At this time of year, many still seek out the 1946 film, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” In it an angel visits a frustrated businessman at Christmas. The angel shows him the value of his life, letting him glimpse how things would have been if he had never been born.
How then to value the birth of Jesus Christ, the baby whom Christians acclaim as Emmanuel, ‘God with us’? The angels’ message on a hillside by Bethlehem over 2000 years ago: ‘Peace on earth, goodwill to all’ has given us the enduring association of ‘goodwill’ with Christmas.
Goodwill, that subversively inoffensive Christmas gift, can nudge us into a generous act, a kind word, a forgiving conversation, being less grumpy and can even transform relations between people and groups. Showing goodwill puts others first whether we hardly feel it or if it comes at great cost or risk to our life.
Recent barbarous events in Sydney moved me to great sorrow and much prayer, and also showed the power of goodwill. Ahmed al-Ahmed, a bystander, put himself at grave risk, halting a terrorist’s murderous rampage through those celebrating the Jewish festival of lights, Hannukah, which prompts adherents to acts of kindness. His actions were costly for him; for those whose lives were spared, they were transformative.
His act brought light into the darkness of murder. He did not ask who those at risk were; he did not check that they were people like him; he did not judge whether they deserved to be saved; he acted because goodwill to others flourished in his heart.
Goodwill is and always should be gloriously indiscriminate. In this case, its unfettered power was that a Muslim man defended a Jewish community in a country where the majority affiliation is Christian.
That is deeply subversive: reminding us that goodwill is for all, just as the God who comes at Christmas is for all, and also not just for Christmas, but forever too. Likewise, the goodwill the angels proclaimed is not just for a season but for an age lasting for as long as Christ is with us: also forever.
In an era where we are rightly concerned about those who are weaponising and politicising Christian faith, perhaps the antidote is instead to weaponise goodwill. As a feeling on its own it will achieve nothing, but if we let the feeling prompt us to action it can light a thousand candles in the darkness.
As the poet Henry Longfellow wrote:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.” (19th century archaic language)
May you have a joyous Christmas in which much goodwill flows.
The Rt Revd Dr Michael Ipgrave, Bishop of Lichfield