(Sermon by our Guest Speaker, Rev. James Turriff 05/13/07)

INTRODUCTION:

It so happens that a Lutheran minister and a car salesman are called from this earth at about the same time.  They both appear before the pearly gates of heaven, where they’re greeted by St. Peter.  He looks up both of their names in the computer, and he invites them both to enter heaven.  “Come on in!” he says, “and follow me to your eternal reward.”

The pair of new arrivals follows St. Peter through the streets paved with gold, completely awed by what they see.  Heaven is amazing!  Finally they turn the corner, and they come upon this palace with sprawling acreage, beautifully manicured gardens, you get the picture. St. Peter says to the car salesman, “This is yours.  Enjoy!”

The minister thinks to himself, “Wow!  This is phenomenal.  I wonder what my place is going to be like.”  But when St. Peter finally leads him to his eternal abode, it’s just a little cottage – very nice, of course – but nothing like the huge mansion that the car salesman had received.  “What’s with this?” the minister asks.  “All my life I served the Lord faithfully, and this is all I get?”

“Well,” says St. Peter, “here in heaven we’ve got plenty of Lutheran ministers.  But that was our first car salesman.”

I hope you realize that joke has no theological merit whatsoever.  I used it only as an illustration.  You’ve heard many such jokes about St. Peter at the pearly gates.  It’s always St. Peter at the pearly gates.  Did you ever wonder where that caricature of St. Peter being the one sitting at the pearly gates came from?  In St. John’s Revelation he describes heaven as having 12 gates, and each gate was a single pearl (Revelation 21:21).  The idea that it’s always Peter sitting welcoming visitors comes from our text here in Matthew 16, where Jesus says to Peter, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.”  Since then, it’s always been St. Peter at the pearly gates.

Let’s look a little closer at just what Jesus is talking about here in our text as he gives to Peter—and, as we’re going to see, not just to Peter—the keys to the kingdom.

In the chapters leading up to Matthew 16 Jesus has been at work.  He’s been out amongst the people doing miracles.  Jesus healed the daughter of a Gentile woman, giving her the crumbs of his grace.  Now Jesus is in the town of Caesarea Philippi, on the north shores of the Sea of Galilee.  The hubbub about him still hasn’t died down.  The crowds still remember about how he fed the five thousand.  Shortly after that he had fed another four thousand.  But there was still a great deal of confusion about who Jesus was and what he had come to do.  People were still looking at Jesus as some kind of bread king.  It’s in this context that Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”  It’s an interesting question.  “What are people saying about me these days?”

The disciples relate what they’ve heard.  They replied, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”  We can just imagine the buzz, the gossip, the rumors circulating through the towns of Galilee about this prophet from Nazareth and all the miracles he’s been performing and how he taught with authority, not like their own teachers of the law.

Sadly, confusion is still something that reigns in regard to who the Son of Man is.  If you would ask someone about their view of Jesus you might get the following answers:

• Muslim-Prophet, Yes! God, No!
• Jewish-Teacher, Yes! Messiah, No!
• Christian-Example, Yes! Divine, No!

Jesus then brings the question closer to home.  “But what about you?” he asked...

“Who Do You Say I Am?”

It was Peter, impetuous Peter, Peter who always jumped in both feet first, who this time rose to the occasion.  Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

What a confession!  It seems that Peter got it!  Well, at least he knew who Jesus was.  Unfortunately, he still didn’t have a clear grasp of what Jesus had come to do as the Christ.  Only a few verses later in this chapter, when Jesus told his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life—after that conversation Peter took Jesus aside and said, “Never, Lord!  This shall never happen to you!”  Jesus’ next words to Peter were, “Get behind me, Satan!  You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”  That was why at the end of our text this morning Jesus “warned his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ.”  Jesus didn’t want them propagating a false impression of what he had come to do and making the problem of the crowds with their unrealistic expectations even worse.

Yet, Jesus still commends Peter for his confession.  Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for his was not revealed to you by m an, but by my Father in heaven.  And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.  I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.  Jesus uses a little play on words here, but you have to go into the original Greek to see it.  Many of you know that the name Peter—petros in Greek—means “rock.”  But it’s typically a smaller rock, a stone or a pebble.  Jesus says, “You are Peter (a little pebble rock) and on this rock (there he uses a different word—petra in Greek—which means a huge massif or rocky outcropping) I will build my church.”  We know from many other places in Scripture that the Rock on which the church is founded is Christ himself.  Jesus’ church was built on the cornerstone of Christ the Rock, whom Peter had so beautifully confessed.

That caricature of St. Peter at the pearly gates that appears in so many jokes is mostly a harmless one, even if it’s far from accurate.  Unfortunately, some have used the words of this text to paint an inaccurate picture that is much more harmful than the things we joke about.  Over the centuries, the pope at Rome has claimed, as the successor to Peter—whom Roman Catholics consider to be the first pope—that the pope and the pope alone possesses the keys to heaven and has the authority to open and close the gates to heaven to anyone whom he wishes.  If you look at the papal symbol, you’ll see a bishop’s miter (a type of hat) and two crisscrossed keys, representing the keys of the kingdom.

