Bishop of Chichester: Love and joy will always win over violence

If you’re a Disney fan, there’s a great present for you this Christmas. It’s the film Wish, full of adventure and feelgood factor, writes Dr Martin Warner.

Lots of people make a wish at Christmas: “We wish you a merry Christmas” is a carol about generosity for family and neighbours.

And we hope our wish comes true. That’s what writing a letter to Santa Clause is all about.

Disney has combined how we wish for a better world with the story of a magical night-time star.

The plot has the usual players.

There’s a greedy king, Magnifico, and the 17-year-old Asha who makes a wish for Sabino her grandad on his 100th birthday.

We’d need a spoiler alert if I go into much more detail.

This happy film puts a star at the centre of the story.

It’s a speaking star, of course, that drops into our world and works the magic that only speaking stars can work.

Sussex is a great place for star-gazing, protected from light pollution on one side by the sea and on the other by the South Downs.

On a clear night you get an amazing view of the stars and a sense of something magnificent.

We’ve generally forgotten how to read the night sky. But the Biblical story of Christmas tells us that our ancestors could do just that.

Seeing a new star was for them like TikTok is for us. At a turning point in human history a new star was news and information which set them on a journey to find a different kind of king: Jesus Christ.

This is an age that loves Disney, but is sceptical about Bible stories.

We want the Disney stories to be true. But the line "and they all lived happily ever after” simply doesn’t match our experience.

But Bible stories are full of human wishes for a better life and a better world.

In the Old Testament Abraham and Sara look up at the stars and dream about friendship with God in a happy world.

Joseph is also a dreamer and the stars speak to him about doing something with his life that is outstanding.

These stories also confront us with reality and truth.

They tell us that we will have tears and sadness.

Bad things happen to good people. The young die before their time and the wicked grow old in their crimes.

But there is a point at which all this is called to account. The struggle to be kind, generous, honest and cheerful has a reward that lasts longer than a lifetime.

Going back to Wish, the Disney film, we discover that having a magic star as your friend doesn’t make life as easy as you might think.

You still have to work at resisting greed and fear and evil. Life is full of risks and uncertainty.

In Disney land these are adventures that always end well: in daily life that is not always the case.

Across the whole world, Christians will be praying for peace this Christmas, particularly in the land where Jesus Christ was born.

Prayers are not wishes built on superstition. They are the cry of the heart in response to what we see, feel, love and need.

The Church’s prayers this year focus on tiny, vulnerable people who have been born into a world of violent bloodshed.

How remarkably similar that is to the context in which Jesus Christ was born.

The babies of Gaza and Israel, of Ukraine and Sudan, of Myanmar and Guatemala are incredibly vulnerable.

We identify the Christ child with them, because his death will embrace their death and all its evil origins.

What has happened to the minds of people who maim and kill tiny children, defenceless women, aged grandparents, and young adults brimming with hope and energy?

They have lost the capacity to look up at the stars and be filled with wonder and delight.

The tenderness of their own childhood has been eclipsed by a grotesque anger that is fed by hate.

The prayers that Christians say are not a wish list, with fingers crossed, hoping for the best.

They are a cry that reasserts, against all the odds, the enduring power of beauty, joy and love, which will ultimately win through, consuming fear and violence.

That’s the Easter story, which comes next.