The Strange Portrait
A sermon preached by the Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce
on the Seventh Sunday after Trinity
26th July 2009
In the name of the living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
This church is unusually blessed in the quality of its fixtures and fittings, and in the beauty and the sheer craftsmanship of many of its artefacts. Having said this, however, there are one or two acquisitions that I have to say I have sometimes felt we might just possibly be the richer without. It is here that I enter dangerous ground.
Because I must confess that, for me, one of the offending items is the portrait that currently hangs on the north wall of our church, just above the steps under that archway over there. I will admit that my aversion is partly due to my own prejudice: I have always felt that historic churches provide the perfect setting for devotional objects and carved memorials; but that large-scale portraits in oils, however worthy the subject, cannot help but look somewhat out of place.
But more specifically, there is something about the demeanour of the man himself, as he is portrayed there, that I have always found distinctly off-putting: he is a portly gentleman, to say the least, with an air that appears both haughty and somewhat pompous: indeed, when you look up at his portrait, he appears to be looking straight down his rather elongated nose at you. In fact, stick a wig on him, and he could have come straight out of Barchester Towers – he even has a pair of pince nez suspended on a chain around his neck. And if that were not enough, his very name sounds distinctly Trollopian: because our friend over there is none other than Canon Cresswell Strange, who was vicar of this parish just over a century ago, between the years 1885 and 1903.
Now, the reason why I am telling you this is that something happened earlier this week that has radically changed my view both of that portrait and of the man whom it depicts. Allow me to explain:
A few days ago I had occasion to delve into an edition of the Worcester and Birmingham Diocesan Magazine dating from 1905. There, to my surprise, I chanced upon an obituary of our very own Canon Strange, whom, I discovered, had died unexpectedly in his sleep, at midnight, on 30th January of that year, after having led Evensong at Worcester Cathedral for what turned out to be his last time. And what I read was fascinating, and rather unexpected.
Now, I was already aware, as some of you may be too, that the achievements of Cresswell Strange during his time as vicar here were not inconsiderable: apart from anything else, he was responsible for building the whole area of the church behind me, the choir and the sanctuary, as well as the Lady Chapel over there. The memorial plaque in the wall, next to which his portrait now hangs, records this, describing how: ‘By his labours this Church was restored and enlarged in 1886, and again enlarged in 1889: a new organ was erected in 1891, and the Parish Schools were extended in 1894.’ The plaque goes on to list the ‘daughter’ churches that he was responsible for founding in this area: St Mary and St Ambrose on the Pershore Road, and the mission church of St Monica, which sadly no longer stands.
But it was only when I read that 1905 obituary of Cresswell Strange earlier this week that I began to glimpse something of the man behind these undoubted achievements. So let me tell you a little more about his story.
Before becoming vicar of this church, Cresswell Strange had spent time in rural ministry, followed by twelve years in a very large, extremely tough parish in Southampton, in an area of considerable social deprivation. He then came to be vicar here in 1885, where he remained for a total of eighteen years, until his appointment as a Residentiary Canon of Worcester Cathedral, where he was to spend the final two years of his life.
But what kind of a man was he? Given the nature of his achievements, one might naturally expect to find a very powerful man; a force to be reckoned with; probably somewhat overbearing in his manner, as his portrait suggests. Actually, he was none of these things. On the contrary, his obituary describes him thus:
He was a man endued with overflowing kindness, of a most affectionate disposition, and possessed of a charming manner, at once attracting sympathy and extending it to all with whom he came into contact. His teaching and his very presence always tended towards unity, and in that respect he must stand pre-eminent in the history of the Church in Birmingham for the last twenty years[…]
… As a preacher he was at his best, and more evenly so than most good speakers. Interesting, instructive, spiritual, practical, simple, with great facility of expression and a voice of rare persuasive power, he was convincing and uplifting. His knowledge and expository use of the Bible were quite exceptional, and never failed to rivet the attention. Love was his keynote, penitence the road to it, faith the ground of it, and hope the joy of it.
The obituary continues:
As a parish priest his influence was very marked; his sound common sense, his sympathetic manner, and his tender and faithful dealing with the sick and the penitent can only be fully appreciated by those who had experience of them. A man of peace, he was seldom drawn into controversy […] Methodical, business-like, and courteous, he was an ideal Chairman, and secured the maximum of progress with the minimum of friction. He was a great worker, and never spared himself if he could really give help, but he had the moral courage to ‘limit his work’ … he declined to multiply machinery beyond its power of efficiency, and the quality of his work undoubtedly gained through such limitation of the quantity. [I must remember that one – the quality of one’s work gains through limitation of the quantity!]
