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Viewing the Christmas story through children's eyes

Ch-pageant-19

All these years later, I still remember when I was given the role of one of the so-called three wise men in a children's Christmas pageant at the church in which I grew up in Illinois.

I held my head high, both to keep the crown from slipping off and because I thought this was an important role in an important story.

What, as a 6- or 7-year-old (or whatever age I was), I knew about the historical or mythological nature of the Christmas story, no doubt was quite limited. But I did grasp the special nature of the occasion and the idea that acting out a story in costume was one way of telling others what was in the Bible.

I was thinking about all that this past Sunday when the children in my Kansas City church put on their annual version of the Christmas story, as shown in the photo above.

Does it make much difference if Jesus was really born in Bethlehem or whether, as some scholars contend, he probably was born in his hometown of Nazareth?

Does it matter if we smash together the birth narratives found in the gospels of Luke and Matthew even if they don't match up completely?

Was there really a flashy star guiding Persian astrologers to the birthplace? Did King Herod really order the murder of lots of toddlers and infants?

I don't know the answers to those questions. What I do know is that, at its foundation, this is a story of love, a story of incarnation, a story of God being present with humanity. And if we nitpick the details (some of which there's simply no way to verify) we are likely to miss the point.

The children are wise simply to immerse themselves in the story and, in some mysterious way, find themselves in it. That's what I did as a little-boy wise man decades ago and I still remember that because even at that age I knew that the story was somehow about me, too, because I was enveloped in a love that was the impulse behind creation. I hope the kids in the photo here today know that, too.

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LOTS OF NEW MUHAMMADS

The name "Muhammad" has just cracked the top 10 list of names given newborn males in the U.S. It's one more piece of evidence that our nation is becoming more religiously diverse and that Muslims are negotiating their way into the mainstream of American society.

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