21st Sunday in Ordinary Time – Scottsdale – 2026
There are few things more frustrating than being locked out.
You shut the door and almost immediately realise that the keys are on the other side. There is that awful moment when you pat every pocket, knowing perfectly well that the key is not going to appear. You feel rather stupid. You feel helpless. But you are not hopeless, because somewhere there is a key.
Our readings today are full of that imagery: a key placed upon a shoulder; a door opened that no one can close; a door closed that no one can open. Then, in the Gospel, Jesus says to Peter: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.”
Keys matter because they give access.
The great question in today’s Gospel is not really about keys. It is about Jesus.
“Who do people say the Son of Man is?”
The disciples give him the results of the latest opinion poll. Some say John the Baptist. Others Elijah. Others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.
Then Jesus makes the question personal: “But you, who do you say I am?”
This is one of the great questions of the Gospel.
It is a question for a small Catholic community gathered in Scottsdale just as surely as it was a question for those disciples gathered around Jesus at Caesarea Philippi.
“But you, who do you say I am?”
Peter answers: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
And Jesus gives Peter the keys.
There is something wonderfully reassuring about that because Peter is hardly an obvious choice.
Peter can be magnificent and Peter can be a complete bungler. He is the man who steps out of the boat, goes towards Jesus, and then sinks. He is the man who boldly declares that Jesus is the Christ and later becomes frightened enough to deny that he even knows him.
Yet when Peter sinks, Jesus reaches out and takes hold of him.
When Peter fails, Jesus does not discard him.
That tells us something tremendously important about the Church. The Church was never founded upon the perfection of Peter. It was founded upon the grace of Christ working in Peter.
And that is good news for us.
You see, none of us comes to Mass this morning because we have everything sorted out. We come because we need the Lord.
The keys entrusted to Peter signify a real authority and responsibility in the Church. We Catholics have always taken those words of Jesus seriously. But underneath that authority is something even more fundamental: Peter knows Jesus. Peter has been called by him. Peter has discovered that even when he falls, Jesus reaches down and raises him up.
That is the faith for which Peter eventually gave his life.
And that same faith has brought us together here today.
In a small Catholic community such as Scottsdale, we can sometimes be conscious of what we do not have. We might remember days when churches were more full or when priests were more readily available. We can worry about what the Church will look like in another ten or twenty years.
But perhaps the Gospel asks us to begin somewhere else.
Not how large are we nor what will happen to us?
But with “Who do you say I am?”
Because if Jesus Christ is truly the Son of the living God, then the future of the Church does not finally depend upon numbers. It depends upon our remaining close to him.
Perhaps there are times when we feel that faith itself has become difficult. Perhaps there are prayers that seem unanswered. Perhaps there are burdens we have carried for a long time.
Peter reminds us that sinking is not the end of the story.
There is a hand reaching towards us.
The hand belongs to the one whom Peter recognised as “the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
When we leave this little church today, we do not simply take with us an idea about Jesus.
We take Christ himself.
He is the one who opens what seems closed.
And when we wonder where the key is, perhaps the answer has been before us all along.
The key is Christ and with faith in him the doors of life are never locked.
Most Rev. Anthony J. Ireland
Archbishop of Hobart
23 August 2026