I was pleased this week to be able to help out the Community of St Luke church in Remuera with a new cartoon for their Christmas billboard.
See below for the full text of the media release about it:
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Christmas billboard portrays the Holy Family as refugees
The Community of St Luke’s church in Remuera, Auckland, today revealed its Christmas billboard; a cartoon depicting the Holy Family of Mary and Joseph as refugees in a leaky boat being turned away at a barbed-wire border fence.
The Minister of St Luke’s, Rev Glynn Cardy, says the image aims to bring into clear focus the meaning of Christmas for a modern world that is facing an ongoing and desperate refugee crisis.
“The first Christmas involved people with few resources relying on the hospitality of those with more. This is the situation today with refugees – whether in Europe, or trying to reach Australia or even New Zealand.” says Cardy.
“Like today’s refugees, Mary and Joseph had travelled far from their families. They were vulnerable. They needed someone to make room, to make a room available, in order that Mary could give birth to Jesus.
“Christmas not only asks us to be generous and welcoming as individuals. It also asks us to make sure our Government’s policies towards refugees are generous and welcoming.”
Cardy says that for Christians to reject refugees is to reject Mary and her unborn child in their time of need.
“Rather than being greeted by a gun, a barbed-wire fence, and a blunt statement ‘Sorry; there’s no room’, could not we greet refugees with shelter, food, and assistance with work?”
Visit the Community of St Luke online at http://stlukes.org.nz
For more information, contact:
Glynn Cardy
Ph: +64 9 520 0678
Mob: 021 545 969
E: glynn@stlukes.org.nz