8-24-23 - Keys To the Kingdom

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here. 

I’ve always pictured an oversized key, like an honorary Key to the City. But I don’t think that’s what Jesus had in mind when he said to Simon Peter, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

He has just called Peter the “rock on which I will build my church.” And now the keys to the Kingdom? We can only guess at what he meant – that is how theologians and biblical scholars make a living, after all. But we might get a hint of what he intended when we think about what keys do. They lock things, and they open them. They make them inaccessible and accessible.

The Kingdom of God is a reality that Jesus described through image and metaphor, and demonstrated through healing, teaching, and transformative actions that look to us like miracles. It is the realm of God, the reality of God, the Life of God as it unfolds in our own plane of reality. It is power and energy and boundless grace. To be given the “keys” to this reality is to be given power to unlock, release the energy of heaven – or to withhold it. Hence, “…whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

We are heirs to this gift, this promise, this frightening spiritual authority. We can keep the realm of God, with all its power and promise and peace, locked up simply by not talking about it, or not exercising the power we’ve been given. Or we can use these keys to open it to everyone who is thirsty for God.

We can keep people bound by withholding forgiveness, and loosed by exercising grace. Jesus gave us these gifts not to be locked away in a safe deposit box, but to be spent, drawn down, exhausted… only to find the them constantly replenished, like a waterfall.

In prayer today, imagine sitting with Jesus and having him hand you a set of keys. What do they look like? What do they open? Who has the keys to your heart?

There are some things that need to remain bound, I suppose – the power of evil to wreak destruction in our world, for one. Racism, materialism, consumerism, nationalism… there are a few. And so many more things and people and communities that need to be released, set free. I believe God wants us in the “loosing” business, one lock at a time. That's what the keys to the kingdom are for.

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