THE MEANING OF A KISS

Mark 14:43-45, Luke 7:44-47, Luke 15:17-24

Do You remember your first kiss? I mean the kind where you kissed your boy friend or girl friend? I remember the first time that I kissed Janice or the first time she kissed me, or which ever way it was.
It was in the Fall during my freshman year at Carson-Newman College. Janice was a sophomore. We had become good friends. For a couple of months we had seen each other daily and had spent a lot of time getting to know each other. We walked across the campus together. We stood and talked for hours. We would meet in the cafeteria, the student center, the daily chapel services, at student events and at the library.

One afternoon, we were in the library at different tables. Janice was studying literature and I was studying her. Finally, I got up and went over to her table and we talked quietly for a few moments. Then she said, “Would you like to see a place where I go to be alone and pray?” “Let’s go!” I said. “I like to pray!” I had not been alone with her for two months.

She took me down a lane to the back side of the campus to a railroad track. We walked down the railroad track and came to a place called the “rock quarry.” It was a limestone pit filled with beautiful blue-green water. We sat down on a big rock overlooking the water and talked about our dreams for the future. I told her, “I believe that God is calling me to be a Pastor.” “That would be exciting!” she said, knowing that God was calling her to be a Pastor’s wife. We prayed together and she looked up at me and then it happened…we embraced and kissed…and the future was looking bright!

Later, we both laughed about it and said that we knew that the other had no experience in kissing. And we were proud of that.

What did that kiss mean? It meant that we were forming a relationship in the providence of God that would take us into a future of love and commitment. And that was fifty seven years ago.

I fear that kisses are given too freely today and that they don’t mean very much. I encourage young people to save even their kisses for that special person that God has for you to spend your life with.

One day, I talked with a youth director in another church who told me of a girl in their youth group who was crying because she was still a virgin. How far we have come from meaningful values and strong character!

Today, we are going to look at some kisses in the Bible.

THE KISS THAT BETRAYED. (MARK 14:43-45).

“Now the betrayer had arranged a signal with them: ‘The one I kiss is the man; arrest him and lead him away under guard.’”

It happened on the night that Jesus had spent time with his disciples in the upper room and had instituted the memorial that we observed this morning. Jesus had explained to them that one of the twelve would betray him. “Is it I?” they all asked. “It is one of the Twelve,” Jesus said.

Judas left the group that he had been with for three years. I have always been amazed that one who had lived with Jesus for three years and had heard his teachings, seen his miracles, felt his love, and experienced his kindness could betray him.

When Jesus was praying in the garden of Gethsemene, Judas led the soldiers to him. He came up and kissed Jesus so that they would know who to arrest. Jesus did not refuse the traitor’s kiss. His only words were, “Do you betray the Son of man with a kiss?”

As we take our journey to the cross this week we must ask ourselves some pointed questions:
“Have I been with his disciples but not been of them in spirit?”

“Have I kissed Jesus with my words and betrayed him with my actions?”

“Have I kissed a concept of life in which I have betrayed my values?”

It has been said that the greatest word in the English language is “God.” The deepest word is “soul.” The longest word is “eternity.” The swiftest word is “time.” The nearest word is “now.” The darkest word is “sin.” The broadest word is “truth.” The strongest word is “right.” The tenderest word is “love.” The dearest word is “mother.” The ugliest word is “betrayal.”

Judas lost everything. He lost his place with the disciples. He lost the money he was paid to betray Jesus. He lost his direction. He lost his life. The betrayer is always a loser!

THE KISS THAT ADORED. (LUKE 7:44-47).

“You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet.”

It happened in a Pharisee’s house. A sinful woman learned that he was there and came in and sat at his feet and kissed them and poured perfume on them. The religious leader said to Jesus, “Don’t you know what kind of woman she is?”

Jesus answered that he had changed all of that for her and that she was expressing her gratitude. Was this Mary Magdalene? We are not told. Was it Mary of Bethany, sister to Lazarus, for we know that she did a similar thing in gratitude for the raising of her brother to life? We do not know for in Luke’s account she was not named.

This is what The Lord’s Supper is for us. It is a kiss of gratitude for the way that Jesus has changed things for us.

When Leonardo de Vinci was forty years old, the Duke of Milan asked him to paint the dramatic scene of Jesus’ last supper with his disciples.

