On Christmas Eve of 2008, a vibrant Anglo-Catholic parish in a major American city was celebrating our Lord’s nativity on Christmas Eve. The church was bedecked with garlands of greenery. The pews were full. The organ was sounding in its full glory. The Mass opened with a procession around the church and happy voices loudly singing “O come, all ye faithful.”
It was during that procession that several choir members, and I’m sure others, noticed the homeless man who often showed up for Mass at this inner-city church. He was hard to miss because he was wearing what he always wore, no matter the weather: a bulky silver winter coat that shimmered in the light. He was standing at the back of the crowded church, which was not surprising because it was Christmas Eve, and the pews were packed.
The sight of this frequent attender of Masses was only surprising the next day when the choir members picked up the local newspaper and saw that the homeless visitor spotted the previous night at Mass had been brutally murdered on the city streets. The most surprising thing of all was that the murder had happened on Christmas Eve, before the Mass where he was seen.
Although those who confidently assert that they saw the man that night were at first shocked upon learning of his tragic death, perhaps they weren’t entirely surprised to consider that he might have been spotted at the back of the church where he so often attended Mass. It was a place where he found refuge. It was a place where he was seen and welcomed, not ignored. And of all nights to be there, why not Christmas Eve?
The congregation of that church was gathered to celebrate the nativity of Christ and revel in the mystery of the Incarnation and its radical claim that God became so intimately wrapped up in the lives of human beings that God, in Christ, took on human flesh. The people gathered in that church would have heard St. Luke’s account of Jesus’s birth, but of course, in the backs of their minds, they would have supplemented the story with details from St. Matthew’s birth narrative. They would have been potently aware of Christmas’s special significance: that Christ is Emmanuel, God-with-us. God in Christ is revealed to be rather like the message in the rearview mirror of cars: closer than God appears.
In that Anglo-Catholic parish, which was firmly committed to honoring the Real Presence of Christ in the poor on the streets of a troubled, deeply segregated city, parishioners would have understood that receiving Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar was inextricably connected with receiving Christ’s presence in the poor, homeless, hungry, thirsty, naked, imprisoned, and sick. And on that Christmas Eve, God showed up tangibly in both the Sacrament of the Altar and in the vision of a man who had been heinously murdered by those who were supposed to treat him as if he were Christ himself.
If I were to take a poll of the room right now, I would guess that many of you have already sorted characters from this story into sheep and goats based on Matthew’s parable. It’s a scene that is full of judgment and that seems to be about who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, and ultimately, a rigid reading of this parable is usually based on our own fear of judgment. But if we have learned anything from the parables of the last few weeks in Matthew’s Gospel, we have learned that our motivations for following Christ will be distorted if they are rooted in fear. And this is why the parable of the sheep and the goats is ultimately not about fear but about how God’s love is revealed in judgment. And in this realization, we find that salvation is closer than it initially appears.
For nearly twenty-five chapters, Matthew has reinforced a central message to his Gospel: that our salvation is tied up in the ordinary moments and actions of our life. Indeed, salvation itself is closer than it often appears. It’s not an elusive pie-in-the-sky dream. It’s not something that can be controlled or weaponized by the Church. It’s something that is freely given to all who will receive the gift, whether they profess to be Christians or whether they’re living as Christians are supposed to live without even knowing it.
So, as Matthew’s Gospel draws to a close and Advent draws nigh, we encounter this judgment scene that confounds all exclusive, fearful notions of salvation. Salvation is closer to us than we appear. It’s tied up in our willingness to live as if God is closer than he might appear. Salvation is tied up with our willingness to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, and visit the sick and the imprisoned. And in Matthew’s rather practical but convicting depiction of judgment, we find that none of us can receive salvation without each other.[1] Salvation is closer to us than it appears. God is closer to us than he might at first appear. But what is closest to us is often what we least want to face.
Such as an immigrant without a home whose life was taken on the street where he slept. His life was taken by those who should have seen in him that their own salvation was closer than it first appeared, that God himself was closer than they might imagine.
But that homeless man found his way to a place that welcomed him as they welcomed the refugee child born homeless in Bethlehem, the city where salvation became far closer than it had ever appeared. On Christmas Eve, a homeless refugee in our nation’s capital didn’t need to greet his King in a royal palace but met him face to face in the Sacrament of the Altar, where his King exchanged his royal robe for bread and wine. A congregation attired in their Sunday best could easily appreciate the presence of Christ in the Eucharistic Bread and Wine, but some also saw Christ in the presence of the man from the streets. That Christmas night, Christ was present at the east and west ends of that church, in the sacred food of the altar and in the man from the streets.
Christ is the King who exchanges his royal robes for clothes with holes in them. He is the King who exchanges the royal feast for begging for food on the street. He is the King who exchanges the sumptuous bed of a royal chamber for a cold, hard city street. Christ is the King who exchanges the lavish palace for a dank prison cell. He does it all so that heaven can become closer than it appears. Christ is the King honored at the altar and in the streets. We can’t meet Christ in the high places without also finding him in the lowest places of the earth. And in the lowest places of the earth, we find the heavenly throne room.
Christ the King is Emmanuel who comes to us in surprising vesture, although we meet him most truly when we least expect it or are aware of it. This is often when we come closest to salvation. In the parable of the sheep and the goats, neither the sheep nor the goats can understand their fate. The righteous ones are not consciously aware that they were ministering to Christ when they ministered to the needy. And the wicked ones are not consciously aware that they had failed to minister to Christ when they had failed to minister to the needy. Following Christ is about not letting our right hand know what the left is doing. And doing the right things without pretense or ulterior motive is precisely the point.
When we are blissfully conscious of meeting Christ in the ordinary, then we have found heaven. There’s no need to calculate every step of our lives for fear of losing heaven or for hope of gaining it. If we live as Christ is asking us to live, we will find heaven, partly in this life and perfectly in the next. Heaven is closer than it often appears. Is it any wonder, then, that a murdered man being welcomed towards the pearly gates might also be seen in his shiny silver coat in a church on Christmas Eve?
When the poor and needy are pawns for us to use to gain heaven, then we have found hell. When the hungry and thirsty are inconvenient to our daily comfort and when we judge them because of their situation, then we have found hell. When a person on the streets is nothing more than an object of pity, then we have not yet found heaven. When the altar is only a royal throne and not a manger of hay, then we have not understood what heaven is and we have failed to understand the kind of King that comes to us daily.
For us Christians, there must always be two altars. There must be the altar in our church, where Christ comes to us assuredly in the Blessed Sacrament, and there must be an altar on the street, where we meet Christ in the stranger and the one in need. Although it often seems that heaven is light years away in the toil and tribulations of this life, when we begin to see Christ’s royal robes shining forth from the tattered jacket of the one in need, we will learn that none of us can find heaven without each other. And heaven itself is always much closer than it appears.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Last Sunday after Pentecost: Christ the King
November 26, 2023
[1] I am indebted to a similar argument made by David Bentley Hart in That All Shall Be Saved (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2019), 148-149.