In the middle of our communion service, after our intercessions, after confessing our unworthiness in the Prayer of Humble Access ("We do not presume..."), before we offer our gifts of bread and wine, we do something very unusual in church. We turn and look at each other.
There is a theory that good Anglicans are only happy worshipping if they can see the backs of each other's heads. This theory explains why so many people make for the seats at the back when they come into church. It may well be that the early church "met together", but we Anglicans surely feel safer if we interpret this as all sitting in the same congregation, facing the front where it All Happens.
Look in your Bible. You will find no description of any kind of service similar in form to the ten o'clock at St Ursula's. The early Christians did not worship sitting in rows facing a stained-glass window. They worshipped with each other, shared their experiences with each other, ate with each other. Their relation with each other was just as important when they met together as their common relation to God.
In four of his letters, Paul writes to the congregation: "Greet one another with a holy kiss" - and the writer of 1 Peter calls it "the kiss of love". Kissing in the culture of the time was a sign of greeting, and of love and reconciliation (or, in Judas' case, just the opposite!), and it seems from the way the epistles mention it that it was also an activity that took place in the context of meeting for worship.
The epistles also connect the kiss closely with sharing God's peace. Again, in the culture of the time, people greeted each other with words of peace (shalom in Hebrew, eirene in Greek). Wishing someone peace can be very casual, or it can be profoundly significant - especially when we remember that God's peace "is beyond all understanding" (Phil.4.7).
The earliest descriptions of the baptism service, from the second century, tell us that the newly baptised were welcomed into the congregation with a kiss, before continuing with the eucharist. Another writer called the kiss of peace "the seal of prayer": a sort of acted "Amen". So the kiss of peace was used at the Eucharist to show that the participants accepted and were united with each other, just as Jesus had commanded his hearers in the Sermon on the Mount to be reconciled to their brethren before offering themselves and their gifts of God.
By the time that orders of service became fixed, the kiss of peace had become a formal gesture. In both the eastern and western churches, the president said: "The peace of the Lord be always with you", but the congregation did nothing. They simply responded with the words: "And with your spirit" (although the clergy in the sanctuary might put their hands on each other’s shoulders and embrace). In England, and in some monastic communities, a trace of the old practice remained: a tablet with a small picture of Christ was passed round the congregation, and each one kissed it. But this practice died out in England with the Reformation.
In recent years, we have reintroduced the kiss of peace (the Church of South India was the first, in 1950 - the Church of England reintroduced the words in 1967, and in its 1973 service book stated that "The president may accompany the words of the Peace with a handclasp or similar action: and both the words and action may be passed through the congregation.".
So the handclasp, or holy kiss, or any other sign, is not just to say hello to the people sitting next to us. It is to share the joy of reconciliation, and the joy of God's peace. And we need to share that peace with each other week by week, even if it is too deep for us to fathom.
HD