August 24, 2008
Rev. Rick Haverly
Use the Keys
Did this reading sound familiar this morning? Maybe more familiar than usual? That’ right it’s the same reading Pat used when for worship last week. It’s my fault. This is the Gospel reading assigned for today but Pat asked several weeks ago if I was going to use it, and I told her no I was thinking of using the Old Testament lesson from Exodus this morning so she could use it. But after I said that I remembered which Gospel lesson it was and that I did really want to use it. So you get a bit of overlap.
This has happened to me before. When I was in my last year of Divinity School I had a student assignment at a three point charge. That means there were three churches with one minister, and I was assigned to work with him. Now the two smaller churches had worship at the same time so Clay and I would alternate at those churches and he would preach at the larger church 3 Sundays a month and I would preach there the other Sunday. Because of that arrangement there were a couple of time when Clay would use his sermon a second week at the church he hadn’t preached at before and would preach on the text I had used the previous week but it would still be a different interpretation. I think what it demonstrates is that each of us hears something different when we read scripture. And it is not that one reading is right and the other is wrong. There is a richness in scripture that we can find multiple meanings there and while a passage may strike you one way now it may mean something totally different to you when you read it again a few years from now.
So I would like to talk about the keys that are given to Peter after his confession of Jesus as Messiah. Everyone knows that Peter has the keys, right? There are all sorts of stories about Peter standing by the pearly gates checking people in. For instance, an engineer dies and reports to the pearly gates. St. Peter checks his dossier and says, "Ah, you're an engineer. You are in the wrong place." So, the engineer reports to the gates of hell and is let in. Pretty soon, the engineer gets dissatisfied with the level of comfort in hell, and starts designing and building improvements. After a while, they've got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and the engineer is a pretty popular guy.
One day, God calls Satan up on the telephone and says with a sneer, "So, how's it going down there in hell?" Satan replies, "Hey, things are going great. We've got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and there's no telling what this engineer is going to come up with next." God replies, "What? You've got an engineer? That's a mistake. He should never have gotten down there; send him up here." Satan says, "No way." I like having an engineer on the staff, and I'm keeping him." God says, "Send him back up here or I'll sue." Satan laughs uproariously and answers, "Yeah, right. And just where are you going to get a lawyer?"
And that’s the image of Peter with the keys, isn’t it? He’s the gate keeper for the exclusive club who decides who is going to get in and who is to be kept out. It’s an image like the bouncer on the UCC commercial that won’t let people who are different into the church. They have to meet certain criteria first. That’s the way I used to think of this passage and to me it was very ordinary. With that interpretation there would have been no regrets giving it to Pat and you wouldn’t be hearing it again today.
I don’t think that is what Jesus meant when he said he was giving Peter the keys to the kingdom. And I don’t think that because the Pharisees would have loved that interpretation. They would have thought Jesus was one of them because they had the role of telling everybody what the law required of them and whether others were good enough or not. But Jesus never put up with their judgmental behavior and would just go off and eat with a tax collector, associate with a prostitute or heal someone else the Pharisees had declared a sinner. So I don’t think Jesus wanted to appoint Peter as a super-Pharisee standing at a door and passing judgment.
I owe the transformation of this passage to Dr. Leonard Sweet. He was talking about this passage and saying that Jesus was wonderful at using images in his speech. And in this story there a pair of matching images.
On one hand, there are the gates of Hell which Jesus proclaims will not prevail against the church. So you can picture the gates of Hell standing over here on the right. And out of those gates all manner of evil is spewing out into the world. There’s hate and war, disease, genocide, jealousy, greed. You can picture it just contaminating the world, causing immense problems. Now the balance to this image in the story is the pearly gates of heaven standing over here on the left. These are the gates to which Peter has been given the keys. But he has not been given the keys to selectively keep people out while allowing others in. He has been given the keys to open the gates wide and let all the things of God’s Kingdom to come pouring out to give opposition to everything coming out of the gates of Hell. Out of the gates of Heaven should come such things as Paul later describes as he fruit of the Spirit being love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These are the things Peter is to unlock with these marvelous keys.
This idea was transforming to me. Suddenly the passage is not about judgment and exclusion. It is a call to service to the world. Peter is representative to each of us in the church. The result of our discovery of Jesus as the Christ, the Savior is to be given the keys. Keys that are not for our exclusivity but keys that send us out in the world to unlock the wonderful gifts of God’s Kingdom. This is in keeping with Jesus proclamation in his earthly lifetime where he would declare that “the Kingdom of God is at hand.” It was not in some far off land but available right here. And he gave signs of it that brought healing…recovery of sight to the blind, freedom for prisoners, and care for the oppressed.
So we need to use the keys that we have been given. Unlock the Kingdom of God for people in need around us. Bring healing, peace, and justice to a world that is broken and full of the stuff pouring out of the very Gates of Hell. It’s an overwhelming task but we are sustained by the knowledge that Jesus is the Christ, the chosen one of God and his encouragement that even the gates of Hell will not prevail against the church.
So the next time you find yourself worrying about who Peter is going to let in through those pearly gates, including yourself. Remind yourself that those keys are used to unlock the gates of heaven, fling them open and bring the Kingdom of God at now, not in some sweet by and by. And as the ancestors of Peter, we have keys to those very same gates. Let’s use them.