I only ever really watch TV at home when everyone else has gone to bed, and there are all these reruns of programmes such as Mock The Week or, my favourite, Have I Got News For You. But when you watch another favourite of mine, ‘QI’, you begin to wonder is anything I have ever been taught actually true! ‘QI’ seems to dispel so-called ever-lasting truths as complete myths. You could imagine that a favourite topic of theirs is often Biblical suppositions and beliefs.

In the book of the series which I have called ‘The Book of General Ignorance’; page 262 asks ‘Was Jesus born in a stable?’ And their answer is, not surprisingly, ‘No’!

We are very used to the Nativity Scene and endless nativity school plays that we all had to attend (and know backwards) with the animals and the shepherds, the three wise men, and you know all the rest. This year we have, for the first time, an Easter Garden, created by our Sunday Club, although I think Laurian Duff has played a large part in putting it all together, and a wonderful job she has done!

QI’s answer to the ‘stable question’ is ‘technically’ correct. There is no reference to a stable in any of the Gospel’s, and it’s only ever assumed that it was a stable because of a rather oblique reference to a ‘manger’ in Luke’s Gospel.

It says, “She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”

From those few lines we have had to review endless children’s Nativity Plays for a major part of our lives. (In all fairness, they are often quite brilliant and they have a new twist every year, and there’s nothing more wonderful that watching your own little ‘Jimmy’, or whoever, on stage for the first time).

I’m coming back to Easter in a minute, but just to say that QI goes on to say that we’re all now so familiar with the Christmas Crib, but yet a thousand years had passed before it was ever invented. Seemingly, St Francis of Assisi is credited with making the first crib in 1223 in a cave in the hills of Greccio. He placed some hay on a flat rock (which can still be seen today), put a baby on top and added carvings of an ox and ass (but no Joseph, Mary, Wise Men, Shepherds, angels, or lobsters – the book is meant to be funny!)

Well, as much as these producers of such programmes would like to think, we know all of this already, and we’re not stupid. For example, we know the wise men came a long time after the shepherds. We already know that there may have been a gaggle of wise men (another QI question), maybe as many as 20; we only ever say there were three because only three ‘presents’ are mentioned. (The number of Wise Men was settled on as the standard in the Church only in the sixth century). And also, Jesus seems not to have been a baby, but a small boy, living in a house!

Whatever about the detail, however, the central truth can never be altered.

We have our Easter Garden at the back of the Church. According to strenuous research, the sites in Jerusalem that commemorate the crucifixion and the burial of Jesus are, in fact, the most likely historical places at which these events unfolded. They are near to each other; even next to each other; extraordinary places to visit, as any of us who have had the privilege of being at these places can testify. Just a few words about someone like Joseph of Arimathea, in whose garden Jesus was buried, as we had in our Gospel this evening, and we can build and deduce a whole captivating and wondrous scene.

It’s very easy for me, or any of us, to be cynical and sceptical of a church that doesn’t work very well – we all know that! And I can be a culprit of that.

But it is difficult for me or any of us, to read what is in the New Testament (and the Old Testament) and say, this can’t be true. Just try it! The details of nativity scenes and who was there or who was not there is truly irrelevant. When I look at our Easter Garden, although beautiful with its flowers and garden path, I actually see a form of execution that was grotesque in its conception, and I know a person who went through it all, just for us.

It is a concept that programmes such as QI could never grasp because it is all so awe-inspiring. How can you adequately explain, that because of Easter, from what will be for all of us certain death, there is certain life?

What more detail do we need to know?