O KEY OF DAVID!

 

O KEY OF DAVID!

‘O key of David ...what you open no one else can close.’ So sings the church at evening prayer on 20 December. God comes to dwell among us and open up the store of energy locked away until ‘the time is fulfilled.’ The time is now fulfilled. This is the time. That is why we rejoice. No one knew, until modern times, the energy locked away in the oil under the ground. Nor did anyone guess we could produce electric power to generate light and heat.

These are images, parables, of the energy locked away in each of us – waiting to be released. The coming of the Word of God, Jesus of Nazareth, the key of David, releases energy on the world. We have only to think of Saul of Tarsus, locked up in his Jewish zeal for the law, frustrated it wasn’t leading anywhere. Then he is overcome by whatever it was that happened to him at Damascus. It was like releasing a pent-up spring. He taught, he preached, he travelled, he wrote and he suffered.

His influence and that of his companions spread everywhere, transforming late antiquity so that within a few centuries, the key was unlocking doors until the desert and the sea put a temporary halt to their reach. Over subsequent centuries, the key of David reached the furthest lands.

The process continues but now it is a call, no longer to go further, but to go deeper. Each person has gifts, even the poorest and most disabled. But often they are unknown, hidden. As we celebrate Christmas, we can search, as the wise man from the East did, for this key to our own hearts and to our hidden gifts. And the key to the hearts and gifts of others. What is stopping us unearthing these treasures, ‘hidden in a field’, we carry around with us every day?

These are gifts, not for our own enjoyment – although that too - but to be shared. One who knows their gifts and can share them, transforms the world.   As we kneel in our imagination before the crib, it is a great sorrow if we cannot unwrap our gifts. Something prevents us. Our fear of failure or ridicule? Or our circumstances which block our freedom to be who we are. Jesus, the Key, stands there waiting to help us. That’s why he came.  He is creating a new heaven and a new earth. But he can’t do it without us.   

22 December 2024          Advent 4C   Mic 5:1-4    Heb 10:5-10       Lk 1:39-45