THEY call him “al-Masih.” The Messiah. He looks like a tough Jesus, one who recognizes the power and intricacies of geopolitics. He, if the description from the Israeli authorities are to be heeded, sprouted from nowhere. He walks among the crowd and starts to talk, until his words become a sermon, a political diatribe, a mystical exhortation. The audience is lost.
Who is he? Where did he come from?
Like the Biblical character or even the versions churned out by scriptwriters, this al-Massih is seen as violating many codes in the Bible. The imam and other elders continue to express with much reservation how he misquotes many lines from the Great Book. But when his listeners probe and demand from him some answers, we sigh a great sense of relief by his hold of the ironic, punching the great doubters about certain aspects of those who stayed on the shore of logic and history.
When will he engage us in straight talk? When will he stop from offering punchlines that resonate with other phrases, quotes or plain snippets from the Bible? And who is he really?
Like the Biblical Jesus of Nazareth, this New Age Messiah is a demanding interrogator. Gone are the Pharisees even as the landscape remains the same–miles and miles of barren field, endless poverty and might in the guns and bombs that explode all over the place. Question for question, he matches the energy of the CIA and other operatives, the new Romans if we use the current metonymy to represent the contemporary global forces out to intervene with and intrude into the local affairs.
Then al-Masih gathers enough crowd and leads them to the border going into Israel. He is apprehended, of course, and his “people” are stranded in the desert. He is brought into the jail for questioning. While locked in the interrogation room, he “disappears.” His people do not know what is happening until vehicles filled with water and food supply come to halt their unintended hunger strike, which is embarrassing Israel and giving the US, as the case always plays out, a chance to enter the fray.
The search is on for this cult figure, Messiah to others. He goes into a holy site and preaches and while there are others who are disbelieving, there are many who are slowly being converted by this unkempt man to his side. To his ideology.
The crowd is asked to disperse when the military and the police arrive to arrest him, he being a fugitive now after all. A shot rings out and a boy gets hit. Al-Massih goes near the boy and, in a moment, the young victim rises from his “death.” The “Messiah” disappears into the crowd again.
The whole appearance and disappearance have already been blown out of proportion. Or it blew itself into a humongous diplomatic fracas.
The pattern is back: a person who claims he is the “Word” is taunted. Just like several millenniums ago, everyone waits for that “Coming” but nobody is ever ready for anyone out to save the world. In this case, this man now vanished in Episode 2 of Messiah, according to Netflix, is indeed the New Savior in so many ways. He is not anymore, the Gentle One. While he retains the bewildering smile that seems to be the be-all for the actors and personages who have portrayed the Christ, this al-Masih is terrifically confrontational, mystical only to the point of uttering his epigrams but, otherwise, a character who certainly should be at home at any negotiating table from UN in New York to the Hague.
To top it all, he is dressed for any restaging of Jesus Christ Superstar by Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice.
Messiah has always been described as a thriller but when Netflix canceled it in 2020, it was clear the material was incendiary. Like the character played with a mix of aplomb, finesse and grit, by Mehdi Dehbi as al-Masih, we watch this man who is certainly on the unpopular side of war (if we reckon by our own understanding of the Middle East problems).
Is he right? Is his perspective the proper way to assess why the Israel and Palestine problem cannot be solved, that out there in those lands are points and symbols of unity and not discord?
We can be entangled in the philosophies that run rampant across the screen when you view Messiah, which only goes to show how Jesus or our ideas about him have remained relevant up to this day.
In this new edition of the eschatological persona, we see the Messiah cross borders, enter the US territory and issues like deportation and extradition become part of the vocabulary of our Bible stories. Amazing, how the ancient tales of Jesus being passed on from Pilate to Herod to the public now resonate in the world of wars, espionage and neo-Imperialism.
The series was released in January 2020. Netflix canceled the series after one season in March 2020. That season, appropriate for meditation in this time of Lent, streams still on Netflix.