Like many people, I love children's Christmas pageants. They are not sophisticated drama. They are often far from professional. The singing is seldom on a par with the Vienna Boy's Choir. They are noisy and messy. By the end of the typical show, the church's floor is littered with trampled halos and broken pieces of angel wings.

Still I love them. Most of us do. Let's run through the plot of a typical pageant, shall we? First there is the empty tableau, an empty manger, perhaps some painted plywood animals, and a lot of hay from a nearby farm. Then two older children come in. They are Mary and Joseph. Then middle-elementary boys come in dressed up as shepherds. Most are wearing the bathrobes that they gave their fathers last Christmas. Then the three kings come in wearing crowns and carrying elaborate paper mache objects painted to look like gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Then the angel of the lord, an older girl, makes her pronouncement while waving a wand with a star glued to the end of it. After that, the little children stumble up the aisles singing "Away in a Manger," a carol that, when sung by young children, often sounds more like the mewing of baby mice. Finally the lights are dimmed and everyone sings Silent Night.

What's not to love? The children are adorable. And the story is charming.

But let's take another look at the story. Most people are not aware that the story, as I just presented it, is not told that way in any gospel. The familiar Christmas pageant is a blend of Matthew's and Luke's separate stories. Matthew's Christmas story, from which today's gospel lesson is drawn, is not charming. In fact, Matthew's Christmas story is not suitable for children. No church would ever consider basing its Christmas pageant on a story so filled with violence, lies, and cynicism.

Matthew's Christmas is a story of political intrigue and murder. Jesus's parents become illegal aliens ultimately settling in a town that has recently been devastated by a foreign military power.

For a moment, let's rewind our imaginations and try to think of what Matthew's Christmas pageant would be like. Be prepared! There will be no shepherds. No choirs of angels. And Mary will be relegated to being a minor character. She has the baby. But there's no mention of an inn.

The opening scene is not a barn, but rather an empty room. There is no manger.

Two scared bedraggled people come in, one pregnant, both in a lot of trouble.

Just two people who barely know each other, but who have been thrown together by the ferocious times in which they live. There probably hasn't yet been enough time for the two of them to work out their problems. She is pregnant and it isn't his child. He'd made it clear that she was to be "put aside." But, if word had gotten out, that might have led to her being dragged to her father's door and stoned by the people of the town. Mary, though terrified, would have accepted that it was "the right thing to do." We shouldn't be too judgmental about the conventional morality of Mary's day. Even today, much cruelty is done in the name of morality.

In Matthew's pageant Joseph, not Mary, has the angelic night vision. And it was so compelling that he'd agreed to marry her anyway.

As one who does marriage counseling, I can tell you that this wasn't a great way to start a relationship. The two were from different generations. He, an older man, would have a tough time thinking about the paternity of the child. She would always wonder why he'd agreed to marry her. And she was a virgin. Who'd believe that?

From this maelstrom of emotions, the two walk into our Christmas Eve pageant, terribly frightened. Joseph and Mary were survivors of Roman reprisals. They were strangers in their own land bringing a child into the world and wondering, like all young parents do – even in kinder times – what kind of world they were bringing their child into.

Our Christmas pageant has two stages. The lights go out on Joseph and Mary and go up on a scene in a room with a throne. Sitting in regal splendor, surrounded by toady sycophants, is Herod. He and his court are dressed in the latest styles. Clothing and hair are cut in Roman fashion. Compared to Joseph and Mary, they are well-to-do, educated, sophisticated, and by the standards of the Ancient Near East, modern.

Three of those standing before the king are dressed in exotic clothing, but are similarly rich and educated. In keeping with hospitality traditions of the day, these "three kings" are paying their respects to the local court. And while doing so, they wisely ask for directions to their destination.

The king gives his visitors the directions that they are asking for. He shrewdly recruits them. But they are warned in the story's second nightly vision to return "by another road." And so the baby Jesus and his parents are visited by the magi. Their reaction to the Christ child is the crucial center to Matthew's pageant. Without hesitation,

"They bowed down and worshiped Him."

