The Keys to the Kingdom

         What are the “Keys to the Kingdom” that Jesus tells Peter about in the Gospel of Matthew?  How many times have we seen a cartoon with an authoritative Peter standing behind a podium before the pearly gates with someone standing before him waiting to enter those gates.   Peter, in these cartoons is the admission officer to heaven; the one who says yes or no to whoever comes to stand before him.  What an awesome responsibility.  What does he do when somebody who refused to forgive his neighbor is before him?  Does Peter say, “You know what?  I did that too!” And let the poor person in.  What if these keys of the kingdom are all about forgiveness?  What if forgiveness is the essence of what Jesus came to teach us?  Forgiveness is one of the most difficult things that any of us wrestle with in the life. 

            Why is it that you come to church?  For me, it is the fundamental sense of community that it provides.  It isn’t doctrinal, it doesn’t even have much to do with the things that the church has taught through the years; it is primarily because I like to see all of these people who sit in the pews with me.  That is for me what church is all about.  There is also something else that happens in church that I find enervating:  Every week we kneel or stand in this place and confess our sins, those things that we have done or left undone.  We humbly ask God to forgive us and let us get on with our lives.  After we have done this, the priest pronounces absolution of our sins.  This is not a small thing.  It is God, through the priest, saying to each of us:  you are clean, you are forgiven, you can go on. 

            What is significant to me is that this is done right before we offer the peace of God to each other.  Here are a group of cleansed people coming to each other and saying “The Peace of the Lord be always with you! We then reply, “and also with you!”  If this isn’t a profound statement of community, I have never heard one.  It transcends all of the petty differences that we have with each other, lets us get back to the only thing that keeps us together, our relationship with each other.  It is then that we go on and break the bread, fill the cup and celebrate the real presence of the Lord in our lives.  That is what we take with us when we leave this place.

            What if we took this notion of forgiveness one more step:  To look at all of our relationships and see where we need to forgive.  That can be life giving, not only for the person whom we forgive, but mostly for us.  The burden of carrying hurts with us through our lives can wreck our souls.  Being resentful is something that continually causes pain; and when we can let it go, it breathes life back into us.

            For many years, I had a ministry at Western Penitentiary.  I had a group of men, all who had killed somebody and were in the place for life.  We talked about a lot of things, often about what had led them to be in the prison in the first place.  One week, one of the men in the group told us that he had gotten a letter from the family of the victim of his crime.  They wanted to come and see him.  He had been a teacher, who had an inappropriate relationship with one of his students.  In the course of events, she was killed and he was sentenced to prison.  He went to see the parents.  The father said to him, “we have come to forgive you.  It is time for us to bury our daughter and to get on with our lives.  It is time to stop the hatred and to look forward.”  My inmate was stunned.  The father went on to tell him that this wasn’t done lightly.  “When you were being transferred to the court house from the prison, I was on a roof down the street with a rifle.  I wanted to kill you, but I couldn’t do it.  I thank God that I didn’t take that step.” 

            What happened in that encounter was a miracle.  My inmate was amazed and somewhat put off by it; but the parents were freed.  They were able to let go of all of the anger and resentment that they had with that man and get on with their lives.  That is certainly not a small thing.

            I think that is the essence of what Jesus came to help us to understand.  From the cross, he said, “Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do.”  That, for me is the message of the church to the world.  What if we were able to forgive without reserve?  Wouldn’t we all live better lives?  Wouldn’t the world be a better place?  Wouldn’t our freedom be multiplied? We take the Keys of the Kingdom with us when we go through our lives.  We are the ones behind the podium.  Forgiveness is the key.