But Jesus didn’t give the keys of the kingdom to Peter alone.  How do we know?  If we go ahead only two chapters in Matthew chapter 18 we hear Jesus speaking to all his disciples when he uses almost exactly the same words as he uses when speaking to Peter: Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.  After Jesus’ resurrection, when he appeared to his disciples in the locked room on Easter evening, he said to all of the disciples who were present, “If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven.  If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”  Jesus gave the keys to the kingdom not to one man—not only to St. Peter and his successors—but to his entire church to use in his name, the church that is built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone (Ephesians 2:20).

So how is the church to use this ministry of the keys?  We use keys for two reasons: to lock and to unlock.  Let’s take each of those in turn.

The idea of locking the gates of heaven and shutting someone out of the kingdom of God might seem like a harsh thing to do, but under certain circumstances it is exactly what the Lord has called us to do.  When someone is impenitent, living in unrepented sin, hardened in his heart against the Lord Jesus, refusing to hear Christian admonition and despising the call to repentance that others bring to him—in such a situation the church has no choice but to use the “binding key” and to say to that person, “The gates of heaven are closed to you until you repent.  You will not be able to stand in the Judgment, and you will be shut out from the presence of God for all eternity.”

Of course, that teaching of Scripture is wildly unpopular today.  People’s perception today is that if I have a one-on-one relationship with God, I’m good to go.  Christian brothers and sisters, the elders of the church, pastors and teachers—they can all jump in the lake as far as many are concerned.  People say, “I don’t believe you have the power or right to tell me I’m not going to heaven.”

Well, sadly, that’s why it’s called “unbelief,” isn’t it?  Because Jesus’ words still stand: Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.  When the church, having followed the process of admonishing that’s described in Matthew chapter 18, says on the basis of Scripture, “Your unrepented sins are not forgiven,” that declaration remains as valid and as certain in heaven also, as if Christ our dear Lord had spoken those words to us himself.

The prospect of closing the gates of heaven to someone is not particularly pleasing, so let’s turn our thoughts to something more positive: the use of the “loosing key.”  How might we unlock and open the gates of heaven to a sinner?  When a penitent sinner feels the burden of his sin, when his conscience is troubled by the weight of what he has done or failed to do, when the devil won’t let such a person experience the peace of forgiveness but continues tormenting him with the guilt of his sin—in such a situation, what a privilege it is for Christians to be able to unbind that person’s conscience and open for him or her the gates of heaven.

Normally, the called pastor of the congregation makes that joyful pronouncement in the general confession and absolution in the worship service.  But the open invitation to private confession and absolution also stands.  When a person knows and feels the sins he or she has committed, it is a wonderful privilege to privately confess sins and receive the precious assurance that every single sin we have ever committed has been washed away in Jesus’ blood.  That’s exactly why Jesus lived and bled and died for us on the cross, so that all our guilt is removed, and we are pure and holy before God in heaven through Jesus’ merit.

The practice of private confession in our circles has, unfortunately, all but gone by the wayside—and that’s too bad.  Sometimes we’re ashamed of the guilt we carry, and we don’t want someone else to know what we’ve done, so we carry it alone.  We might be afraid that the person to whom we confess won’t give us absolution but will instead try to extract some pound of flesh as a condition for forgiveness.  How sad that we deprive ourselves of the joy of hearing the proclamation of forgiveness!

There is no greater privilege than to be able to exercise in the name of Jesus the ministry of the keys, to announce God’s full and free forgiveness to the penitent sinner.  That privilege isn’t just for pastors, my friends.  Each of you, as a member of Christ’s church, carries the same responsibility and privilege.  When someone who is burdened and troubled by anxiety or guilt speaks to you, don’t just give them trite conversation and pious platitudes.  Don’t just tell them, “Hang in there,” or “Tough it out” or “Keep your chin up.”  Share the gospel with them!  Share with them the sweet message of God’s grace in Jesus.  Point them to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

One wonders what Peter felt after the Lord commended to him and to his church this tremendously powerful gift of the keys to heaven.  Do you think Peter pictured himself sitting at the gate deciding who would go in and who would not?  Do you think Peter realized he would be the subject of so many jokes about St. Peter and the pearly gates?  No, but he certainly was comforted in his conviction and knowledge that Jesus was exactly who Peter had confessed him to be: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.  And just like every believer in the history of the Christian church who correctly understood the Ministry of the Keys, he rejoiced in the forgiveness of sins that was personally communicated to him in Christ.

May the certainty that the gates of heaven have been unlocked by the keys to the kingdom always fill your heart with joy and peace!  Amen.

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