It is also clear from his obituary, that Cresswell Strange was a man who was on a very real journey of his own: it tells how he was brought up with a very narrow kind of theological outlook; it was as a consequence of his own reading and spiritual development that he came to adopt a much broader view of faith and approach to worship (the latter influenced by the Oxford Movement), both of which he took profoundly seriously: ‘his whole tone and demeanour’, we are told, ‘breathed reverence.’ This perhaps helps to explain his absolute passion for education in all its forms: Cresswell Strange knew from his own experience the power that it has to change lives.
Now all this may constitute an interesting little snippet of Edgbaston history, but what possible relevance does it have to the main theme of our Gospel reading today – the feeding of the five thousand? Well, listen on:
The story of the miraculous feeding of the five thousand, which occurs in all four gospels, has frequently been misrepresented by both well-intentioned preachers, and misguided biblical critics, who succumb to the temptation to explain it all away, rationally. I have certainly heard it suggested that what ‘really happened’ was that the child with the loaves and fishes was encouraged to share what he had, and in the process, others in the crowd were inspired to do likewise, so that they all opened up the lunch boxes they had secreted away and shared the contents. But if you actually read the biblical text, that is not what happens at all.
So, what is the story about? We have a very large crowd - five thousand people -following Jesus. It is Jesus himself who raises the question about feeding them: ‘Where are we going to buy bread for these people to eat?’ This is clearly an impossible task, because as Philip remarks, the crowd is so vast that six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little. But, undeterred, Jesus takes the paltry amount of food that is there, the five loaves and two fishes; he gives thanks to God, and he distributes them. And what follows, as we all know, was one heck of a lunch party.
This is, of course, yet another of those gospel stories that exemplify for us the astonishing, boundless, profligate generosity and grace of God; it is a story that invites us to (as Ellen Davis puts it) ‘contemplate a world where offering up all the little we have inexplicably yields more, in bewildering abundance.’ It is a story that ‘invites us to think in fundamentally new ways about the presence and the power of God’1 – a God who really can create so very much out of so very little. A God who sometimes asks us simply to suspend our disbelief and ‘give it a go’. Because if we are prepared to take that risk, then truly astonishing things can sometimes happen.
Let me now read you a bit more from that 1905 obituary of Cresswell Strange. I quote:
In his own parish [that is, this one], remarkable growth was seen … From a mere handful of worshippers when he came to Edgbaston, the combined congregations must have often exceeded two thousand when he left, and starting with considerably less than a hundred communicants, he left nearly a thousand in the united parish…
.. and all this at a time when the resident population of the parish, which was about seven thousand, itself increased very little during his time here. The obituary then remarks that, under his leadership, ‘The whole character, tone, and methods of Church life were altered almost past recognition, and his people moved with him with one mind…’
What Cresswell Strange achieved during his time as vicar of this church, was far, far more than a few impressive building projects; because what he did here was a real ‘loaves and fishes’ job. He recognised, possibly before they themselves did, that the people who lived in this place were hungry for something. And he fed them: he fed them through his work, and through his witness, by the quality of his relationships, and above all by his preaching, which brought everyone who heard him in touch with the power, and the grace, and the generosity of God’s love. To quote again that description of his preaching from the obituary that I read to you:
Love was his keynote, penitence the road to it, faith the ground of it, and hope the joy of it.
And when they experienced that, the crowds of Edgbaston flocked in.
As a congregation, we are currently facing some very big challenges, particularly, although not exclusively, financial: our regular giving is nowhere near enough to cover our costs; we have a major organ restoration on the cards (as Cresswell Strange himself did, all those years ago); and we have further substantial work on the fabric of our building still to fund.
But, at the same time, we have so much going for us: not least in the kind of community we are becoming, as we continue to grow together in faith, and hope, and love. Ours is a community to which new people are now coming and staying; because they find themselves drawn to what they find here. Cresswell Strange managed the seemingly impossible here, just over a hundred years ago. So can we. Here. And now.
I think we should leave that portrait where it is.
Amen.
1 Ellen F. Davis, ‘Holy Preaching’, in Reclaiming Faith: Essays on Orthodoxy in the Episcopal Church and the Baltimore Declaration, ed. Ephraim Radner and George R. Sumner (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1993), p. 204.