KEYS OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

 KEYS OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN
Matthew 16:18-19 : “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."

Most people are quite sure that hell is an iron gated community or a spiritual prison system complex just as Jesus told the disciples, that " I will build my assembly, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it." Likewise, when we consider Heaven, we think about it as a gated community or as a paradise like, but a fenced megapolis, the Heavenly Jerusalem, with defined borders and admission gates and check points, as Jesus told the disciples, that I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven."
It is true, that there is no real gateways between Heaven and Hell, as it is written in the Gospel of Luke chapter 16, verse 26, that between 'Heaven and Hades there is a great gulf fixed, that those who want to pass from Heaven to Hades are not able, and that none may cross over from Hades to Heaven.'
However, nothing is completely black and white in our mostly quite strange reality, not even the nowadays already obsolete black and white TVs, which were able to project innumerable ranges of gray, as the images combined black and white picture points to produce a range of achromatic brightnesses of gray.
Thus, the dichotomy between the Western view and the Eastern view applies here a bit, where the Western philosophy asserts that when a thing is A, then the exact same thing can not be a B or a C at the same time. Meanwhile the Eastern philosophy says that it can happen that a thing can be A or B or even C at the same time and space. It can be undoubtedly stated, that the ancient Eastern philosophy sounds deeper than the Western one, as it reflects the principles of Quantum Mechanics, which  was discovered by the West barely a century ago, which agrees very much with the Eastern view.
So when we say that Heaven and Hell are gated and fenced territories in the spiritual realm, that is true at least somewhat, but also it is true somewhat that they are not totally gated and totally fenced as at least in our physical reality we can experience both, often in the same time and space, like a heart touching sunset over a war ruined town.
Even Jesus had to assert in the Gospel of Luke that when "Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, "The kingdom of God doesn't come with observation;  neither will they say, 'Look, here!' or, 'Look, there!' for behold, the kingdom of God is within you." Which means, at least in this physical reality, that wherever we go, the spiritual realm we carry, goes with us within us.
Likewise, also the presence of Hades or the Hell within us goes wherever we go, stays wherever we stay, though the Lord told Cain in the Book of Genesis, chapter 4, that "If you do well, will it not be lifted up? If you don't do well, sin crouches at the door. Its desire is for you, (to devour you) but you are to rule over it."
Nonetheless, Jesus told Peter that " I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven", and it is written likewise in the Book of the Revelation, that the Lord said, that "I am the first and last and the Living One. I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. I have the keys of Death and of Hades." Thus, it is a dichotomy.
I seems to be, that Heaven and Hell, both are all penetrating and omnipresent spiritual realities, and they have keys. However, it is a complex issue, as keys might be physical, might be metaphysical, spiritual, emotional access keys, or they can be decoding keys of codes, the understanding of the difficult, the overpowering strength over forces, the access rights to the forbidden, the clearance level regarding the classified. It can be all in the same time.
Some argue that when Jesus told Peter, that "you are Peter, (which means Rock in Greek) and on this rock, I will build my assembly, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it", still Jesus did not mean that Peter, himself, is the very rock in the foundation meaning, but Jesus meant himself of being that rock.
This text is one of the most disputed text in the Gospel throughout Christianity, because superficially it looks like that Jesus made Peter an infallible authority within and over the church. However, it also happened, that “when Jesus began to teach the disciples " that the Son of Man must suffer many (...) and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of men” .
The dichotomy is still present, as Peter once was called the Rock of Faith, and in an other instance he was called a stumbling block and a Satan, by the same Jesus.
The very same Peter drew his sword to defend Jesus till death on the night of Maundy  Thursday, and this same Peter was the same person, who denied Jesus three times during the perilous persecution and torture of his Messiah, just a couple of hours later.
From the broader context in the Bible we exactly know, that only God is our Rock and Redeemer, and Jesus the Christ, himself, is the very foundation stone of the Church. Thus the keys of the Kingdom of God belongs to the Lord only.
The power of rendering judgment over life and death, over salvation or damnation belongs to God only. As no human being, including the Apostles, may wield this kind of power over fellow humans, so the keys of the Kingdom of God, depicted in the Gospel, given to the community of the Apostles, is not the rendering of any judgment, but the proclaiming of the Gospel of Jesus Christ on behalf of God.
And exactly that was the mission and ministry Jesus had chosen his disciples for, to help bring the Good News into the world, sanctifying God’s name and help the Kingdom of God become a reality on Earth. It is not the swinging of the sword of judgment over anybody, it is the proclamation of grace and life in Jesus Christ.
And exactly, this the mission and the ministry of the church even today, until Jesus will return to judge the quick and the dead. As hopefuls of the eternal life, we have to share the richness of the blessing of God with anyone who comes to faith and follows Jesus by keeping the commandments, focusing on the two major ones:
You shall love the Lord your God above everything, from all your heart and soul, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself, or maybe even a bit more than yourself, aiming for the always greater glory of the graceful and true Lord. AMEN