In a Sunday School class, a teacher looked down at a piece of paper on which a child was intently crafting a picture. "What are you drawing?" was the teacher's query. "God!" replied the youngster. "But no one know what God looks like," protested the teacher. The determined child's quick response, "They will, when I'm done!"

A Unitarian family visited friends in another city and with some concern allowed their boy to accompany their friend's daughter to Sunday school at an evangelical Christian church. Upon their return, the Unitarian father pulled his son aside and asked him how the visit had gone. "Fine, dad," was the succinct response. The father pressed for more.

"Well, dad, we had this wonderful story from the Bible about Adam and Eve. There was this buried treasure that God hid in his Eden garden and along came this gangster called, Serpent, who helped Adam and Eve find the treasure. They also got away with it, but God caught them and there was a big shoot out in which Serpent got killed, so God captured Adam and Eve and gave them a new identity so other crooks, who were friends of Serpent, wouldn't find them. Then God put Adam and Eve in an armored car, which was driven out of his garden so they could start over again in another country."

There was a long pause, before the father said. "Son, I don't think that's the story you heard this morning. You shouldn't tell false tales." "Yes, I know," admitted the unrepentant son, "But if I told you the story just as I heard it in Sunday School, you'd never believe me, and would probably send me to my room for a time out."

Two tales which recount the dilemma of great religious stories, when persons seek to make them literally true. For all their popularity, no one tries to make the Hobbits, or Star Wars, or Harry Potter stand any test of veracity. No one seems bothered that Mickey Mouse and a whole host of Disney characters, or that mole, badger, ratty, and toad in **Wind in the Willows**, or that **The Little Prince** who ventures from his asteroid to visit earth, are fictional characters much beloved of the young, not to mention adults We accept that stories oft tell us larger truths about life.

In tales from world religions, we are apt to find charming the story of Buddha's birth after his mother's impregnation by a sacred elephant or Lao Tze spending 80 years in the womb so that he is born a wizened old man, yet he starts crawling about and acting as a babe, in order not to disappoint his parents. Now, when we turn to the birth stories about Jesus, we find on one side biblical literalists, who want to defend every jot and tittle of the story as pure fact and, on the other side, burned over ex-Christians, who get bent out of shape, when the familiar nativity tales are recounted.

If we strive to rivet the birth of Jesus to proven fact, we engage in an absurd quest. Reputable biblical scholars dismiss the accounts out of hand as late additions to the gospels of Matthew and Luke, where each birth story appears in completely different form and even when each giving a different genealogy for Jesus. Both accounts trace his ancestry through Joseph, who according to the Bible was not the real father of Jesus, so what point is there to doing this? The birth tales of Jesus are really worthless, if we want to find literal truth about his birth.

But if we want a wondrous story when god, to paraphrase a slogan made famous by Hallmark Cards, cared enough to end the very best, we may begin send why miracles get linked to events of import. We may get beyond the nonsense of the veracity of the tales and begin to see a larger picture.

For long ages, orthodox Jews have believed that a messiah is coming. The literal meaning of the word, messiah, is anointed one and the word messiah translated in Greek was christos. Thus, Jesus Christ means literally, Jesus, the anointed. The messiah in Jewish though is ever deemed some kind of redeemer, but there was never any common doctrinal agreement about in what manner the messiah should come, out of what part of the Jewish heritage he would emerge, and what would be the nature of his redemptive mission. In the time of Jesus, expectation that the messiah was at hand was a strong conviction, widely held. Some Jews held the messiah would be a political religious leader, such as King David. Others believed he would be more a super prophet, such as Elijah, who would redeem the world from its ills. Still others awaited a religious figure, who would fulfill the Jewish religion, and bring into being the Kingdom of God on earth.

Under harsh Roman rule with the Jews divided into many factions, and after several centuries of almost continuous disasters for the Jewish state, most Jews came to believe that only the messiah could redeem their fate. Some appeared claiming to be the messiah; many prophesied as to how and when the anointed one would appear. Wondrous signs that a redeemer would soon appear were sought and constantly found. Expectations were high.

