The Keys to the Kingdom

“The Keys to the Kingdom”
The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

Matthew 16.13-28

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. 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.” Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life? “For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

My grandfather had a set of keys . . . well, set is an understatement. He had a ring that seemed to hold the keys to every door in Southern California. I held these keys many times as a young boy. I was often called upon to fetch them. With a Tennessee hillbilly cadence, he would say, “Freddy, now you go and get me ma’ keys;” or if I was called upon to fetch a tool he’d say, “here, take ma’ keys and get me an adjustable wrench.”

With this massive set of keys in my hands, I would venture to his shed/closet by the swimming pool. I have such a lovely memory of opening the door to this shed being engulfed in the aroma of oil and gas and lawn clippings; enhancing this was the subtle waifs of paint and cleaner and grease. With his keys I felt like I was unlocking the universe; it was an inner sanctum and black hole.

When I think of keys, I can see my grandfather and his deeply callused hands flip through key after key before he would say, “this one. This is the one, Freddy. Now don’t let go of this one.” On the rare occasion he was wrong I found myself lost in the abyss of the overwhelming variety. Short ones; long ones; thick ones. Keys edged on both sides; keys older than some ancient texts. Dr. Suess could have written quite a book had he ever held such a ring of keys.
My grandfather not only possessed these keys; he also, like Peter, possessed the keys to the kingdom.

The keys to the kingdom, the ones promised to Peter in Caesarea Philippi, these keys are not physical. Most people believe they are symbolic, symbolizing the church’s authority. If you Google keys to the kingdom mostly what you will get are two definitions. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the keys to the kingdom given to Peter is the authority of the church, the church’s authority on earth. Most specifically the authority of the Bishop of Rome passed down from one Pope to the next. This is known as the apostolic succession. The keys are a symbol of this transferred authority.

The second option you find in a Google search is knowledge. Protestants equate the keys with knowledge, like an answer key. Here we have the right answers, the right doctrines, the right beliefs. Having these answers is important because this is how you open the door to heaven. Peter’s keys are the knowledge that unlocks the mystery of God, gives access to the divine will, and most importantly, removes the barrier of unbelief, the agnosticism of the heathens and pagans.

I can tell you with all certainty that my grandfather was not the Pope, nor papal material for that matter. His idea of authority was something you avoided as best as possible. Hence, he didn’t have Roman Catholic keys. And he didn’t give much truck to the Protestant keys either. He knew how to fix just about anything, had every tool that could reasonably fit in the back of Ford pinto sedan, but his idea of knowledge had little to do with religion or mystery. When he spoke of Jesus Christ, it was more as an exclamation than a proclamation.

We don’t know exactly what the keys of Peter are. Jesus says they bind things and lose things. With these keys Hell is kept at bay. Most importantly what you do with these keys reaches heaven, which is pretty far I am told.

Unfortunately, both the Roman Catholic and Protestant definitions too often venture into very murky waters of certainty and determination. The keys of Peter are often used to distinguish which people find heaven as an open door to enter from those who find Hell as a closed door that must remain shut. Like most dubious theological views this way of understanding the keys of Peter or the keys of the kingdom is a form of judgment where I am right, and you are in for a world of hurt. With these keys the ones deemed as unworthy are locked away from those deemed as worthy.

I am going to go out on limb here and venture a guess that if you are here in worship today or watching on-line, that the murky waters of figuring out who goes to heaven and who goes to hell is not a topic you consider much. Most protestants still believe in heaven, but fewer and fewer believe in hell, let alone having the keys to such. And more importantly the need to segregate and differentiate and find the signs of distinction between the sheep and the goats is not a source of fascination or inspiration. God’s will is rightly respected as yet a mystery.

I try not to base my sermons on guesses. Although never beyond doubt, I do seek to achieve a likelihood of interpretation based in evidence or corroboration. But in this instance, I must confess that what I am about to say is my best guess, or guesses, as I have two.

My first guess is that there are three keys: the key of goodness, the key of truth, and the key of beauty. Here the keys are not so much about the church or knowledge, but power. If sought in humility goodness, truth, and beauty are where we find the power of the kingdom of God. What life is meant to be, a life of dignity and purpose and integrity. If you do the good, speak the truth, and seek what is splendid, well, you have the keys to a good life. A good life here and now.

As for heaven, these three are eternal. So, the good you find here, well, that is the good you find in heaven; the truth that sets you free here is just as free in heaven; and beauty . . . I think you get the point.

