“The Man with the Keys”
On this, the birthday of my father, it seemed good to me and the Holy Spirit to let his life preach a bit.
Prayer: We are making ready now, O God.
In the dark we reach for your dawn.
We long to believe the keys to the Kingdom are ours, the latch to heaven undone, the love in Jesus makes us one. Give us the precious gift of holy imagination. Amen.
When my father retired, he took a job as the janitor of our local church. At that time, there was a large Head Start program that used our Sunday School space and caused the building to buzz with kids all day long. These children had lots of women, but not as many men in their lives. So, when he could, my Dad would eat his lunch with the children and keep a ready supply of Lifesavers in his pocket.
In high school at that time, I would go down to the church sometimes and help him finish up so he could get home early. You could hear Dad coming because he had to carry a large ring of keys that chucked against his hip as he walked. The children loved to see him. “Hey, Mis-ta Rowe! How are you doing, Mis-ta Rowe?” This lilting chorus followed Dad around the building.
But there was one little boy, very bright and full of stuff, who’d lift his shining face proclaiming: “Don’t call that man, Mis-ta Rowe … He’s the man with the keys. Call him the man with the keys!”
That little boy knew enough even at such a young age to understand that if you held the key to every door, well then you really were some—body! The man with the key to unlock every door was someone worth knowing.
A large audience had gathered. They had come to hear a great mind, and they listened respectfully to his concluding remarks: “Therefore,” he said, “there is no God; Jesus Christ was slaughtered for political reasons by an occupying power in collaboration with religious authorities. The Holy Spirit is a fantasy of the naïve. The church is an oppressive and out of date institution and the future, the future belongs to the rich, the powerful and multi-national corporations.”
He was about to sit down when a gray-haired man near the front, wearing a priest’s collar stood up and said to the lecturer, “May I just say one, short sentence?”
The lecturer reluctantly nodded. The old priest turned and looking out over the crowd shouted, “Christ has risen!”
And the people roared back, “He has risen indeed!”
When Jesus broke out of that spiced tomb, heaven happened. When Jesus rose out of the dark, he brought with him a new dawn.
Easter is the beginning of God’s new world. Jesus is the man with the keys.
Since Easter day our ears have been filled Sabbath after Sabbath with the thunder and lightning storm we call the Revelation to John, or The Book of Revelations … and what has been revealed?
One Sunday we’re given a vision of the risen Jesus:
Snow white hair, feet of polished bronze, voice like a waterfall, his face like the sun, itself. This is where terror and joy meet. And today is added, he is the bright and morning star, alpha and omega. No wonder John fell at his feet as through dead.
Then today’s the gospel offers the heart swelling vision of all of us being ONE with Jesus … One … his blood and bone our own, our breath his, our death and life lost in his!
When love comes and calls your name, the only sane thing to do, is to say, Here I am, take me!”
Does this take some imagination to acquire this astonishing grace? Well, of course it does! All set up by the glorious line from Revelations first chapter:
Don’t be afraid, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died and look, I am alive forever more. And …. I’VE GOT THE KEYS! (Rev. 1: 17-18)
Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase, in The Message: “See these keys in my hand? They open and lock death’s doors, they open and lock hell’s gates.”
Whatever you have misplaced, I’ve got the keys to find it. Whatever in you is locked up, bound up, I can untie it. Whoever you have lost, well, you want to see them again? I’ve got the keys! Trust me.
Broken heart, come through this door to a new start. Shame and despair… come to me for loving care. Got some sorrow tucked away or is it so large this morning as to barring all the entrances to joy? I am the man with the keys. I can clean that wound. The tyrants, the autocrats, the murderers say they hold the keys to hell and death—they’re lying. I hold those keys and by my love I’ve locked those dark doors tight. I am here to open heavens doors.”
All you need to do is use the gift I’ve given each of you: Holy imagination.
Jesus’ central purpose was to open heaven’s doors in the present and in the future.
Future first.
“I am the Resurrection and the Life; whoever believes in me, though they should die, will come to life.” (John 11:25)
We believe in the resurrection from the dead.
We do not believe in immortality—some vague sense of watered-down survival.
No, we believe in resurrection. More then mere survival. More than a kind of disembodied bliss. In resurrection our bodies are brought out in a new edition!
The new life Jesus offers is not less than physical, it’s more–being human with more, real cool, new software. Yes, I know…hard to get one’s head around this for sure … actually don’t expect you to do so … not understand it, but I do encourage you to stand under it … way to say: accept on faith this holiest of holy mysteries—this one in which the final word is love … love wins.
Metaphors can help: 1 Thessalonians—like a nap while Revelations 20 … talks about a really long sleep. 1 Corinthians 15—twinkling of an eye … the trumpet sound. Not bad. Jesus’ profound, moving mansions metaphor of “many prepared rooms …” Stand under that!
Remember when Jesus turned to the criminal dying beside him and said, “Today …. TODAY … TODAY … You will be with me in paradise.”
We believe in the resurrection from the dead & we believe in a future heaven.
Your holy job? Imagine it. Imagine love/compassion/justice winning. Forever. This will change your life … to live wonder-full … great secret of a life with God—to live full of wonder … and yet, Jesus is so misunderstood if he is a Savior only for tomorrow.
