O Key of David and Sceptre of the house of Israel, Who dost
open and no man doth shut, Who dost shut and no man doth open, come and bring
forth from his prisonhouse the captive that sitteth in darkness and in the
shadow of death.
He would turn up
for the grand occasions in the Chapel when I was a student at Duke. He was an old man, very distinguished with a
craggy face, an emeritus professor of chemistry. His doctoral robe was Harvard Crimson, and he
wore a velvet cap. And he carried an
enormous jeweled staff, with a wide silver head, the mace of the
University. His title was the University
Marshall, and that staff represented, I think, the teaching authority. He bore on behalf of the faculty, who had
chosen them to represent him. When he
carried it in on Matriculation Ceremony, or on Founders’ Day or for
Baccalaureate, and laid it upon the Altar, it announced to all of us that the
university could now get about its business, that the teachers would teach,
that students could learn. He walked
very slowly, because he knew that everyone had to wait for him. His mace was the key that opened the
proceedings of a great university.
Of the images evoked in the Advent
antiphons, this last one we will consider today, the key of David, is probably
the most obscure. I certainly had to
remind myself of the odd corner of Isaiah’s prophecy from which it is taken.[1] And you get a better picture of it by
imagining that university marshal with his silver mace than any little piece of
steel you might have in your pocket or handbag this afternoon. First, it was something that was carried on a
shoulder—far too big to fit in a pocket.
Probably it was designed to secure the complicated series of bolts and
gates that needed to be fixed each night in those dangerous days. And it may well have been, by Isaiah’s time a
rather fancy and bejeweled implement.
Because, like the mace it was a symbol of authority.
It was given to the chief steward,
the one who had authority to manage the royal household: think Carson the
butler from Downton Abbey. He chose the
staff, he purchased what was needed, he presided with dignity at grand
occasions, and the full responsibility for the hospitality and the splendor of
the king’s palace rested on his shoulders.
The steward in Isaiah’s time, Shebna, had failed, and the key with it
attendant power was given to Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, with the promise, that at
least for a time, he would prove reliable and trustworthy, “fastened like a peg
in a sure place.” He would perform his
duties with finality, and the quality of his work would be lasting, “shutting
and no man opening,” and “opening, and no man shutting.”
The
chief steward also was the one, above all, who gave access to the king. Regicide was a constant challenge in most
ancient societies, and many palaces were designed a bit like the
labyrinth—confusing passageways, hidden doors, bolted gates. The steward knew his way around the palace,
and only his key could open every door.
You needed him to guide you if you wanted to make your way to the king’s
presence.
The antiphon begins with that image of the
royal steward, but then it shifts things, and talks instead about prisoners, in
the words of the Psalmist, “such as sit in darkness,
and in the shadow of death, being fast bound in misery and iron.” It’s not a courtier who needs the steward to
gain access to the king, it’s the man in the dungeon who needs to be loosed
from his shackles. But the true steward,
the master of the hall, his key can open those doors as well.
It is one of the most recurring
images, the prisoner in darkness, longing for freedom and light. Joseph was a prisoner, and Jeremiah the
prophet. Peter and John were jailed several
times during their early ministry in Jerusalem, and Paul wrote most of His
letters from a prison cell. But more
still is meant by this. The prison is an
image of sin, and the devil is the one who has bound us, the strong man who
holds us captive. We hope for freedom,
but it is no simple matter to break the chains of long habit and early
formation in vice. We cannot tame our
passions by good intentions alone, our besetting sins return again and again. Our resolve simply isn’t strong enough to cut
through the iron bars. We must be set
free by another. A prayer from the English
Prayer Book puts it this way: “though we be tied and bound with the chain of
our sins, yet let the pitifulness of thy great mercy loose us.”
And Christ is the one who has
come to set the prisoner free. It was
part of that great agenda He announced in Nazareth at the very beginning of His
ministry. “The Spirit of the Lord is
upon me…to proclaim liberty to the captive.”[2] As He proclaimed the good news, He loosed
people from devastating physical conditions, and also declared the forgiveness
of sins. And in His death and
resurrection, at the great feast of Passover, the day of liberation, He broke
the power of sin forever. And when He
ascended to glory, He threw wide the gates, so that we too might follow after
him. As the ancient Te Deum has it,
“when thou hadst overcome the sharpness of
death, thou didst open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers.”[3]
“I am the living One,” He announced to the
seven churches in the Book of Revelation, “I died,
and behold I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.”[4] You may know the orthodox ikon of the
resurrection. It’s not like those
Renaissance pictures where Christ steps meekly out from His grave. Instead, it shows him, as He completes what
the author of I Peter describes as his “preaching to the souls in prison.”[5] He is lifting Adam and Eve out of their dark
tombs and into the light. At His feet
are those keys He has come to claim, and the devil lies bound beneath him in
the darkness.
Life in Him
begins with repentance. We turn to Him confessing
our sins, and then we find the power of His great mercy. He steps into our dark prison, breaks
everything that holds us, and leads us out, like those ancient apostles, like
Adam and Eve, to a new life. The words
of Wesley’s hymn are especially powerful.
Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.[6]
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.[6]
That work, the work of setting
people free by confession and forgiveness.
He himself called it the power of
the keys. And it is at the heart of the
Church’s ministry. Whether we come to
him in private or in the Church’s common worship, whenever we confess our sins
sincerely, we receive, through the ministry of His priests, the gift of
absolution. Absolution, it means
“breaking the bond”—taking off the chains, throwing open the door.
But He is also, like Isaiah’s
Eliakim the chief steward, the One who leads the way for us, the way back to
the Father’s house. When He comes for
us, He will take us by the hand, and bring us into His Presence, our home
forever. In that place, as Saint John
saw in His vision, there are twelve gates, each of a single pearl, and every
one of them is open forever.[7]
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