Our Christmas story character for today is “Messiah.”

If Advent is defined as “the season of expectation,” then the people who lived in Israel in the era when Jesus was born were living the longest Advent imaginable.

The culture had been living on the brink of expectation for hundreds of years. The Children of Israel were – once again – under an oppressive regime. They were looking for “Messiah,” and they had been waiting for a long time.

WHAT KIND OF MESSIAH? A “Messiah” is defined as a savior or a liberator. For the people who were waiting, this meant a leader who would defeat the Romans, who would gather Israel together again, and who would reestablish the line, or dynasty, of King David.

Messiah was an idea that resided, always, just under the surface of imagination, thought, hopes, dreams, and discussion. The possibility both inspired and worried people. Even Herod, who was consummately secular and self-serving, believed – or was superstitious – enough that he wanted to snuff out any possibility.

But nobody was thinking Messiah in the way that God was. Because even though God broke into human history with unprecedented light and life, God did not limit the scope of salvation and liberation to the narrow confines of time and space.

The Messiah Israel was looking for would have defeated the Romans in battle, on a particular field at a particular time; and the battle would likely have been repeated at intervals and at great cost to human life.

• The “kingdom” would have been confined to the physical boundaries of Israel.
• The dispersed people would have had to return in order to participate.
• The era of Messiah would have been over once the great conqueror grew old and died.
• The Messiah’s personal presence would have been limited to the people he could actually meet.

In other words, the Messiah would have been temporal, temporary, and tempered by the parameters of time and physical space.

JESUS MESSIAH: Jesus blew all that out of the water. He wasn’t interested in being their kind of Messiah, he was committed to being God’s kind of Messiah.

“I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment” (John 16:7-8).

Jesus is the kind of Messiah who “proves the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment.”

• What we think we know about kingdoms, and victory, and Messiahs… well, that’s not it at all.
• What we expect when it comes to righteousness… well, God has something else in mind.
• What we want to see happen in terms of judgment… well, get over it, because Jesus is One Whole Other Kind of Messiah….

So they saved the Romans the trouble and arrested him themselves. Kill him for us, please. Dead and gone; that’s the end of THAT kind of Messiah.

But, no. Jesus moved from the limited realm of time and space and launched an unstoppable Messiah initiative that continues today. No limits. One Whole Other Kind of Messiah.

Hope; Peace; Love.; Joy; Promise. JESUS