Handed the Keys to the Kingdom...

Today's reading from Matthew is one in which Jesus is proclaimed to be the Messiah, or the Christ (the two words both mean "anointed one"). We also hear that Jesus has created the ekklesia, that is, the church, which literally means "those called out." Jesus promises that nothing will overcome the church, and he says that he will give us the keys of the kingdom of heaven. We have been invited by our Lord to a great journey doing his work with our hands.

10^th Sunday after Pentecost – Sunday, August 21, 2011

Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church, Lancaster, PA

Texts: Romans 12:1-8, Matthew 16:13-20

Can you remember the day you were handed the keys to your parents' car, to drive off all on your own for the first time? Can you recall the way they felt in your hand when you turned the ignition? Did you change the radio station from whatever decades-old music your parents had on to something actually cool? I remember getting a few blocks away from home and sitting at the stoplight thinking, “I can go anywhere.” School, sure, but to the movies, maybe the Burger King around the corner, the mall!! I might have been a little sheltered, but my mind was filled with possibilities, even if they were a bit innocent.

But as all parents know, with the keys come responsibilities. The reality is that when you take the keys and get behind the wheel, life and death are in your hands, and most of us have ridden past far too many wrecks on the side of the highway to take that responsibility lightly.

The trouble is, it often seems like our society is rolling along with the driver asleep at the wheel. We cruise along with prisons filling and schools struggling. We keep turning down roads with lines of people waiting for unemployment benefits, lines of hopefuls outside one temp agency or another, or people wrapped around a corner for a free meal that might be their first in a few days. The industrial engines of our society burn through the resources God has entrusted to our care, accelerating toward global warfare and global greed while leaving the poor of the globe behind, in the dust. We wonder, where is God? Why won't God take the wheel and like Isaiah said make our wilderness like Eden, and our desert like the garden of the LORD?

Jesus and his disciples knew what it was like to live in a society with a drunk driver at the controls. Intoxicated by greed and a thirst for absolute power, Caesar's empire stretched across the known world, spreading an addiction to money and power down the chain of command. Herod Philip, a local Roman puppet, was in charge of the city that he named Caesarea Philippi to score political points in Rome and, of course, to honor himself. This city was also well known as a center for worship of Greek and Roman gods, and it was the site of an important battle which had imposed foreign rule over the Jewish people. In the eyes of the Jewish people, this city was a symbol of idol worship and all the damage that could be done in a world driven by people addicted to themselves.

In our reading today Jesus gives us, you and me, the keys of the kingdom of heaven. But our world looks a lot like his did centuries ago. We have our own idols to worship – skyscrapers honoring corporate power, fancy cars and immaculate homes just a few blocks away from someone sleeping on a bench. We often seem to pay more attention to national interests than we do to the needs of all God's people. Jesus gives us the keys? Seriously?? Seems like a not-so-good parental decision to hand off the keys to adolescents like us with a few too many points on our licenses.

But we hear today that it is in that city, surrounded by the symbols of global empire, idol worship and personal arrogance and greed, that Jesus asks his disciples, “who do you say that I am?” This is a profoundly bold and rebellious religious and political move for Jesus to make. It is there that Peter, moved by his experiences with Jesus, makes his radical, subversive declaration that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of the living God. This story continues in our lectionary next week, and we'll talk about it more then, but suffice it to say that if Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, the savior and liberator of his people, then Caesar was not.

Here in our city and in our world which looks so much like the one from this story, Jesus is our Messiah also, our Lord, Savior and liberator. Christ has declared for all time that we belong to him, not to any ruler, not to any creditor, not to any empire or business or regime which lays claim to us. In our baptisms Christ has claimed us as his own for all time. In the end, the forces of greed, violence and self-obsession have no power over us. Through his death on the cross and his resurrection, Christ put an end to that entire system of coercive power, liberating us through grace and love.

We live in a world that many have called “already and not yet.” Christ's death and resurrection is, of course, the “already.” The “not yet” we know about in our lives. Surely we know that evil and sin and death still romp around on the roads we travel, and that our lives and those of our neighbors are still filled with the tragedies they bring. Jesus did not make these hardships disappear nor did he avoid them himself. He entered into them and in his death and resurrection, he exposed them as the frauds they are.

Christ is our strong rock, the cornerstone of creation, and as that strong rock he has paved the road for us with his very life. Our destination is not in question – we go forward with Christ to the time of his return, when all the dead shall be raised, all tears wiped away and the whole Creation resurrected and aligned with God's will. No matter where we go, no matter where sin and tragedy strike us on this journey of our lives, we will always end up with God.

God has freed us and empowered us through his death and resurrection to usher in his kingdom here and now in the “not yet.” Jesus tells Peter he will build his church, his ekklesia in Greek, which literally means “those called out.” We have been called by God to go out into our world to build the kingdom of heaven right here on earth. We are invited by God to become a part of God's answer to our prayer “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Jesus promises that not even the gates of Hades, that is, no power, no empire, no force of evil, will ultimately prevail against us, his church.

Amazingly, Christ has handed us the keys to his kingdom. Christ has chosen us, the bad drivers – the sinners – that we are, to get behind the wheel and steer his people to the life God has always intended. Can you believe it? God has given us the incredible privilege of doing his work with our hands. If you didn't know, that's the motto of our whole denomination, the ELCA – God's work, Our hands.

Those keys might get a little heavy sometimes, but we must remember that our freedom to do God's work is always made possible because Christ has borne the weight of the world and secured our future. Christ himself is the way, Christ is the road we travel. But on that road we have been given an awesome invitation and power to change the world. Here at Christ Lutheran over the next year we will be discerning together how God is calling us to change the world right here in Lancaster. Our actions, our decisions, however small they might seem to us, are God's way of changing the world. When we feed God's people, when we help them find new life in this worship, when we become, as St. Paul put it, living sacrifices for others, God is using our hearts and hands to build the kingdom of heaven here on earth.

Jesus Christ, our Messiah, has set up shop and he's here to stay. Sin and death are on notice. Their time is over. We will never be the same. The world will never be the same. Christ has handed us the keys. What a journey it will be. Amen.