Tacked on to the various stories of the coming messiah were other myths drawn from miracle birth stories trickling into Jewish culture from Zoroastrian and Greco-Roman tales about miraculous births among the gods. Later, after Jesus died, the small, early Christian bands preached that Jesus had actually been the promised messiah, but such claim was mocked. How could Jesus be the messiah? By any earthly standard he was a complete dud - he died a criminal on the cross; he never even attempted to throw off Roman rule; he made no move to re-establish the Jewish state or even to unify the bickering Jewish groups of his time. So the beleaguered early Christian, who were actually a small, heretical band within Judaism, began to claim that Jesus was the messiah, who was prophesied in the Book of Isaiah, as the suffering servant, a redeemer who was not a conqueror, but one who would take on all human sin and suffering in order that Judaism should be reformed and made clean. He would lead the world to a humanitarian, universal faith. Therefore, the failure of death by crucifixion was actually a victory, as proved by his later resurrection. The anointed one was willing to suffer on the cross, but then to be resurrected as a reborn, risen messiah, a god for all humankind.

The gist of the tale draws heavily on earlier Hebrew scripture, such as the birth tales of Isaac and Samson. First, there is a visitation to an earthling from god or an angel that strikes fear into the human heart. Next, the divine message is be not afraid, but know that a male child will soon be born, who needs to be given a particular name and who will come to accomplish great things. Finally, the earthly being recovers enough to doubt the prophesy and to ask proof by some sign, which is soon provided from on high. The birth stories of Jesus were originated primarily to put him directly in the line of earlier miraculous births recounted for great figures in Jewish scripture. The chief Christian change was that Jesus was a god come to earth in human form; a god who came as a mere babe in the humblest circumstances to poor parents.

All this takes on great import if we are concerned about Jewish and Christian claims about the messiah, theological speculation about the divinity of Jesus, or doctrinal issues in the development of Christian church history. But let us suppose that these matters are not prime or vital proofs to us. What then? We are left with a simple story, familiar indeed, but rarely interpreted from its own wonderful narrative.

For some, then, the nativity becomes a reassuring proclamation that the divine cares for human life. No person in times of travail, turmoil, and terror can but wonder if god has deserted humankind and no longer cares for the fate of the human made in the very image of the divine. Certainly the issue is prime in the literature of the holocaust, when many Jews wrestled with how could a loving, just god allow the Nazi death camps. Some have lofted similar concerns about the terror attacks of September 11th or see that event as one more warning that the end of the world is at hand.

Others, however, return year after year to the Nativity as a message of promise and hope in the human adventure. What more awesome renewal for human hope can there be than the constant miracle of new birth - every child a birth of divine possibility in human form. Many, including most Unitarians, look to the miraculous birth stories found in so many traditions, as reaffirmation of the simple human need to find new purpose and creativity in life. Such stories are precious not for literal truth, but rather because of our need to dress important truths with the grand costumes of wonder and miracle. This is a way storytellers have to proclaim, "Pay attention! I want to declare something so significant that the very order of the earth was changed, when it occurred."

The Nativity reveals, before all else, that because this new baby was very important to the world, great signs heralded his birth. We dress the tale of the Babe of Bethlehem with a virgin who conceives; a birth, unusual with a guiding star high over the manger; and this star attracted magi from afar carrying wonderful gifts. We add simple shepherds tending their flocks, who saw angels hovering and singing in the sky with great tidings of a wondrous birth. The shepherds hurry off to see for themselves. The proclamation is ever one of renewal - peace on earth, goodwill to all; and the birth of the son of the most high of whose realm thee will be no end.

Even as we are summoned by this promise, we read on and find that our story also has a shadow side. The magi had trouble finding what they sought, so in time, the went to King Herod in the land where they were searching. King Herod, too, had heard the story of the birth of a miraculous child, so he commissioned the magi to seek further and then report back to him when they had found the child. Then he, King Herod, could go in person and worship the child. Eventually, the magi make their way to the cheche in Bethelehem, but they are warned in a dream not to go back and report of Herod. They go home a diffferent way. Also Joseph has a dream warning him to take his family and flee quickly into another land.

Good thing, these divinely inspired dreams, for when King Herod discovered that the magi had not come back, he sent his soldiers out and ordered them to slaughter all the male babies. King Herod wanted no wondrous people about, even as babes. So the Nativity in its fullness is no sweet, saccharin tale, for it proclaims that the very hope of the world must flee for his life, else cruel butchers would obliterate new hope and vision. There are ever evil folk, who will slaughter the innocent, to proclaim their dogmatic gospel of power. In this year so marked by terror, I would suggest that we remind ourselves anew of this horrible part of the tale. Evil ever surrounds us, but hope cannot be killed in the human adventure.