Twenty First Sunday in Ordinary Time

Everyday, the last thing I do when I leave my room is to slap my pocket to make sure I have my keys. Every third or fourth day, I then spend 15 minutes looking for the keys that the gremlins have mysteriously hidden during the night, taken from the bowl next to the door where I always put them when I get home. When the fifteen-minute search comes up empty, I do what any sensible Catholic would do: I pray to St. Anthony.  “Tony, Tony Come around, what was lost must be found…” That’s the closest thing our tradition allows to a full scale magical incantation, but it works, most of the time. We don’t argue with results. So thanks, St. Anthony.

On my ring, I have, more or less in order, the key to my room; the key to our campus chapel; the key to a storage room; the key to my studio space; the key to the janitor’s closet with the sink in it next door; the master key to Arrupe House at SU where I am superior of the community, which opens more or less everything. That’s about the only perk in the job: it relieves me of carrying a couple of extra keys.  I also have a flash drive, which is like a key to my computer, and a caribiner, to which I attach the keys to whatever car I got out of the Jesuit fleet that day. Today it’s #1.

A key, when you think about it, is a simple but almost magical thing: it’s a little piece of carefully cut metal that allows us to open a big door; in our modern world as often as not, a password, a code that unlocks the secrets of my computer or a vault simply by entering the right order of binary code:  at least eight characters, one capital letter, one number, no more that two successive letters the same.  You know the drill. Ali Baba said “Open, Sesame,” and the great stone door Theives’ Den opens wide.  I type in 8 more or less random characters, and I can watch puppies on YouTube on free wireless at Starbucks.

Today’s scriptures talk about keys: God gives King Eliakim the Key of David to carry on his shoulder, to open and close what needs to be opened and closed. In today’s Gospel, after Peter makes his startling profession of faith: “You are the Christ, the son of the living God,” Jesus make an equally startling declaration: You are Rock, and on this rock I will build my church: I give to you the keys to the kingdom of heaven, so that whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” This is why the insignia of the Papacy has two crossed keys on it: the keys that symbolize gate of the kingdom of heaven, and the key of forgiveness on earth.

Much is made of this “power of the keys” in theology, of binding and loosing, which is fine; but the mystery reveled here is deeper and even more immediate, and pertains not just to the power of the pope, but to us all:  in Peter’s profession of faith, we discover the key we need for our own salvation.  Peter’s profession IS the key that unlocks the door: Peter’s profession, our profession of faith is in Christ, the Son of the Living God; Christ who is our light, Christ, as our parish’s name reminds us, who is our hope.

“Who do you say that I am?” Jesus asks each of us today.  We already have the key in our hands already, in our mouths, in our hearts. We hold the key, we know the passcode:  “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” With that, all the treasury of grace and goodness is open to us, richer than Alibaba’s den or any bank vault; the infinite treasury of God’s mercy and forgiveness, of God’s abundant kindness and tender love.  We profess our faith in him, and in so doing, we profess our faith in the Living God who sent him to us to open the way to the Father,  to show us the way home.  “You are the Christ, the anointed one, the Son of the Living God.  In you we place our hope.” Let that be our prayer of faith today, and always, even when the gremlins hide our key ring at home. 

Rev. Tom Lucas, SJ