Giving us the Keys: Meditations on John 20

When Jesus appears to His disciples after His resurrection, He does a number of exceptional things.  First, He doesn’t pummel them about the head and shoulders for being weak, stupid, and cowardly during His Passion.  He doesn’t upbraid them, cajole them, or guilt-trip them.  He doesn’t appear in all His heavenly glory, and shock them into shivering masses on the floor.  He doesn’t regale them with vivid images of the hell He has just endured and conquered.  All of which would have been appropriate and just, since the disciples proved themselves absolutely useless, while Jesus proved Himself Lord of Heaven and Earth.

Instead, He gives His disciples a word of peace and consolation, that they do not in any way deserve or expect.  Having suffered for their sins, dying and rising again, He owed the disciples nothing—in fact, they owed Him everything.  While He was at His most pain filled moments, they abandoned Him, renounced Him, and tried to blend in with the vicious crowd that murdered Him.  Jesus did not owe them anything but judgment, and instead, He gave them forgiveness, peace, and reconciliation.  Having suffered the greatest injustice and mistreatment in the history of the universe, Jesus emerged on the other side of that suffering, giving the gift of His grace and mercy.

What an alien concept to fallen humanity!  How quick we are, to demand justice when we are wronged.  How fast our tongue flicks out words of condemnation, judgment, and derision against others.  How much we enjoy causing another person to feel guilty for their faults against us, twisting the knife of grief until we think they’ve paid sufficient penance.  And all the while, as sinful, broken, guilty people, it is we who deserve far greater condemnation from our just God, who has suffered all things at our hands.  We, who are guilty, constantly seek to throw stones at our neighbor, in our pathological delusion that asks for justice while hiding from it.

Yet it is to us that Jesus not only first shows love, mercy, and forgiveness, but also gives us the authority to give these gifts to others.  Knowing what sniveling wretches the disciples were, He first shows them divine love, and then gives them His own hard won authority to show His love to the world.  While Jesus is Lord of All, His authority to forgive sins came through the Cross, where the penalty of our sins was paid.  God could not forgive sins without just payment, lest His divine Justice be violated.  And so, Jesus bore the penalty, and emerged with the gift—the forgiveness of sins by the shedding of His Blood, which satisfies the wrath of our Holy God.

And so He says to His disciples, “As the Father has sent Me, even so I send you…”  Sent to do what?  To preach the Gospel of forgiveness through the Cross of Christ, which cures the deadly curse of the Law; to freely give what no one deserves, just as those who first received it, received it freely and without merit.  Jesus gives freely to His disciples forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation by the eternal authority of His Sacrifice for the sins of the world, and then hands them the Keys of the Kingdom so that they may do the same for their neighbors in His Name. Jesus delivers His great victory over sin, death, the devil and hell, to His disciples, that they might give it freely to all who will repent and believe in Him.

That’s the gift of the Keys, which the under-shepherds of the Chief Shepherd administer on His behalf and in His Name, for the good of His people.  It is a gift freely received and freely given, earned by no lesser price than the most precious Blood of Christ.  Hear the Word of the Savior as it comes to you, bringing you peace and mercy and grace, through faith in Him.  Amen.