Do you recall another the wonder-full moment in Mary’s life after her brother Lazarus had died? He’s been gone a full 3 days before Jesus finally gets there … as he approaches Mary, she’s ready for him to offer condolences, to say what any kind person, much less on who loved her and her brother would say: I am so sorry for your loss. Right?
Instead, what does he say? “Your brother will rise again.”
She responds without missing a beat, , “Yes, thank you, so kind … I know, I know, at the last day.” She’s thinking, like most of us do on our best Easter days. “Yes, I do have this future hope that when I leave this world, I’ll go to another. For right now, well, we’ll just have to get by.”
Jesus responded, “No, no Mary. You don’t get it. I mean right now. I am the resurrection. Heaven is now.” Future yes, but also …
Jesus came to bring heaven now.
The Easter Truth is not just about new life someday, but of a reborn world, TODAY.
3 great truths of Easter:
First great truth of Easter: There is a heaven.
Second great truth of Easter: This heaven is for all people. We will have new life in it.
Third and last truth is the Everest of Easter. These first two glorious truths are base camps of hope and joy. But the Everest of Easter, the third great truth is this:
Heaven has come to earth.
Jesus brought heaven down. Not in a blue sky far away. Heaven can no longer wait!
Fred Craddock: “People need to stop bulldozing the great promise of scripture into the future.”
Heaven begins with love with affair between all those we love and Jesus Christ, not in a local nursing home.
Easter is a vision of a world reborn: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.” Rev 21:1
Heaven is God taking up space, with justice and grace, with us now.
No throw away world but a rather a “so loved world.”
We are called as the people of The Way of Jesus to get heaven out of our hearts and minds and onto our hands.
Halli in Barbara Kingsolver’s wonderful novel, Animal Dreams, shares with her friend Codi a Kingdom of God vision for her life:
“Codi, here is what I have decided: the very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. What I want is so simple I almost can’t say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility that kids might grow up to be neither the destroyers or the destroyed. That’s about it. Right now I’m living that hope, running down it’s hallway and touching the walls on both sides.”
To live in hope … right under its roof! Resurrection clothes are not white robes but overalls.
When “Love is Lord of Heaven and earth” there is work to do.
A resurrection that matters is a promise and a gift, but it is also a demand and a task.
Leontine Kelly, born into 1920, to a family 3 Methodist ministers in it…pioneer in women’s rights, first women Bishop of The United Methodist Church in the San Francisco Bay area.
Little girl, her father was sent to serve a formerly all white church in Cincinnati. Magnificent structure—gothic arches, polished oak, crystal chandeliers. It was a church with a great history. Presidents had worshipped there and one married there. Parsonage was so big each kid had their own room—took up an entire city block. Huge cellar under the parsonage—dungeon dark.
One day her brothers found a hole beside the furnace leading to a tunnel. Tried to get Leontine to go through it. Ran crying to her father, Daddy, come a get these guys!”
Her father went down and came back quite excited … didn’t scold the boys.
“Let’s go over to the church and check the furnace there. I think we have found something!” Removed some old boards and found another hole and what looked like more tunnels.
“Go and get on your oldest clothes, these tunnels are lined with brick. I think they can be trusted.”
That night at the dinner table at the Calvary Methodist parsonage in Cincinnati, Ohio, five blocks from the Ohio River, she heard her father tell of the “underground railroad” … no tracks and not entirely underground—network for helping slaves escape to freedom. Slaves who if caught would be brutally punished, killed. Against the law to do this. Her father said, “Children don’t ever forget this day.”
The next Sunday was like Easter. She said she can still hear her father’s thundering voice: “I stand on hallowed ground. I now know the greatness of this church. It is not in Gothic arch, or polished oak, not in stained glass or crystal chandelier. The greatness of this church is below us. I am standing on hallowed ground. For this week, my children and I found heaven’s door … to look at it is to see only a bare light bulb hanging down, a dark, damp and cobwebby place, but below us some people were practicing resurrection. Below us some people were using the keys Christ had entrusted them with! Below us you can read the story of a people not content with the world as it was, dared to risk, dared to be involved … to care about poor, frightened human beings. The very foundations of this church bear the markings of helping hurting people along to freedom.”
They used the copies of Christ’s keys given to each of them at baptism. They used their hands, their lives, to open the doors of heaven and bring it down to the banks of the Ohio in Cincinnati.
Life after death? Yes. Rooms prepared and our bodies in a new addition? Yes. Heaven someday? Yes. But there is a whole world waiting for us who have been given keys … waiting for someone like you to open a door, to raise a window.
The man with the keys has made copies, and not to use yours is to allow the gospel to end with weeping women like Mary and frightened, confused, heart sick men.
There are still a million Mary’s and more, all races and ages, some hungry and hurt, some sad and lonely, some afraid … waiting so close to hell and death that they can smell and taste it … just waiting for someone who knows what hope is and is willing to live within that hope …. there is a whole world waiting for someone who knows the man with the keys and is willing whatever the cost to practice resurrection!
He is risen! He is risen indeed!
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