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REACHING OUT
St. AUGUSTINE'S CHURCH NEWSLETTER
Winter 2006 NO 64
A Glass Half Empty
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As Christmas approaches it's the season to be
jolly, it's party time! There's only one
thing worse than a glass half empty during the
festive season, and that's when your glass is
completely empty and you are left propping up
the bar on your own because everyone else has
gone home - but that's another story!
Not so strange then that the Church of England
has taken a rather quirky turn in it's Christmas
advertising; in an attempt to put the 'spirit'
back in to Christmas it has produced an advert
of the face of Jesus as some kind of apparition
patterned in the froth on the inside of an empty
beer glass, accompanied by the words 'Where will
you find him?' The advert is particularly
targeted at the young and is intended to
illustrate the spiritual empiness of the
traditional party season and offer Jesus and the
Church as a credible alternative - midnight mass
or one last oint can be a hard choice! The
advert also draws on a worldwide trend for
finding holy images in everyday objects, a cross
in a potato, Jesus on a pizza, the Virgin Mary
on a toasted sandwich; the mind boggles, a visit
to the local take away could turn into a whole
new religious experience!
The 'Big, Bulky, Anglican' website described the
advertising campaign as sickening and the 'ad'
obtuse. I am not sure, for there may come
for many that moment when the party is over,
when the awful reality of life stares us in the
face and we wonder where its all leasing, one
too many doesn't always cheer us up, even at
Christmas. Indeed life will look just the
same, if not worse, when we wake up the next
morning to face another day.
It may well be at a moment like this that a
person needs to find Jesus, for his gospel
'reaches the parts that other gospels may not.'
Certainly the Church needs to encourage people
to find Jesus, but may be a more direct campaign
to put the Christ back into Christmas would be a
more useful exercise in a society where there
seems to be an increasingly hardened campaign to
remove all religion from public life, whether
that be wearing a cross around the neck, or
wearing a turban, or keeping our faith schools.
I even heard Elton John calling for the
abolition of public religion beacuse he says it
lacks compassion. For goodness sake, Jesus
died on the cross for love of all human kind, or
perhaps he really was just a perverted
masochist? Perhaps we should just close
all our churches this Christmas and sit back
with a copy of Richard Dawkins' 'The God
delusion', the hottest book this festive yule.
Some of us are not quite ready to give up and
give in to the secularists who tell us there is
a huge unbelieving constituency in this country.
Rather we invite you to come to church this
Christmas to celebrate the birth of a child
whose whole life was to be a testimony to the
God who loves us, a message of love not just for
when the glass is empty, but for every single
moment of our human existance.
A truly happy Christmass to you all
Father Keith
LOOKING BACK
LOOKING FORWARD
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