Thursday, December 19, 2019

Advent 2019, day nineteen





Once, I found an old key in a cupboard in the vestry of a church I served. It was large, far larger than a modern key, with an elaborate bit and bow, and had been the key to the door of the church a long time ago. No one seemed to value it, and I was tempted to take it with me when I moved on to serve another church community, as a memento. But it was not mine to take; it belonged to the community through the generations, whether they knew it or not, and not to any given individual who passed through.

If Jesus is the key to the kingdom of the heavens, then the heart — our God-given capacity to make choices — is the lock. But not, primarily, at an individual level. The heart in question is that of a community, the God-given capacity of the church to make choices, of what to bar and what to release. And the Holy Spirit is the oil that keeps the lock free-turning.

It is a source of frustration to some that the Holy Spirit should lead different churches to open and close different doors. But this is given to remind us all that none of us has a monopoly on what the kingdom of the heavens looks like beyond those doors. We are simply door-keepers in the house of the Lord, each given responsibility for a different door, by which the greatest number of people might find their way home.

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