I went to a pantomime last night in Liverpool. Ian McKellen and John Bishop in Mother Goose. Amazing Costumes, raunchy and topic script, and the lead actors were having a great time with it. I have all the more regard for the both of them. And the audience? Incredible! I can’t think when I’ve been in such a passionate, responsive and excited crowd. The actors played us and we went for it whole-hearted.

It takes great panto to get that. The highest form of theatre. I always say so. If you’re doing a show in front of a live audience, don’t pretend you can’t see them. You’re a lead character? Then confide the audience. Engage them, use them, get them involved.

This is the part of Ben-Them where I jump track to the more Biblical, which hopefully doesn’t slay the episode — but I wonder what the theatre was like in first Century Judaea. Did Jesus, Barabbas, Mary, Mary and Mary get to go to pantomime and laugh with a loud and delighted crowd? The Greeks had theatre, of a perhaps more stately style. Did the Roman-era Jews have hilarious theatre for children with plenty of political and sexual jokes thrown in for the adults. Who was the John Bishop of the Gospel age, and the admirable Ian McKellen, returning to the great joy of his career?

I have no real knowledge of first century culture, despite having read quite a bit around the era. The scriptures and the histories talk about edifying stories, like parables, being told, but never have a reason to mention the age’s forerunners of Mother Goose, Star Wars and Paddington, the pure entertainment fiction - just like we hear a lot about making music for and about God, but nothing about secular music. It surely existed. I find it’s very helpful to look for kinship between our lives and those in the Bible. It’s easy to assume, Jesus, Moses, Ruth and Peter’s mother-in-law lived their lives working, milling flour, praying and de-boning fish and had no *recreation*, no substantial pastimes, no distractions and small joys, romantic dates, memes fandoms, autistic special-interests.

God came down to earth for 33 years. It wasn’t all preaching, cooking fish, dining with friends, boating and sleeping. It’s easy to assume historical folks lived small, bored lives with no content, but they didn’t just sit around gazing into fires, and their lives weren’t wall-to-wall theology. Jesus was a man who surely sneezed and suffered and had days of joy and of frustration. We know he didn’t just endure this life, but engaged with it, and with people, and responded with enthusiasm, kindness, open ears, action and passion and anger and readiness and knew when to make the wine and cook the fish. When we suffer we can know he suffered and knows what that is. That’s bleak, and it’s easy to focus on those sorrows. But when we have excellent entertainment and joy, he’s surely experienced that side of human life, and knows our joy.. What I’m saying is I really hope he got to go to a Nazarene panto and shout ‘he’s behind you’. Oh no he didn’t? Oh yes, he may very well have, or its cultural equivalent, and I’m glad for him.