bored of peace?

One of the many things I love about the parish I serve is how long it takes the congregation to pass the peace. In many churches in the US, at the peace folks will stay nestled in their pew and only greet the people in their immediate vicinity. Not at All Saints’! Here, it’s as if the captain has turned off the fasten seatbelt sign and all are suddenly free to move about the cabin. Which is a beautiful thing.

As some more seasoned Episcopalians will remember, before the 1979 revision of the Book of Common Prayer, the ritual of the passing of the peace was absent from all Episcopal liturgies. In fact, until the latter half of the twentieth century, it had been absent from all Western (i.e., both Roman Catholic and Protestant) liturgies. And perhaps for some good reason.

It is thought by some that the practice has its roots in certain New Testament passages that exhort Christians to “greet one another with a holy kiss.” Whether or not this is the case, by the fifth century or so, the exchange of the kiss of peace—enacted between the liturgy of the word and the celebration of Holy Communion—became a fixture in the Latin liturgy.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, by the late Middle Ages (at least in England), the passing of the peace had turned into a means of reinforcing local social hierarchies. Instead of kissing one another directly, the people would kiss a wooden or silver plate known as a paxbrede (“peace board”) and pass it around the sanctuary—in order of “importance.” The clergy would kiss it first and then pass it to the wealthy and/or those considered leaders of the community, from whom it would descend down the pecking order.

Paxbrede, 15th c.

Niels from Amsterdam, NL, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

English Reformation historian Peter Marshall describes how this ritual could prove a significant source of tension: “In 1496, Joanna Dyaca, of the London parish of All Hallows cast the peace board in fury to the ground because another woman was allowed to kiss it before her. John Browne, of the Essex parish of Theydon-Garnon, went further in 1522, and smashed the paxbrede over the head of the parish clerk, in his anger at being placed lower than he assessed himself in the order of local importance.” And also with YOU!

Perhaps this is why the Reformers did away with the practice.

But it was good of the 1979 Prayer Book editors to bring it back (minus the kissing, the board, and the hierarchy). Not because we need more social time. But because of a higher spiritual principle:

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says to us, “When you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.”

This is why we exchange the peace—it is a sign that we are reconciled with one another, that there is no bad blood between us, that all is forgiven, and we are at peace.

Here’s a question: When’s the last time you’ve asked another person for forgiveness? Or at least acknowledged that you’ve made a mistake and have hurt or offended them?

If our experience of Holy Communion is dry and mechanical—if when we receive the body and blood of Christ we have no feeling of God’s presence or of restoration or of peace, it could be that there is someone to whom we still owe an apology or that a grudge that we have been nursing must finally be weaned. Of course, there are many other possible reasons (some of them being well beyond our control and not any fault of our own) why Communion may feel to us like an empty ritual.

Regardless, confession and forgiveness are foundational to Christian spirituality. And the passing of the peace (which, not coincidentally, takes place in the liturgy immediately after the Confession of Sin and Absolution) provides us with a sacred moment to take stock of our relationships and prepare our hearts to pray after the Great Thanksgiving, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

The peace of the Lord be always with you.