Sargon II was the haughty Assyrian ruler who finished the conquest of Samaria and ended the biblical kingdom of Israel. Near Ninevah he built a magnificent palace, then filled it with every luxury, including the oldest mechanical lock archaeologists have ever found. When someone inserted a monstrous wooden key, pegs inside the lock would line up evenly, allowing the bolt to move and the door to open.

Twenty-seven centuries later, keys are used everywhere for privacy and security. Indeed, they are so essential that they have become impressive symbols demanding ritual and respect. Massive keys are featured on coats-of-arms as signs of prerogative and privilege. Ornamental keys are offered as gifts of worth and welcome. Ceremonial keys are displayed as emblems of access and authority.

Every night at the Tower of London, for example, the “Queen’s Keys” are paraded across the cobblestones just before the stroke of ten. Guards salute as the Chief Yeoman Warder—dressed in Tudor “bonnet,” ruff, and tunic—locks the huge oaken doors that secure that ancient fortress brooding over the River Thames. As the officer returns the keys, a sentry barks, “Halt! Who goes there?”

“The Keys,” replies the Warder, his face glowing from a single candle flickering within his lantern. “Whose keys?” comes the challenge. “Queen Elizabeth’s Keys,” he explains. “Pass Queen Elizabeth’s Keys!” the sentry orders. “All’s well!” Followed by his escort, the Chief Yeoman Warder walks through an archway, pauses, then calls out, “God preserve Queen Elizabeth!” The guards respond, “Amen!” and “The Last Post” is sounded by a bugler.

Only once in 700 years has this “Ceremony of the Keys” been disrupted, and that was during World War II when incendiary bombs were raining down upon the Tower. Even then, the guards scrambled quickly to their feet, dusted off their uniforms, and completed their maneuvers. For Queen Elizabeth’s Keys—they were King George’s then—not only move great bolts in massive locks, but they also represent her powers as sovereign of her realm.

King Jesus also has His keys—keys that represent His powers as sovereign of His realm. That realm includes the invisible world where all of us must finally go. He has been there first, for as the Apostles’ Creed instructs us, “He descended into hell”—that is, into Hades, since the term does not mean the confines of penal suffering but the region of all the dead.

That first Good Friday He had groaned six hours nailed to His cross; and He had crushed the Serpent’s head, though the Serpent had bruised His heel. “It is finished!” He had cried after He had offered the atoning sacrifice; then He had committed Himself to His Father and dismissed His spirit. On Sunday morning He would rise up from the dead. But first He entered Hades to announce His conquest; and as our champion, He cleared the way so that we would not be afraid when we must go there, too.

Now it is Easter once again—dear, blessed Easter, our holy paschal feast, the day of days of all the year. “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept…. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” He is Lord of death and hell, and with His keys He locks and unlocks them both. If at Christmas we celebrate His birth and at Pentecost His Spirit, then at Easter we celebrate His keys. For with His keys He moves great bolts in massive locks.

It was on a Lord’s Day long ago that He declared them to be His own. Radiant with the Easter glory—His eyes piercing like “a flame of fire,” His voice thundering like “many waters,” His face shining like “the sun… in his strength,” He appeared to Saint John, though His message was for us all. “Fear not, I am the First and the Last,” He said. “I am he that liveth and was dead; and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of death and hell!”

This is still the claim that Jesus makes. “I have the keys of death and hell!” First, they are His by right of divine prerogative, since as the eternal Son, He holds dominion over everything. But, second, they are His by right of decisive conquest, since by His death and resurrection He has “disarmed the powers and authorities” of evil, making “a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross” (Col. 2:15, NIV).

Hail to the Prince of life and death,
Who holds the keys of death and hell!
The spacious world unseen is His,
And sovereign power becomes Him well.

Famous generals have led vast armies to topple mighty empires and ancient thrones. But only Jesus has vanquished death. Only Jesus can claim the “spacious world unseen” as His own. Alexander won the glory of this world, but he died before he was 33. Julius Caesar subdued the Gallic tribes, but his friends murdered him at the height of his power. Napoleon brought numbing fear to all of Europe, but cancer—some say poison—claimed him in lonely exile on St. Helena.

Conquerors all, but conquered all! Napoleon’s dust is coffined at the Invalides in Paris, but where Caesar and Alexander lie buried we do not even know. We do know that they have left forever the honors they once enjoyed, and now in Hades their naked spirits await the awful summons to give answer before the great tribunal of Jesus Christ. “As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth; For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no more.”

Except for Jesus, death will also conquer us. Every obituary notice, every passing hearse, and every granite tombstone warns that we too shall join what Cullen Bryant calls that “innumerable caravan, which moves / To that mysterious realm, where each shall take / His chamber in the silent halls of death.” Nothing is more certain about this life than that we shall leave it.

What lies before us in “that mysterious realm” where our parents and grandparents and others who have kissed our brows and touched our hands have gone? Death is a mystery, but what lies beyond is even a greater one. “If a man die, shall he live again?” asked Job; and all the ages have echoed his poignant question. From the beginning of our race, we have hoped for a blessed immortality—for unending life in the fullness of light and love. But who can assure us that this is more than an illusive dream?

Only Jesus can, and only Jesus does. Remember how He promised: “I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” Nor are these empty words. His empty cross, His empty grave-clothes, and His empty tomb all bear witness that He has subdued those grim and vicious foes that haunt our lives and mock our deaths. “Fear not,” He reassures us. “I am the First and the Last. I am he that liveth and was dead; and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen!” Life, not death, shall have the final word. This is the Easter message, and always it is the Church’s triumph-song.

Because Jesus has the keys of death and hell, we shall leave this world only by His consent, and we shall enter the world to come only with His welcome. He will be with us there, as certainly as He has been with us here; and He will care for us there as lovingly as He has cared for us here. “Absent from the body,” we shall be “present with the Lord,” who is the Good Shepherd who has laid down His life for His sheep. “And I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.”

Then by His own appointment, “the gates of death and hades shall be reopened. Bodies shall rise, spirits shall put on the new and mysterious vesture,” as an old writer has reminded us. For all must appear before the judgment seat of Christ. To the wicked He will command, “Depart from me”; but to His dear ones He will say, “Come, ye blessed of my Father.” “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

Tonight at the Tower of London, the “Queen’s Keys” will be paraded again across the cobblestones. Jesus also has His keys that represent His powers as sovereign of His realm.That realm includes the invisible world where all of us must go. But He has cleared the way so that we would not be afraid. He is Lord of death and hell, and with His keys He locks and unlocks them both. If at Christmas we celebrate His birth and at Pentecost His Spirit, then at Easter we celebrate His keys.