Each of these keys can be known or understood, but they are best lived as memory, the way we live. Life can wear you down so you forget what is good (shooting after shooting, invasions, viruses, scandal: we can forget how good life really is); we can be immersed in so much falsity we forget what is true (so many talking heads telling so many lies and all of sudden we can’t find truth anymore); and, the difficulties of life, tragedies, violence can smash beauty to the place we forget (an avalanche of hate comes crashing and we forget life is beautiful).

Having these keys is how we follow Jesus. These three are something to remember and live. Understanding is not a bad; it’s just not enough. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, knowledge of God is too often a cheap form of grace. Lots of stuff we can know without really living. Costly grace, grace of great value, is when we hold fast to following where Jesus leads, where our faith is enacted with sacrifice, lived.

If we risk our life, make the choice to sacrifice our life for the good of others, Jesus says, you keep that life. Speaking the truth when faced with the threat of lies and falsity, speaking this truth so others may be free, this is how the life we give away is returned to us. Beauty is the same. To bring beauty to others, especially to those who are broken, is the risk Jesus said we must take. Hence, he chastises Peter. To give your life away is the only way to keep it.

That’s my first guess. My second is that there are two keys. One key is love and the other key is perseverance.

I found this idea or guess in the account Victor Frankl gave of his time in Nazi concentration camps. Frankl was a world renown psychologist, founder of one of the three Viennese schools of psychiatric therapy. Author of some thirty books. Yet, how most people encounter him or know of him was in his story of survival, living through four different concentration camps during the Holocaust.

Frankl offered this account for one reason. He wanted to reveal what he believed were the keys to his survival, and by inference, how you too might survive the harshness of life, the brokenness, even rise above them.

The first key was love. On a wintry day, barely clothed in rags, marching through mud to dig a trench, Frankl had reached a place of such profound misery he was nearly lost. He describes this as a kind of out of body experience because his body had been so broken and beaten, starved and exposed. He was walking on a forced march to a long day of digging through hard ground when he remembered his wife.

He remembered he loved her and it saved him. He didn’t know if she was alive or dead. He had no way of knowing. He said, at that point it was of no matter if she was alive or dead, because she was alive in him, her love for him and his for her. This love opened the skies. In spite of all the misery, he experienced the meaning of life. His life was a gift of love to be given; and he was lucky enough to have been given such a gift as well. This was the first key to survival. To find, remember, the meaning of life is found in love, giving yourself away.

The second key is not about freedom but incarceration. Frankl described the memory of his wife as a kind of liberation, love set him free in the concentration camp. But the key of perseverance was not about a moment of freedom, but the persistence to not yield to despair.

The concentration camp had one common effect on all people. The effect, Frankl wrote, was apathy. You become indifferent, apathetic, cold to the world around you. More and more the harshness and brutality of the guards erode the goodness, the beauty, and the truth of life and what you are left with is a kind of half-life. You are unable to feel anything.

In this moment apathy must be bound by hope; the half-life must not overtake you. You must keep going forward, moving without the ease of normal life. How you endure suffering is the key. There is a wonderful example of this where Frankl talks about the variety shows the prisoners put on. He spoke about laughter, how the skits and songs and offerings gave a moment of reprieve, a moment of remembrance how life ought to feel.

I almost titled this sermon “Concentration Camp Humor.” But I didn’t. I thought such a title would be too offensive on the marquee. Yet humor gave him persistence for survival. He discovered the power of joy to keep apathy at bay; joy let hope of freedom persist. He said, when we’d laugh, for just a moment, you forgot the misery.
So, my second guess about the keys Jesus promised to Peter is this: one is the way love frees us; the other is that persistence binds apathy and allows us to find the power of joy.

My grandfather had these keys. He survived and endured war and poverty and tragedy and all those things that rob us of spirit, lead to apathy. He lived them and never seemed to fall to despair. His love was not complex or mysterious. He never found the love of fine art or cuisine. He loved finding baseball caps on the side of the road and hot dogs at the seven eleven or hamburgers at McDonalds, which is a great thing for a young boy.

He loved my grandmother, which was quite often a whale of a challenge. He found the keys of Frankl. He laughed a lot. Now had I tried to say this to him, describe Victor Frankl and his keys, he would have said something like, “Freddy, I’ll check, but I am pretty sure I don’t have any keys from this Frank fella.” He didn’t need to know it; he lived it. Amen.