But my second favourite Gospel is the Gospel according to James. No, it's not some heretical add-on to the New Testament. I'll explain. In a minute.
But first, a trip to Room 101. My personal Room 101, in whose woodchip walls you will find incarcerated all of the following things that I hate:
- Marmite
- Novelty socks with cartoon characters on
- Mince pies
- Christmas records by Paul McCartney, Elton John, Mariah Carey…
- Christmas jumpers
- Away In A Manger
How's that for a list?
Someone bought me a Christmas jumper in all good cheer once, and I could literally, physically, not bring myself to wear it. It's a psychological thing. Feel free to wear one yourself: I won't think any worse of you. It's just me.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
I may have mentioned McCartney's ruddy awful Christmas song in a previous blog. Let it lie.
Mince pies… I will eat mince pies with anyone in goodwill, but there's no other planet where you could replace a good tasty pie filling - like apple or rhubarb - with the odds and ends from a shed and call it a special treat.
Novelty socks… no no no no no no. Buy me some and watch me give them away.
Away In A Manger. I told my church in Stoke once about my longstanding dislike of Away In A Manger and there was an audible gasp. A curate who hates a Christmas carol? Pass the smelling salts, darling.
But there are lots of us. Lots of us who roll our eyes and change the words (and not to the Batman version!). If Christmas really is about God coming down to earth, about Jesus being found in human likeness, becoming one of us, then something in Away In A Manger needs showing the stable door.
It's this line: "Little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes."
Let's get this straight. God became human. That's Christmas 101, if you like. So for a carol to take that fact and contradict it seems… odd, to say the least. "No crying he makes?" The whole point is that being human, Jesus would cry. He had no special licence to avoid human pain - that would defeat the object. He didn't walk on a cloud six inches above the ground. He lived, and to a large extent that meant he suffered. Pardon the bathos, but he suffered: nappy rash and teething and circumcision pain and maybe acne and mumps and carpenter's calluses. The times being old, probably halitosis and bad teeth. I'm sorry if you need your Jesus not to have been human. Human he was, or else how can we pray to him, talk to him, if he got a hall pass to miss out on the suffering of life?
Jesus may well have facepalmed himself when he heard Away In A Manger the first time. Possibly.
Jesus wept. Not just as a man. Jesus bawled his baby eyes out when he was hungry or tired or had filled his swaddling clothes. Human. Get used to it. Jesus did. He was "glad to be found in human likeness." He liked it. Who are we to try to cut the crusts off for him?
Jesus perhaps, crying. Halo not strictly accurate.
It's not a pointless theological point. Look at the suffering in the world. Look at your own suffering. That suffering - we sufferers - need a friend who isn't that blue-eyed Clairol-coiffed airbrushed Jesus. We need a friend who knows, who's been there, who didn't cheat, who refused to call his dad so he could stop it all.
Fortunately that's whom we have. Jesus. Completely God, completely human. Able to identify from here below rather than vaguely sympathise from on high.
And it's on this basis - fundamental and foundational to all our Christmas theology, our understanding of who God is and what on earth he was doing on earth in those days - that I will always change the words of the song in my head. And on a screen if possible.
No crying he makes? No chance, my friends.
And that brings us round to James again. Not the disciple James, not the letter-writer James but the rock band James, mostly famous for the 90s anthem Sit Down.
I want this man as my worship leader.
The words of that song are words I could easily hear Jesus saying to whoever, wherever, whenever:
Those who feel the breath of sadness
Sit down next to me
Those who find they're touched by madness
Sit down next to me
Those who find themselves ridiculous
Sit down next to me
Love, in fear, in hate, in tears
Down
Down
Oh sit down
Sit down next to me
Is that you?
Have you felt the breath of sadness? Sit down with Jesus.
Have you ever entertained the thought that your mental health isn't 100%? Me too. Sit down with Jesus.
Do you find yourself ridiculous? If you don't, you're missing something. Sit down with Jesus.
Do you love? Sit down.
Do you fear anything? Anything at all? Sit down.
Do you hate? Sit down.
Tears. Shed any ever? Sit down with Jesus.
And you can. You can sit down with Jesus, because down is exactly the story of Christmas. God coming down. Down to stay, down to live, down to earth. Down and dirty; down, down, deeper and down. Later he descended to the dead, into the tomb as well, which is pretty much as down as down can get.
So I suppose the dead too get to sit down with Jesus. That's fortunate too.
Christmas can exclude people, people who feel exiled from that warm circle of light and family and fireside. But real Christmas includes, includes all of us, however exiled we feel.
Sit down with Jesus, be honest and tell him all about it. Stop airbrushing your life. You have a good good friend there.
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