‘Jesus Christ plays for Chelsea’
Yes, that really was the headline in a newspaper this week: “Jesus Christ plays for Chelsea say 1 in 5 kids”. This was swiftly followed in the online version by: “1 in 4 kids think the shepherds found Jesus using Google maps. 1 in 10 think Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer was in the stable. Half of kids believe Xmas Day is Santa Claus’ birthday. 1 in 3 say Jesus was born at the South Pole, not Bethlehem.” These are the kinds of headline we have come to expect at this time of year, deploring how little people today know of the Christmas story. These particular headlines were generated by a survey of 1000 children aged five to twelve at Brent Cross shopping centre.
What do we say to such results? There are some obvious comments we can make about all that’s wrong with these statements: there are errors of history and geography, and a confusion of myth with reality – to start with. But there is one good thing that comes out of it all: the idea that Jesus is so human that he could have done such a ‘normal’ thing as play football for Chelsea. Sometimes we are so keen, rightly, to emphasise the divinity of Jesus that we neglect his full and true humanity. Yet he really became a flesh-and-blood human being as you and I are – and if he’s going to save flesh-and-blood human beings he has to be: “He had to be made like his brothers in every way … that he might make atonement for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:17, NIV, my italics).