit back down, just enjoying the sight of his son so much. He's like, "I must give him another kiss."

And Spurgeon says this: that story, the fact that Jesus showed this—this is what God is like. God loves to kiss his children. He adores his children. This tells us two things about God.

First, it tells us repeated blessing. God's repeated blessing on you. "You're mine. You're home. I love you."

Second, it tells us repeated delight. Like the father who just couldn't stay where he was, he had to run to his son—just like Spurgeon imagines the father getting up over and over to kiss his son—this is how your heavenly Father is toward you.

One of the saddest deficiencies in our theology is when we think that God is an angry father who only loves us because Jesus sort of mollified his father on the cross. Jesus was sent to this earth to die on the cross because of the Father's incredible, lavish love for sinners. For you. I wish I could get this through us. I wish sometimes I could shake you and say, He really loves you. I know that wouldn't do anything. But this is what it means to be a Christian—to know in your very bones, this is the way the Father is towards you. This is how the Father is toward each and every one of you.

The gospel never comes to us with an address label that says "dear addressee." It's always with your name on it. We're told the God of the universe knows every hair on your heads. He knows everything about you.

Psalm 139 gives us this catalog of how immensely the Father knows you.

And it's not just a knowing, it's a delighting.

Why We Need to Be Greeters

This is why we need to be greeters. Who we greet matters. It matters because it tells us something about what we believe. It tells us whether we really believe that God loves without prejudice, without merit, without looking for qualifications. He loves you because he loves you because he loves you. Not because you're moral or intelligent or you pulled it together or you got it right or you've been serving in the church. He loves you because he loves you because he loves you.

When we welcome one another we're saying that. We're saying God loves you because he loves you. Welcome. Part of the family.

Whether or not we greet matters. Now I know some of you are like, "My dance card is full of friends. I can barely keep up with the people in my life." But there is still something that can come off of you on a Sunday morning toward other people that doesn't communicate "I don't have any more time." Just welcome. I am so glad you're here. It's important. You're important enough for me to remember your name. That matters.

And finally, how we greet matters. Remembering. Calling up people. Following up with them when they disappear.

So can we each take a step? I'm going to finish the sermon with a Tommy Boy quote for you. My prayer is that we would become more and more a Tommy Boy church.

I know some of you have no idea what I'm talking about, but brothers don't shake hands. Brothers got a hug. In the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit. Amen.

Let's pray. Father, pray that you would teach us to be people who are so taken with your love for sinners, your love for us, that we would be those who greet others. Help us, Father. Lord, help us to move past self and self preoccupation. Lord, we thank you for the love of God for sinners. That you're like the father in the prodigal son story. He can't stop kissing. Lord, would you teach us to be holy kissers? We pray in Christ's name. Amen.

Let's respond to God's word together in song.