20 December 2017
Wednesday of the Third Week of Advent
O Key of David and scepter of the House of Israel; you open and no one can shut; you shut and no one can open: Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house, those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.
The Roman Empire had conquered the people of God, and the people longed for freedom. But there was a deeper longing, a more stifling imprisonment from which they all yearned to be free: sin, and the death it brought. No rebellion, no treaty could free the people of God from this bond. No key fashioned by man could unlock its doors, for man had fashioned them, shutting himself out of Eden forever by striving to be what he could not be: his own god. In the greatest and most tragic of ironies our first parents sought to rule themselves, sought what seemed to be a greater freedom, and as a result lost it all, realizing only too late that true freedom lies in obedience to the created order, to the will of God. It was not God that locked Eden’s gates, but we who locked ourselves out.
An angel appears to a virgin in Nazareth, betrothed to a descendant of David, to tell her something astounding: “The Lord is with you.” Here in the midst of ultimate defeat, in the serpentine coils of an empire that was crushing the life out of His people, the Lord was with her. What’s more is the angel promises that in the face of this empire and its Caesar the Most High will send His Son, who shall be given “the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his Kingdom there will be no end.”
And she would bear Him. She would be the queen-mother of the Kingdom of God.
This child would open the gates of Heaven and loose the chains of sin. He would descend even to the depths of Hades to lead to freedom the souls that have waited there since Adam and Eve. He would be a light to those in darkness, and new life to those in the jaws of death. What’s more is the gates of Heaven could never be shut again; it was as if the Son of David, the Son of God would break the key off in the lock such that it could never be used again.
But first that Key would be molded in the womb of Mary, who would in turn be as a lantern bearing the light of hope for the entire world. By Eve’s disobedience the lock was made; it would thus be by “the handmaid of the Lord” that the lock would be opened, smashed, and discarded. Once the sword of sin and death held sway; now “the scepter of the House of Israel” has shattered its blade for the rest of time.