ChurchAds.Net, a Christian publicity organisation in Britain, is appealing for donations so that they can put up posters in bus shelters this Christmas. (If you want to find out more, you can visit their website.) At least, by using bus shelters, they will get their message across before the bus arrives with the secularists' posters on the buses about there probably being no God.
These Christian posters will portray the familiar scene of the Christmas crib in a modern setting. I would like to think that there is a symbolic meaning in this activity. More than recreating the scene as it was (or so we imagine) when Jesus was born, the posters are at the same time helping people to prepare a place for him today.
This symbolism will be lost on some people, of course. There are many (including more than a few who are not Christians) who accept that a man called Jesus lived (and therefore must have been born) in Palestine about 2000 years ago. They would say he was a good man and an important teacher. This view regards Jesus as an historical figure and his birth as an historical event. By all means, they say, celebrate his birthday, as one might celebrate the birthday of George Washington or the composer Mendelssohn (whose 200th anniversary was this year).
"Christmas starts with Christ", says ChurchAds. If we believe this, then Christmas is more than the celebration of an historical event. It also proclaims certain things we believe about God - principally that he came and dwelt among us. He took our human nature upon himself, with all its frailty but also with all its capacity for good. As St Augustine says, "He became like us in order that we might become like him".
Any other kind of God would have no use for a crib. The cribs in our homes, churches or public places express our belief that God is in our midst today (in spite of what those other posters might say). We find him in our lives and in the lives of people we meet. If we prepare a place for him in our hearts, he will be born in us too. That is, we will begin to allow the divine nature to grow in us day by day, so that we become more in tune with the ways and will of God.
When we see Christmas crib scenes, let them remind us of the historical event that "Christ was born in Bethlehem". But let them also say aloud Em-manu-el "God is with us".
Happy Christmas and a blessed New Year to you all.
Peter