Remember the misery of Miss Havisham in Great Expectations? Her lover walked out on her on her wedding day and she stopped all the clocks in her house at the exact time she was jilted. She, then, chose to spread misery to all. She had “great expectations” that were crushed.

Jesus was born into a culture of great expectations. As we read the Gospel narratives, we can hear the expectant hope in Zechariah, Mary, Simeon and Anna. Could the One who was to be born of Mary be the promised Messiah? What expectations were tied to the arrival of “the anointed one”?

One word rings out. Redemption. But before we read our ideas into that pregnant word, we need to know what the early receivers of the birth announcements expected. They expected colossal liberation from oppressive powers so that the people of Israel would be free to worship God alone as they believed God should be worshiped. They longed to be free from the boot of the Roman empire on their necks. When Messiah comes, all wrongs will be made right and all oppressive powers brought into subjection to the will of Israel’s God. Oh, what a day that would be!

Let’s admit it. God had a problem. How could God enter the world in Jesus, the anointed one, and not endorse their grandiose ideas, not live up to their great expectations? The nation Jesus was born into expected a mighty power play resulting in the humiliation of Rome and the exaltation of Israel. The Messiah’s mission was to conquer…in the politico-military sense. How could God both fulfill the prophetic word and also squeeze all the vengeance out of Israel’s national psyche? Even after Jesus launched his public ministry, he still had to address and change Israel’s “great expectations” resident in his own disciples’ hearts.

God gets to the task immediately in the very birth narratives of Jesus. We have to give up our sappy Christmas card versions of Jesus’ birth. The donkey and the manger and the “no room in the inn” stuff. Not that they don’t matter, but we misread God’s intention in these very things. Unless God changes the expectations the people have for the Messiah, the more they will misunderstand his public ministry, teachings and death. They will miss his mission.

Jesus is born in Bethlehem (in fulfillment of Micah 5:2). Bethlehem has a royal energy in its history. King David was from Bethlehem. So, while a little town, Bethlehem had great, even royal meaning. There is no room in the crowded houses as people traveled to fulfill Caesar’s census. Darrell Bock suggests that Bethlehem was too small to even have a travellers inn. Jesus, the new king (as Matthew’s Gospel emphasizes), is born in a stable for animals and is laid in a feeding trough. This is Bethlehem, but it’s far from royal and it’s far from powerful. What is God up to? God is transforming expectations: don’t think power; think humility.

Miss Havisham has a moment of repentance and confesses her sin to Pip. Most of Israel never got the clues that began with Jesus’ birth and continued throughout his ministry. The nation maintained its stubborn grasp on their great expectations. They thought Jesus was a disillusioned imposter. How could they miss it? We’ll consider more of these clues in posts to come.

You may have expectations of God, too. I suppose we all do. If our expectations, no matter how great, do not jive with God’s purpose, we will be disappointed, perhaps even angry. We might end up shouting in our own way, “We have no king but Caesar.” I hope we allow God to reign supreme, even over our expectations of God.

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