On Kisses

This weekend, I splurged on some artificial mistletoe at Dollar Tree and hung it above the doorway leading from the foyer and the living room. It has been a few years since I have hung mistletoe---I used to have a mistletoe ball, which disappeared during an open house at the old parsonage at Broadway. It embarrassed Cana so she took it. And I never saw it again.

I will tell one story: in my first appointment, the first Christmas (this was about five years before I got married), a friend from college showed up the first Sunday afterward Christmas as a surprise. We had been good friends, but not romantic friends. He came to the parsonage as we were heading out for lunch. We were standing between the living room and kitchen as I showed him around, and lo and behold, he kissed me. It was unexpected but quite pleasant. I had forgotten about the mistletoe I had placed above the doorway, but I am very glad Wally hadn't. It was the beginning of a short but lovely romance.

Enough True Confessions.

Kissing is a lovely thing if the kisser and the kissee are both willing. It is a beautiful thing to kiss the cheek of one of my children---Cana's cheek is so soft, Caleb's so whiskery. Kisses can say, I love you; or I want to comfort you; I am so glad to see you. To give or receive a kiss is an intimate thing in our culture...here you reserve it for special people, whereas in many cultures you can around kissing practically anyone on the cheek and there is no stigma even men kissing men on the cheek . It's what is expected.

The psalm appointed for this week in the guide I use for my devotions is Psalm 85. The psalmist tells us that the day of the Lord is near. It is a hopeful song and a song of thanksgiving. the last four verses read:

Steadfast love and righteousness will meet;

righteousness and peace will kiss each other.

Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,

and righteousness will look down from the sky.

The Lord will give what is good,

and our land will yield its increase,

Righteousness will go before him,

and will make a path for his steps.

Righteousness and peace will kiss each other. That which makes for a right relationship with God and that which makes for shalom will be in an intimate relationship. They will kiss. No more division between personal piety and social witness. Our relationship with God and our ways of following Jesus will merge with the needs of the world into a beautiful whole somehow.

Christmas is really God kissing the world. He loved it and each of us enough that through the Holy Spirit, a young woman bore Hope. We do not know who Jesus kissed--his mother, probably, his earthly father, the people he greeted each day in his life, since in that culture kissing was the normal mode of greeting. He most probably kissed the children as they were brought to him---we don't really know. We do know that he was betrayed with a kiss--which shows how terribly wrong it all was, that a sign of love was turned into the prelude of an execution.

We may be doing our share of kissing this week--our great aunt who smells like Lily of the Valley eau du toilette; if we are bold, w2e may attempt to kiss our teenage nephew wearing all black this Christmas with a nose stud and a frown; our mother with tired eyes but an genuine smile; our father who slips us a fifty dollar bill even though we're 49. But we will certainly be getting more than our share of kisses this week too--God Kisses, if you will allow me that, full of mystery and beauty and most of all Perfect Love that will not let us be or let us go. I hope you get a kiss or two under the mistletoe, too!