Working slowly and giving meticulous care to details, he spent three years on the assignment. He grouped the disciples into threes, two groups on either side of the central figure of the Christ. Christ’s arms are outstretched. In his right hand he holds a cup, painted beautifully with marvelous realism.

When the masterpiece was finished, the artist said to a friend, “Observe it and give me your opinion.”

“It’s wonderful!” exclaimed the friend. “The cup is so real that I cannot divert my eyes from it.”
Immediately, Leonardo took a brush and drew it across the sparkling cup! “Nothing shall detract from the figure of Christ!” he said.

That is the way that we are to come to the Lord’s Table. Nothing is to detract from the central meaning of what Jesus did for us. We are to express our love for him as we partake of the Bread and the Cup. We are to express our deepest gratitude. We are to adore him with all of our hearts. We are to give him our lives.

And God does not view this sacred act lightly. Pat Novak, pastor in a nonsacramental denomination, discovered this when he was serving as a hospital chaplain intern just outside of Boston several years ago. Pat was making his rounds one summer morning when he was called to visit a patient admitted with an undiagnosed ailment. John, a man in his sixties, had not responded to any treatment; medical tests showed nothing; psychological tests were inconclusive. Yet he was wasting away; he had not even been able to swallow for two weeks. The nurses tried everything. Finally they called the chaplain’s office.
When Pat walked into the room, John was sitting limply in his bed, strung with IV tubes, staring listlessly at the wall. He was a tall, grandfatherly man, balding a little, but his sallow skin hung loosely on his face, neck, and arms where the weight had dropped from his frame. His eyes were hollow.

Pat was terrified; he had no idea what to do. But John seemed to brighten a bit as soon as he saw Pat’s chaplain badge and invited him to sit down. As they talked, Pat sensed that God was urging him to do something specific: He knew he was to ask John if he wanted to take Communion. Chaplain interns were not encouraged to ask this type of thing in this public hospital, but Pat did.

At that John broke down. “I can’t!” he cried. “I’ve sinned and can’t be forgiven.”

Pat paused a moment, knowing he was about to break policy again. Then he told John about 1 Corinthians 11 and Paul’s admonition that whoever takes Communion in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself. And he asked John if he wanted to confess his sin. John nodded gratefully. To this day Pat can’t remember the particular sin John confessed, nor would he say if he did, but he recalls that it did not strike him as particularly egregious. Yet it had been draining the life from this man. John wept as he confessed, and Pat laid hands on him, hugged him, and told John his sins were forgiven.
Then Pat got the second urging from the Holy Spirit: Ask him if he wants to take Communion. He did. Pat gave John a Bible and told him he would be back later. Already John was sitting up straighter, with a flicker of light in his eyes.

Pat visited a few more patients and then ate some lunch in the hospital cafeteria. When he left he wrapped an extra piece of bread in a napkin and borrowed a coffee cup from the cafeteria. He ran out to a shop a few blocks away and bought a container of grape juice. Then he returned to John’s room with the elements and celebrated Communion with him, again reciting 1 Corinthians 11. John took the bread and chewed it slowly. It was the first time in weeks he had been able to take solid food in his mouth. He took the cup and swallowed. He had been set free.

Within three days John walked out of that hospital. The nurses were so amazed they called the newspaper, which later featured the story of John and Pat, appropriately, in its “LIFE” section.”
Charles W. Colson, The Body,1992, Word Publishing, pp. 139-140.

THE KISS THAT FORGAVE. (LUKE 15:17-24).

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him: he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.”

The first two kisses that we looked at referred to the way that we kiss God. The third speaks of how God kisses us. All of us ought to receive the kiss of God as we take communion this morning.

Jesus told the story of a boy that asked for his inheritance and left the father’s house and went to a far country and spent all that he had in riotous living. He sank to living with the pigs and eating whatever he could get. In time, he thought of how good it was in the father’s house. When he came to himself he said, “I know what I will do. I will return to my father and say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight and am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired servants, but just let me come home.”

He started home. Day after day he traveled. When he neared home, he saw athe father running to him with his arms outstretched. When they met, the father embraced him and kissed him, and accepted him, and forgave him.

That is the way that God kisses us. It means that he forgives us. That is what we celebrate in the Observance of the Lord’s supper.

Let the Lord kiss you!