Woody Allen?

So Jonathan Ross has once again courted controversy, this time not by what he has done but by what he hasn't done. Actually, it wasn't even him who didn't do it-it was something that wasn't done by someone higher up the ITV echelons. And what they didn't do was to show Tim Minchin, ginger-haired, bare-footed, anglo-Australian musician/comedian singing his specially commissioned song about Christmas. You can watch him singing the song here.
It seems that the issue is how offensive his song would be to Christians as he highlights characteristics of Jesus and makes modern-day comparisons. So let's see. Ok, his comparisons are edgy and not very glamorous, but he first highlights the fact that Jesus inhabited a time and space as a Jewish thinker (hence the Woody Allen reference). This is the truth of the incarnation. Then he highlights that Jesus did miracles and calls this magic. Then that he was born of a woman who was a virgin. He compares this to a lizard. And so he goes on in what is, to my mind, a very amusing fashion:-superman, zombie, vampire etc. It's funny because Tim Minchin is not a Christian, and yet in his song he affirms many of the central truths of Christianity, including, most powerfully I think, that when we minister to the lost and the broken we do so to Jesus. Tim is one of the lost and the broken and we are called to treat him as if he is Jesus. As he sings, Tim is Jesus. He is clearly fascinated by our faith as he sings about it so often. So rather than criticising or condemning, let's not take ourselves too seriously and instead celebrate the fact that so many people are now talking about the central truths of Christmas. And lets pray for Tim that those truths blossom into faith.