This is the crucial center of the story. Little children who act out the kings in Christmas pageants focus on the gold, frankincense and myrrh. And the directors of Christmas pageants lop off Matthew's last half of the story where there's a third night vision, this time to Joseph, to escape to Egypt. Then Herod kills the babies of Bethlehem. And, later, the couple settles in Nazareth. Can you imagine a Christmas pageant based solely on Matthew – one that depicts the slaughter of Bethlehem's babies?

The worship by the Magi, not the slaughter of the babies, is where we should focus, though. Matthew has three strangers, acting almost as objective witnesses, acting as people without pre-conceptions, acting as people to whom a Messiah has NOT been promised – these three men immediately recognize the divinity of Jesus. They WORSHIP him, something that is only done to a divinity.

Matthew clearly tells us that Jesus was and is divine.

The world into which God comes is cruel.

The rulers of that world will do whatever it takes to hold on to power, whether it involves killing all the babies in a small town or, later, putting an innocent man to death by nailing him to a cross.

Despite cruelty and death, Jesus lived; and in Matthew's complete telling of the gospel, He lives with us still. Death cannot stop Him. Later, when death catches him, death's victory is only temporary. Jesus lives. To convey this message, Matthew gives us visions.

Joseph, in our Christmas pageant, sees two visions. The magi see a vision. Thirty years later, witnesses on the sea of Galilee have visions of Jesus walking on water. Peter, too, walks on water, until he loses his vision. And after Jesus's death, dozens of unprepared people have visions of Jesus appearing to them. In these visions, He is no longer controlled by time or space. He appears and disappears at will, sometimes not being recognized until after he is gone. In time, there are reports of people in near and far countries having visions of the resurrected Jesus. And all who have these visions are convinced of the truth of two of the most powerful words that have ever been said in any language:

Jesus lives.

Not Jesus lived (which he did) but rather "Jesus lives" in the present tense. Not Jesus lived a good life and we should live like him (which is true) but rather, "Jesus lives." Not Jesus loved us (which He did, but is beside the point) and we should love others. But "Jesus lives and loves us today." We've seen him. Many more will see him. And, perhaps, you will see him too.

Not all will see him. That is why we say, "Happier still are those who have not seen but yet have believed." But some will see him. Jesus lives.

The Magi saw him. But what did they see, just a little baby in his mother's arms? They couldn't have known that he'd work miracles, be crucified and be raised from the dead.

But laying there was someone whose divine presence was so compelling that it was enough to cause them to drop to their knees. In their minds they must have been thinking, "Whoever this divine child is, he lives and we must worship him."

The Magi saw through Herod's treachery. And they would have no part in it. The divine was suddenly real to them. No more following stars for guidance. No more political intrigue at court. Let Herod find his own way to God. Or let Herod continue his path of death, destruction and infanticide. The Magi would have no part in helping Rome's stooge maintain his illusions of power. The three kings who now had a king of their own, took another road home, knowing that there was an alternative to the established order.

Imagine the return trip of the Magi. The great changes that Christianity would bring about had not happened yet. The greatest change at that moment must have been limited to the perspective of the Magi. Everything physical was still the same. Rome dominated the world. Herod would kill the babies. Two frightened parents and their new-born baby were on the perilous road to Egypt. Times were, as always, fraught with danger and peopled with well-armed tyrants. But that night, as the Magi turned their camels toward their distant oriental kingdoms, everything seemed different. The Magi, having seen Jesus in the flesh, had visions of a world made different by a radical change in perspective. Dangerous as the world was, the world was God's, not Rome's. A world that possessed the incarnation of the divine was a world in which men like Herod were not of central importance.

And so our little Christmas pageant, one based solely on Matthew, comes to a close. Or does it? As the imaginary lights dim, the stage is almost empty. Herod has gone off to plan his infamy. The Magi are somewhere on the road to the east. Mary and Joseph have taken the baby south to Egypt. As we look at the empty stage, there is only the star of Bethlehem shining in the vast empty reaches of space, a reminder that those who seek Him in the darkness shall find him. And all who find Him shall become children of God.

Perhaps our inner child is what we feel when we go to Christmas pageants. We see ourselves in the little children. We, too, have trampled our halos and have broken our angel wings. But it is unto the likes of us, unto us, a child is born.