Bishop Martin of Chichester's Christmas reflection

Three cheers, and more, for Chichester Festival Youth Theatre and Sonali Bhattacharyya’s new adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book. Tickets are selling out fast: book immediately!

The show is fuelled by the energy and talent of young people drawn from across all of Sussex. An amazing set and imaginative costumes bring to life hypnotic snakes, a gossiping porcupine, and docile buffalo. It’s a story with a moral, using music to capture our hearts and minds.

The human ‘cub’, a child, Mowgli, explores how to find out who you are, where you belong, and what really matters to you.

Mowgli is discovered in the jungle by animals who are familiar with looking after lost cubs. The law of the jungle has a morality, in which generosity and belonging are prominent. Their sense of belonging and its enrichment of life is contrasted with life in the human city. What a powerful insight.

But the show also tells us that there’s something more within a human person than being and belonging in one place. The human person longs for freedom, for discovery beyond ourselves. We want news about what else there is in the world.

Last month’s COP28 conference confronted us with the inescapable evidence of the damage we are inflicting on the invaluable jungle spaces of our world. So this Christmas show in Chichester couldn’t be more timely. How absolutely right that a fundamental concern about their future is being so brilliantly presented by the Youth Theatre.

And it really is a Christmas show. The crib and the manger don’t generally include jungle animals, but the ox, the ass and some sheep are an essential part of the story.

The birth of Jesus Christ is about hope for the future. God is inviting us to shape a culture of peace: within the human family, and between that family and every other creature and living thing in the natural world.

Happy Christmas!

Dates for your diary

Find out what services are offered this Christmas by your local church.

The website ‘A Church Near You’ (https://www.achurchnearyou.com/) enables you to easily see what Christmas services are being held by churches in your vicinity this year.

Epiphany Procession. Chichester Cathedral, Sunday 7 January, 6pm.

As we celebrate the great feast of the Epiphany after the Twelve Days of Christmas, we rejoice in the holy Child of Bethlehem being the Saviour of all. At 6pm on Sunday 7 January, we are invited to the Cathedral for a service of music and readings in celebration of the truth at the heart of the Christian Faith and our Christmas festivities.