Joe Merrill ⎮  Winter 2012

Every Sunday we interrupt the service, get out of our pews, and say “peace of Christ,” to which the formal reply is “and with you.” It is the only time in the Anglican liturgy that the members of the congregation talk or walk around the sanctuary. Why does the flow of the ritual stop for us to greet all of the people we are going to talk to when the service is over?

At its most fundamental level, the “peace of Christ” is the enactment by the people of the church of their roles as a “royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9) and “ministers of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:18-19). Passing the peace of Christ makes us “caretakers of the mysteries of God” (1Cor. 4:1), which is also the same act whereby God transforms us into the kingdom of priests described in Revelation 1:6.  What are the mysteries of God if not the reconciliation between humanity and God brought about in and through Jesus Christ? What is the Priesthood into which we all are being brought together if not this ministry of reconciliation between a broken world and a just God who has poured out his love in our hearts?  By saying “Peace of Christ,” we wish the full reconciliation between humanity and God to be brought about in the lives of everyone we greet.

In order to understand further what is going on, we need to look at the place the Peace has within the Liturgy.  Fr. Michael Morse, Priest-in-Charge of All Saints’ Anglican Church in Amesbury, Massachusetts, refers to the Sunday Liturgy as a great feast of three, mutually reinforcing courses.  The first course is the Word of God, with its readings and an expository sermon.  The second course is the Holy Eucharist, where we give thanks to God for what God has done and is doing.  The third course is the people.  It is within the company of the people of God that we eat the first two courses, and that company is so delicious, so magnificently pleasing, that it forms the third major aspect of Sunday worship.

Seen through this lens, the Peace of Christ (the part of the liturgy that has the most interaction between people) becomes more than just an interruption in the service – indeed, it becomes the third course in which the consumption of the Word and Eucharist is made fully manifest among the people.

After the Word is read and preached, we kneel to pray.  In our prayer we pray for others and ourselves, we confess our sins to God, and we receive the absolution.  It is here that we are made right with God. The peace between humanity and God is achieved once again here in this intercession, confession, and absolution.  The thanksgiving (Eucharist, second course) which follows it is precisely that, thanksgiving for forgiveness already granted and proclaimed for all the world to hear.

The words of the absolution from Rite One most clearly ground the reconciliation between humanity and God in this act of confession and forgiveness.  “Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who of his great mercy hath promised forgiveness of sins to all those who with hearty repentance and true faith turn unto him, have mercy upon you, pardon and deliver you from all your sins, confirm and strengthen you in all goodness, and bring you to everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.  The absolution is the proclaiming of the already present forgiveness of God in Christ to all those who truly repent (turn from) their sins.

We can see then that the Peace of Christ is something which we all receive from God (as uttered by the Priest) which is the result of what Christ has done in each of us.  Having received the peace, we then become ministers of this reconciliation and wish this peace upon our brothers and sisters gathered together, the “third course” of the Sunday Liturgy.  

The liturgy is designed to teach us about the faith. Everything contained in it, from the high holidays down to the particular motions, colors, and words used on particular days, demonstrates to us in a different way what we hold in common.  The great redemptive story of God reconciling his creation to Himself becomes a play, and we become the actors during church as we tell each other again and again about how God did and is doing this marvelous work.  Yet, we are more than actors and this liturgy is more than a play, for as it unfolds, we hear once again the living word, our hearts are in reality cleansed from their sin, we are made to be at peace with God, and we really do give Great Thanks in the Eucharist.  Far from being a meet and greet in the middle of the service, or an interruption from the real task of sitting down and paying attention, the Peace of Christ (together with the intercession, confession, and absolution) forms the great and crucial bridge between the Word and the Table during which the story which the word recounts is written out (by God) afresh in our hearts – enabling us to move from Word to Table without fear.  Indeed, all fear is replaced with awe… we have been made to be at peace with Christ!

Reconciliation, Priesthood, Keepers of the Mysteries of God, a royal Kingdom, these are all phrases we find in Scripture that are used to describe our very real role in God’s grand narrative of granting his peace to the world.  We all come out of a world corrupted and split beyond our wildest dread by sin.  Whether it is the injustices within the Third World, the terrors of the last century of warfare, the internal division that happens when we worship ourselves and not Christ, or the feelings of abandonment and anguish suffered by those who are depressed and/or sick, we know what non-reconciliation, what non-peace look like.  We are intimately acquainted with this life.  The good news of the Kingdom of God is that precisely in the midst of this very terrible and hurting world, Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you, not as the world gives to I gives do I give to you.  Let not your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful”  (John 14:27).  Every Sunday we enter into that peace through the hearing of the word, praying for others, confessing our own sin, and receiving an already present forgiveness.  We then give great thanks for that peace, leaving the sanctuary to “go out into the world… to do the work You have given us to do, to love and serve the Lord.”