Sermon - The Rev. Dr. Elise Feyerherm, August 27th 2023

We have all done it at one time or another. The door closes behind us, and with a sudden flash of panic we realize that it is locked, with us on one side and the key on the other. If we are lucky, there is a family member or friend nearby who can let us in with a spare key, even if we have to wait awhile. Perhaps there is a first-floor window left unlocked that we can wiggle through. But that feeling of being locked out, of being powerless to access all that is comforting and sheltering in our lives when it is so close, is gut-wrenching.

Growing up, my parents used to keep a key to the back door on the porch behind a heavy shutter. If we came home from school earlier than our mother and father, we could get in without having to carry an extra key around. There was something deeply comforting and reassuring about knowing that key was there. Home was always accessible; we were never barred from refuge, no matter when we needed it. 

Here at St. Paul’s we have been experiencing a key challenge of our own. After decades, and across the tenure of multiple leaders, it’s been hard to know exactly who has keys to what. When folks who should be able to get in find their keys not working, or when doors get left open and things go missing, we find ourselves wondering whether we need a new system. Locks and keys seem essential these days to keep things and people safe; they also provide much needed access for those who have been entrusted with the spiritual and material riches we find in this holy place. We need locks and keys, but it’s hard to get the coordination right.

Jesus says to Peter, “I will give you the keys to 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” What are these keys? Why is the kingdom of heaven locked in the first place? And what are the criteria for having keys? Is Peter the only one who has them?

The exact nature of these keys has been interpreted in various ways over the centuries. Some say that they are the keys to forgiveness of sins. In the gospel of John, Jesus gives a parallel charge to all the disciples when he appears to them after the resurrection: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:23). Binding and loosing in this interpretation is “keyed” (pun intended) to forgiving and retaining sins. The implication is that if one’s sins have been bound, one is locked out of the kingdom of heaven, and if one’s sins have been loosed, one is let in. 

I think the binding and loosing of which Jesus speaks is far more wide-ranging than just the forgiving of sins. I think it has to do with the ties that bind us together, both with each other and with those who have gone before. But is forgiveness isn’t all of it, it still is an essential part of this whole binding and loosing business.

There is tremendous power contained in the ability to forgive or retain sin, which is probably why, before he confers this power in John’s gospel, Jesus breathes on the disciples and gives them the Holy Spirit. In the gospel reading for today, Jesus first probes Peter’s insight about who Jesus is in relation to God, perhaps to see if Peter understands where the power of binding and loosing really lies. This kind of authority does not properly belong to human beings on our own, and when we think it does belong to us, we have a tendency to abuse it.

In the early fifth century, St. Augustine of Hippo taught that when Peter was given these keys to the kingdom, he was standing in for the entire Church, and that this was entrusted not only to Peter, but, Augustine says, “to all.” To all of us. I think it is worth probing what this might mean.

On the one hand, there is the “official” forgiveness that the priest declares after the confession of sin in the liturgy. The Book of Common Prayer even has a separate rite of Reconciliation of a Penitent, in which someone can meet privately with a priest, confess sins that are weighing particularly on their conscience, receive spiritual counsel, and be given absolution for those sins. It’s a beautiful, powerful ritual that very few in the Episcopal Church take advantage of, and if you want to look at it, it begins on page 447 in our prayer book.

Even this “official” forgiveness does not belong to the priest – it belongs to Christ, and to the Church as Christ’s Body. We priests don’t offer forgiveness on our own authority – we declare it as something that has been entrusted to us. We are the messengers of the good news that God forgives all who are penitent, without exception and without condition. 

Forgiveness is indeed one of the keys to the kingdom of heaven. God’s forgiveness, and the assurance of that, given whenever we confess our sins and receive absolution, frees us to begin again, to make a new start, to know that our mistakes and misdeeds do not define us in God’s eyes. That assurance is a priceless treasure.

I wonder, however, if we fully comprehend the power that we have, to bind and to loose, to forgive or to retain sins? Do we realize the power we possess, when others sin against us, to bolt or unlock the gates against them? Whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not, we hold some of those keys. They can be used for good, and they can be used for harm. 

Forgiveness is not the only key to the kingdom. Binding and loosing can and do take many forms. We can bind those who might do others harm; we can also bind wounds. Binding can be lifegiving – we bind people to God and to the community in baptism and eucharist; we establish bonds of marriage and ordination that make our life together in families and congregations rich and fruitful. We bind each other to practices of Safe Church, so that the powerful may be restrained from abusing others and the vulnerable may be protected. God has bound us together in this common life we share.

We can loosen the burden of sin; we can also loosen the millstone of oppression that hangs around another’s neck.

In giving the keys to the kingdom to Peter – to us – Jesus has laid bare the awful power we have as his Body on earth to include and exclude, to honor and demean, to care for and to abandon those who seek refuge with us. It is a fearsome power. But it is the power we have simply by being members of the Body of Christ in this place – the more connected we are to one another, the more capacity we have not only to heal, but to hurt.

Be transformed by the renewing of your minds, the apostle Paul wrote. Judging from the content of Paul’s letters, he understood all too well how powerful are these keys with which we can bind and loose one another. He also knew the impact of those keys being abused in Christian community, which is why he writes so much about the Body and the way we depend on each other.

The kingdom of heaven is no more and no less than the manifestation of God’s love and healing and reconciliation, whether in this world or the next. How will we use the keys we have been given by Christ, through Peter? How will the kingdom of heaven be, in our care, the refuge it is meant to be? In Peter’s footsteps, we become the foundation, the rock upon which Christ’s Body on earth is built. And remember Jesus’ promise, that the gates of death will not prevail against it.