Awesome

XBMC-MQTT

Copy script.service.mosquitto/ to ~/.xbmc/addons/

In the Addons menu, go to Services/Mosquitto and fill in the details of your broker and desired topic to listen to.

Send a message with something like:

$ mosquitto_pub -h myhost.net -t xbmc/messages -m '{"sub":"A subject line", "txt":"A message to display","img":"url://for/image","delay":"5000"}'