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.

Since at least the sixth century Christians in the west have sung the Great O Antiphons at evening prayer on the seven days before Christmas Eve. The antiphon (a refrain sung before and after the Song of Mary) is addressed to Jesus calling him by a title derived from the Old Testament. If you arrange the titles in Latin from last to first, their first letters would spell out the Latin words for “I will be there tomorrow.” That’s exactly what happens. Jesus comes the day after the last antiphon is sung.

Since most Lutherans don’t have daily evening prayer, we never get to hear these marvelous antiphons, but we know an arrangement of them in the hymn “O come, O come, Emanuel.”

Today’s antiphon is based on several texts from Isaiah (22:22 & 42:7). The idea of Jesus as a key who alone can open or shut a lock sounds very mysterious. Maybe it’s related to the Office of the Keys, the authority the church to bind and lose sins. It is certainly related to the idea that we human beings are in bondage to sin. We are prisoners of the darkness and only Christ can free us.

We have to see ourselves as captives to sin before we appreciate the gift of Jesus Christ.

Read Isaiah 42:5-7 and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne