"But we had hoped that he was the one..."

Sometimes, I am not so sure that is what we really are hoping for. Too often, we want to put some qualifiers on it, some restrictions on what it means to be the Messiah.

To proclaim Jesus as God, to announce that in this failed man who hangs on a cross comes the secret of heaven, is to enter into a whole new world of understanding, so vast, so much greater than what we ever imagined. Suddenly our concept of God bursts out of our own limitations.

In recent years, I have come to understand the grace of God as something far greater than I first imagined. All of my childhood training, my years of engagement with the church, my time in seminary...none of it prepared me for what I have come to believe. Before, my hope was so limited, so small. I understood grace so narrowly. Now I am beginning, ever so slowly, to understand this divine love, this heavenly gift, in ways that I never could have imagined before.

Those disciples were hoping for a messiah for Israel and what they got instead was a savior for the world. For too long, we in the church have hoped for a Christ just for Christians and what we have been given is a love that reaches out to everyone. Our vision has been too narrow, our perspective much too small. The crucified one comes in ways we never expected, indeed, in ways that we sometimes don’t even want.