August 27, 2023, Who’s Got the Keys?, Matthew 16:13-20 – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ August 27, 2023 ♦ Leave a comment

To listen to this sermon, click the link above. The text is below.

Almost thirteen years ago, when I first came to St. Philip’s, Dcn. Peggy gave me this big bunch of keys: keys for the Parish Hall door, the Sacristy door, the door into the Sanctuary, the door to the tool shed. There are the keys to the safes in my office, and the key that lets me open the signboard, and the key to the Post Office box. There are a lot of keys involved in the running of one little church!

Which makes it a metaphor that is really easy for us to relate to, when Jesus tells Peter he is handing over the keys of his Kingdom to him, giving to Peter, and to the church, the power of locking and unlocking, of binding and loosing.

These verbs Jesus uses are phrased kind of awkwardly, and that very awkwardness is important. Literally, what Jesus says to Peter is this: “Whatever you bind on earth WILL HAVE BEEN BOUND in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth WILL HAVE BEEN LOOSED in heaven.” The meaning of the keys is that the Church is the official representative of Christ’s kingdom. The meaning of that grammar is that when we make use of our keys here in little old St. Philip’s, our action has real authority – in fact, that it’s a done deal already recorded and approved in the realm of God’s authority. We should recognize that that is a weirdly wholesale claim for Jesus to make.

But first, it’s good to think about what exactly Jesus means by loosing and binding. Those words are used all through the New Testament, in a lot of ways, literal and metaphorical

Uses of luo – it means literally to loosen: to untie a shoe, to unlock a door. But it has a much broader range of related meanings

healing of the man who was mute – “the man’s tongue was loosed”

healing of the crippled woman –

resurrection – “loosing the pangs of death”

Paul set free from custody

divorce

the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile broken down

Christ came to destroy the works of the devil

He freed us from our sins

uses of deo – it means literally to bind or tie something up, like tying an animal up so it doesn’t run off, or locking someone in jail. But like the verb that means loosing, it’s used in other related ways.

physical affliction – “A daughter of Abraham whom Satan has bound for 18 years”

Paul spoke of being compelled by the Spirit, bound to obedience

marriage – husband and wife bound to each other

Now, we’re a very clergy-centric denomination. It’s pretty easy for us to see how this authority thing is applied on the level of clergy, especially in the sacraments of the church, – baptism, confirmation, marriage, ordination, reconciliation, healing, consecration, the last rites. The human actions of the sacraments, of binding someone in marriage or in belonging to the Body of Christ; or loosing someone from sickness or guilt; those works have the authority of heaven behind them. What is bound right here will have been bound in the heavenly realms, and what is set free here will have been set free in the sight of God.

But the truth is, I don’t do – I can’t do – all the opening and closing, all the locking and unlocking, in this Church. Just on a mundane, day to day level, in order for the church to function, I have to share keys with a lot of different people – Musicians, Thrift Shop, AA, Senior citizens, Peggy, who cleans the thrift shop, etc.

And Peter, too, he never thought of himself as the one and only Rock, supreme authority of Christ’s church on earth. No, he knew that the Church was built up of a whole bunch of rocks. He wrote, “You yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Christ Jesus.” Jesus is the one and only cornerstone, but Peter was just the first of many building-blocks built together into this strange and glorious edifice we call the Church.

In the world, we sometimes bestow false authority on someone. Maybe in school, a student will be given the task of being teacher while the teacher is out of the classroom. That means the student has the authority to sit in the teacher’s chair, maybe to call on other students to answer questions; maybe she has authority to write down the names of troublesome students so they’ll get in trouble when the teacher gets back. But she doesn’t have authority to dismiss the class and let everybody go home. She has no authority to decide to give her classmates an “A” on the test. She has no real authority, only a mock authority to stand in the teacher’s place for a specified time. Worldly authorities tend to keep a pretty tight rein on their power.

But when Jesus came to stand among his disciples, gathered together in the locked room on the first Easter night, he gave them the same kind of heavenly authority he had given to Peter. “Just as the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.” And he told them, “When you forgive a person’s sins, they stand forgiven. And if you withhold forgiveness from anyone, it is withheld.”

That means we have all been endowed with real, not pretend, authority, lay people as well as clergy: when you welcome people into our fellowship, they are welcomed in the sight of God; when you offer forgiveness to someone who has hurt you, the evil they have done to you is forgiven in the heavenly realm, the slate wiped clean; when you pray for healing, the divine power of God to heal is brought to bear on that disease or that wound; when you break down social or racial or personal barriers that divide us from another person, those walls come crashing down in the heavenly realms; when you offer someone your blessing, the power for good in the heavenly realm is poured out upon that person.

Clearly, if all that is true – which it is – that calls for us all to act and to speak with intention and with care, as if we were wielding a very sharp, effective, and potentially dangerous tool. Which we do. As if we were people invested with great power. Which we are. Which you are.

Insofar as we act and speak as representatives of Jesus Christ and his Church, we – all of us – are vested with authority to wield the power of God’s good will, of his love, pf his authority, of his power. I grew up Roman Catholic, so I was raised to automatically connect this verse with the Pope. The emblem of the keys is a part of the Papal seal.

But, Jesus is not talking about the Pope here; he’s talking about the reality of our participation in the body of Christ. He’s talking about the presence and the power of the kingdom of heaven right in the midst of all of us, as his people, as his representatives on earth. There is a lot of work to be done in this Church, in our community, in the world – and we – all of us – have been given the keys, real authority, to do our part.