Every year on Thanksgiving for the past ten years, my family has had a tradition. We gather at my grandmother’s house, enjoy a dinner so early it should be called lunch, play a game of Sorry or Scrabble, and skype someone in. The first year we did this, we greeted my aunt and uncle from Georgia on my grandmother’s computer with grainy image quality and several interruptions. Each year, someone who could not be with us in person joined into the joy and chaos of Thanksgiving with increasingly improved technology. My brother Philip, my great Aunt Rosemary, my cousins from Texas. This year, I got to be, as my mother put it, the “face inside the box”.

It’s a surreal experience, being joined to our loved ones in this way. It’s as real as everything we see right in front of our eyes, but we know it’s somewhere else. Somewhere we are not. Another world.

And today, on Christ the King Sunday, we are taking a kind of trip to another world. To contemplate the expansiveness of the kingdom of God, to settle in for a just a moment to the words that we pray in the Lord’s prayer: Your kingdom come, Lord, on earth as it is in heaven.

Earth and heaven. Two realms which must be very different. And yet so deeply loved by the same God. Two realms, one broken and hurting, at war, on fire, crying out. One turning its ears and eyes to the other and saying, I will come. As we prepare ourselves to enter the Advent season, we know that these two realms, heaven and Earth, draw no boundary lines for God, who has a habit of inhabiting both. One of my favorite hymns puts it this way: “Our God, heaven cannot hold Him, nor Earth contain”. God crosses the boundary lines of heaven and Earth.

And in our lectionary reading for today, we hear it straight from the mouth of Jesus. He is arrested and brought before the political authorities, and Pilate asks Him a question, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Now Pilate was not a Judean, and he did not worship the God of Israel. He acknowledges a Passover custom that was not his own. The question he asks Jesus is essentially a political one. “Are you the King of the Jews?” or in other words, are you going to try to lead another band of Judeans in rebellion against the empire?

And to be fair, Jesus had been traveling around the countryside preaching to crowds about some coming kingdom of God where justice would be restored and the mighty would be cast down from their thrones and the poor would be lifted up. These kinds of words terrify the powerful. But they are the very heart of the gospel, and they always have been. They are the promise of God’s kingdom coming here on Earth.

But where does this kingdom come from? Jesus told Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world. My kingdom is from another place”. Christ’s kingdom is a heavenly kingdom. But it doesn’t just stay in heaven. It’s not of this world, but it’s coming into this world. Like Jesus, it cannot be held in heaven. It is breaking into this world, calling us to account and restoring what has been lost. Signs of the kingdom are here, but we still pray “Your kingdom come”.

Because this Earth is real. What we do here, how we live, how we love, how we hurt, all of that matters. All of it has real impact on human lives. And what Jesus shows us about God’s love is that this world and all its inhabitants matter enough to God for God to become part of it.

When we say that Christ is Lord of heaven and earth, we cannot forget the “and earth” part. But the way that Christ is Lord can feel confusing to me sometimes. I look at a world with violence and cruelty and it is hard to say that God is in control of all this.

I hear people saying, “If Jesus is Lord, Caesar is not”. Okay, Caesar isn’t God, but Caesar’s still Caesar. And Donald Trump is still president. And the political powers are still very real for all of us, most especially the poor and vulnerable. And ICE agents still deport and detain refugees like Samuel Oliver-Bruno, who sought sanctuary in a church in North Carolina and was arrested this week when he attempted to comply with the government and provide fingerprints. I know these powers are not eternal, I know they won’t have the last say, but they’re powerful now. And they’re painful now. Breaking hearts and homes and asking us what we will do.

When Samuel was arrested and forced into a van, a group of Christian leaders surrounded the van. Gathered around this scene of fear, they began to sing worship songs. They prayed. They praised God. This went on for about two hours. In those two hours, the kingdom of God came near, and the world saw a glimpse of the truth that Jesus came into the world to bring.

But this is not the only place where God is moving people to protect their fellow human. In the Netherlands, Bethel Church has been worshipping around the clock for thirty-one days. Because thirty-one days ago, an Armenian family showed up and asked for protection. And in the Netherlands, there is a law preventing the interruption of worship by police officers. So for thirty-one days, hundreds of pastors have agreed to help lead worship, sharing the responsibility for this one family, claiming the value of these lives in need, and working together to care for the people that God has brought into their path. And for the past thirty-one days, the kingdom of God has come near at Bethel Church, and the world saw a glimpse of the truth that Jesus came into the world to bring.

That Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not. That money is not. That borders are not. That even though we come from different nations and states, we all share in one citizenship in a heavenly kingdom through Christ. This kingdom is our higher allegiance.

Glimpses of this kingdom are important. They are sign posts on our journey of faith, a foretaste of the feast to come.

Because as much as Caesar is not Lord, our Lord Jesus is not a Caesar or a president or a tyrant or a dictator. Christ doesn’t rule with this kind of power. Christ isn’t bound by the need for violence or terrorism or military might. His strength is revealed in weakness. Her power is revealed in love. The other-worldliness of Christ is lovely in its strangeness, because it gives us something to hope in. Hope that one day, in God’s time, all will be made right. That God’s justice will prevail and She will wipe away every tear from our eyes and we will know peace.

Only a Cosmic Christ could descend to the dead, triumph over evil and death itself, and ultimately, raise us up to dwell in the presence of the glory of God. No person has the power to save us in this way. And yet, we see in Christ that only a person has the power to save us in this way. Only Christ, who is the perfect crossroads of human and divine, can draw us up out of ourselves and give us a promise like this. Because Jesus has experienced our human lives. Our pain and our sorrow and our suffering and our love. But being God, Jesus has the profound mercy not to leave us as He finds us.

While we live here on this Earth, we heed the call to love. We seek signs of the kingdom of God around us. And one day, each of us will know the truth in the kingdom of God that is coming no matter what, with mercy and justice for all. Amen.