The Keys of the Kingdom

Did Jesus give the keys to Peter alone and exclusively?

Did Jesus give the keys to Peter as first among equals together with all the Apostles?

Did Jesus give the keys to the whole Church on earth (Acts 2), committing the earthly organization of such shepherd’s care over such a large flock into the hands of the lowliest of servants?

 

To be sure, the Church was not invented in 1500 AD by the Reformation, in 1534 England, or in 1830 America.  Nor are there many churches, each with individual authority.  There is only one Church (Hebrews 12:22-29) of which all true Christians are members.  The litmus test of this membership rests on sincerity of faith.

However, faith is not some vacuous meaningless term.  A sincere (not filled with wax) faith is filled with action and substance: in Saint James’ term, “works.”  For example, Mary of Bethany could not help herself.  She understood that Jesus would be crucified.  For her, washing Jesus’ feet with her tears and anointing them with precious ointment, was a necessity, driven by her faith.  She, believing, could no more stop herself, than she could deny Him openly, it was simply impossible.  Nor is it that works follow faith, being driven by that faith.  True, there is a cause and effect relationship, humanly speaking.  Nevertheless, within the Divine Mystery, faith and works are inseparable; they are always together.  Any attempt to separate faith from works results in the falsification of one or both of them: it is impossible just to have faith.

 

Central to this problem is the fact that many of God’s sheep are going untended without sufficient pasture in today’s confused world.  Many leaders are more concerned about the rank of the keys than about feeding these wandering sheep.  They would rather fight over who’s in charge that obey Christ’s commands:

“The greatest among you will be servant of all.” 
“Wash each other’s feet.”

“Peter, Feed My sheep.”