• From the dank crypt

    1962 door - 500px

    We’ve been clearing some old documents out of the dank crypt this week and one or two interesting things have emerged. Not least a couple of photographs from 1962.

    We forget now that we photograph anything and everything all the time that in previous decades a photo was relatively rare.

    This one was taken at the church door in 1962 and used in a stewardship brochure. I’ve already posted it on Facebook and there have been a few comments to the effect that it is interesting that the congregation was using a picture of an ethnicly mixed group of people in order to ask for money in 1962. The internationality of the congregation has ebbed and flowed through the years and feels very much who we are at the moment so it does seem significant that this image was used at that point in the congregation’s history.

    And then there is the dog. We do like our dogs at St Mary’s. Then and now.

    The only other thing I have to say is – “hats!”

7 responses to “The Antisemitism Notice”

  1. Gordon Avatar
    Gordon

    Helpful, thank you

    What is the concern with the reproaches? I’m not familiar with them

    1. Kelvin Avatar

      They can be interpreted as being directed at us the listeners. But they can also be interpreted as speaking to Jewish people as all the imagery is from the Hebrew Scriptures and doesn’t reference the experience of those who actually were around Jesus during his life on earth.

      For example:
      “I led you out of Egypt, having drowned Pharaoh in the Red Sea:
      and you have delivered me to the chief priests.”

      Who is being addressed here?

      1. Nick Drew Avatar
        Nick Drew

        That’s interesting, because whenever I have sung the Reproaches I have always felt them as being expressions of personal repentance rather than accusations thrown at the listener.

  2. Rosemary Hannah Avatar
    Rosemary Hannah

    I must admit I had always read the Reproaches as directed to the listener. That the Egypt from which we are delivered is the Egypt of the modern world, the slavery of ghastly jobs (I’ve had a few, in fact a lot) and the oppression of terrible political systems. But I come from a totally different thought world to that of most people today, and I absolutely see they wouldn’t commonly be read that way.
    But I think it would benefit everyone to find a way of expressing BOTH what faith can offer in terms of freedom AND the mess we do make of the world, and sitting with that tension.
    And I think the church as a whole urgently needs to find a compelling and deep reaching way of doing both.

    1. Kelvin Avatar

      You might be interested that we’re looking at Isaiah 59 as a helpful text for this year, given the current ways of the world.

    2. Christine McIntosh Avatar
      Christine McIntosh

      I’m of much the same mind. (A mind that is still blown away when I hear them sung)

  3. Dan Floyd Avatar
    Dan Floyd

    Thank you

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