A bow in Japan, foreheads pressed together in New Zealand, a handshake or a fist bump here, every culture has a way of saying hello. The harder question is whether anyone in the room actually feels seen.

In this seventh message, we turn to a command that closes five different letters written to five very different churches, “Greet one another with a holy kiss,” in Romans 16:16 and its parallels. In a world of masters and slaves and rival factions, that greeting said out loud that nobody here outranks anybody.

Be the church at the top of the escalator, where the bags and the headphones and the pretending all get dropped, instead of the church in the middle seat. Get past your personality, because the command was given to everyone. Come early, learn the names of the people you have sung beside for years, and welcome others the way Christ welcomed you.