In December 2008 the much-loved Woolworths chain, with its 800 stores on high streets across the UK, went into administration. The cash had stopped flowing, trapped in stock that no-one wanted. The ‘customer journey’ had been ignored for too long and business had leached to discount stores and the internet. Ironically, after 99 years of trading, the Woolworth Company was brought down by a shift from brand loyalty to pic ‘n mix shopping.
Woolworths provides a poignant example of an organization that did not change quickly enough to survive. It reminds us that change is essential for growth and that the alternative to growth is death. And that’s a lesson worth remembering at Christmas.
Christmas is often seen as a bastion of changelessness. The ideal of a white Christmas is one where even the ground remains untouched. All is calm, all is bright. The family gathers around the table and TV, the traditional games are played, and everyone has fun listening to Slade and the pop classics.
But families change. There is the empty chair where Gran used to sit and the highchair squeezed in for Baby, and behind the celebrations, concerns and hopes for the future and questions about how to meet the challenges of times with the joy and faith we long for.
Coming to church is a part of many people’s Christmas, and those who attend will expect to find there the traditional trimmings – Hark the Herald, O Come, All ye Faithful, and at the Cathedral, choristers and candles. The story which lies at the heart of the season’s worship, though, is from start to finish about change.
A baby is born. Nothing changes a family more than birth. This birth means that soon the family is fleeing from the village of Bethlehem to Egypt to avoid the threat of infanticide. The family moves from pillar to post, facing upheaval, struggling to survive.
At the heart of the story lies the intimate drama of a mother wondering who on earth is the One to whom she has given birth. After the shepherds have visited with their account of angelic good news, we hear that ‘Mary treasured all these things in her heart’, but the literal translation is that she ’tossed them together’ in her heart. Their meaning is not given on a plate.
May I wish all readers a very happy Christmas, one that brings a sense of stability and hope in changing and concerning times, but I also urge us to turn to the story to follow the example of the holy family, who made the changes they needed to survive.
Change making is always hard, but remember Woolies. They stopped responding to the customer journey. The reality they served was not fixed but shifting. Though managers could convince themselves that the world was as it was ten years previously, when profits were running at over £100 million, they were wrong. Change can be sudden and brutal, but the birth of Jesus echoes and addresses this.
Those who come to church more regularly than at Christmas will now start the journey from the crib to the cross. This is made obvious in our 12th-Century Winchester Bible where the swaddling bands around Jesus at his nativity are painted blood-red, and where the baby seems entombed in the manger.
The artist behind the Genesis Initial, where this scene appears as one of many new beginnings given by God, always depicts serious faces. In it, Mary and Joseph look solemn – only the ox seems merry! Both have their heads propped by a hand. Perhaps they are exhausted, or perhaps we are being invited to contemplate with them where this new beginning will end.
All the contingencies of history are held in the changeless hands of God, who sits enthroned in eternity while in Christ entering our time to share our griefs and sorrows. In opening ourselves to the eternal life that Jesus gifts us, we can find a real stability, based on a conviction often voiced at the start of the funeral service: ‘neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ (Romans 8.38-39)
With blessings and best wishes,
The Revd Canon Dr Roland Riem