The Peace of Christ

Feb 9, 2011 The New Liturgist
Posted by glenadmin

Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

One of the fundamental concerns of the New Liturgist is to promote worship as a communal event. It is always a challenge to move people from worshiping primarily as self-conscious individuals into a God and community conscious people. The subject and object of worship, the Triune God of grace, models a community of three persons who engage with each other in perichoretic harmony. If perichoresis is the notion of intentionally making room for the other, deferring without disengaging, then we have a worship model for human beings as well. God calls and draws us together week by week to worship as a people who are, by nature, inclined to view the other with suspicion. After all, we are sinful human beings who know the deceit of which we’re capable. But we are called to defer, give the benefit of the doubt, without disengaging from each other.

It is here that the action of Passing the Peace serves as reminder of this very thing. The action itself usually follows the leader’s pronouncement of a word of grace or assurance which tells us that we have been forgiven in Christ by a gracious God. How tempting to leave that in the abstract, as simply a good concept! Passing the peace invites us into a physical action which requires turning to those around you and offering a handshake, embrace, or holy kiss, looking each other in the eye and speaking the words of peace to one another. I have been heard to say that this is virtually sacramental in nature, a visible sign of grace. The action carries the intention of binding the community together in mutual acknowledgement of our separation by sin, our mutual reconciliation in Christ, and our mutual intention to live in peace with one another and the world. This has the added benefit of moving us out of a solitary physical position, where visually we are limited by staring at the back of someone’s head, into an active recognition that we are worshiping together with real human beings, our brothers and sisters in Christ.

I have written a song called ‘May the Peace of Christ’ as a helpful musical addition to this action, which you can download for free through the Moveable Feast Resources page.

Tags: community, Passing the peace