The Down to Earth God I believe in isn't a God for perfect people who do no wrong. He is a God for our messy world. This can be illustrated by what is at first sight one of the Bible's most boring passages.The Genealogy of Jesus the Messiah in Matthew 1 is at first site a long list of 'begats' with one male patriarch fathering another. "This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham: Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers..............................................." And so on; ad nauseam all the way down to Jesus.

But take a longer look and the long list of male patriarchs that you would expect from a patriarchal society is punctuated by the names of four women: Tamar, mother of Perez and Zerah (v3), Rahab mother of Boaz and Ruth mother of Obed (v5) and Mary the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah. The passage also refers to a fifth woman, the 'wife of Uriah'. And consider who these women were. They each come with a colourful story and are not obvious relatives to claim for the promised Messiah.

Tamar (see Genesis 38) disguised herself as a prostitute so she could trick her Father in Law, Judah into impregnating her. She was driven to such trickery by the behaviour of the men in the story none of whom come out of it well.

Rahab, the next woman mentioned (whose story can be found in Joshua 2) is referred to in Hebrews 11 as 'Rahab the prostitute'.

The story of Ruth, a widow and a foreigner, who became the daughter-in-law of Rahab is a beautiful one of loyalty but it is also a story of loss, hardship and exile. (The book of Ruth) She is essentially a refugee.

The woman mentioned in Jesus' genealogy as 'Uriah's wife' is Bathsheba who became King David's wife only after committing adultery with David, who then arranged for her husband to be killed in battle. (2 Samuel 11-12)

And finally we have Mary who suffered the ignominy of becoming pregnant out of wed lock a crime that was potentially punishable by stoning to death or being returned to her family in disgrace.

This isn't the lineage of a man privileged to sit outside the sins and failings of our everyday world. It is the lineage of a aman who would engage with our world in all of its messiness suffering humiliation, torture and finally death.

The God I believe in is not a distant God sitting outside our world in judgement of it. He claims it for his own in all of its messiness. He owns and engages with it.

Christians believe that in the person of Jesus he took our human form, lived life as we live it with all of its complexity and temptations. In the person of the Spirit he works through us flawed, fallible human beings to bring order and purpose out of our chaos and deliver God's Kingdom; a state in which we will finally be delivered of our failings and live the lives God intended for us.

We associate Christianity with clean cut people leading conventional lives but Christ's ministry really wasn't about that. He was constantly criticised for the company he kept: wine bibbers  and sinners, even women. It was about engaging with the outcasts of society people who didn't fit in. The Down to Earth God isn't a Sunday best God. He's a God for the complicated lives we lead.

There's a story about a big party. All the great and the good people that lived conventional prosperous lives were invited but they were too busy to attend so the rich man sent his servants out to collect up the waifs and strays and invite them to the party instead. The first shall be last we're told and the last shall be first. It's the people with messy untidy lives who understand their need of God. The ones who've got their life sorted don't need God. They have their own rewards.