St Luke’s, Havelock North – Te Pouhere Sunday 2007 - Sermon

One of the things I love to point out to children when they come into the church is the roof. I ask them to stare at it and tell me what it reminds them of – I get some rather interesting answers. I wonder what it reminds you of? Imagine that rather than looking up you were standing above looking down, does it remind you of the hull of a boat? It should, because that’s what it’s based around. For centuries the traditional shape of a church roof has been an upturned boat, why? Because originally when people started building huge churches the only experience they had of building large objects were boats, so they used that design, and I think it’s a good one and a potentially very helpful symbol for us, more so, perhaps, than the one we find in our gospel reading this morning.

“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you?” Jesus is explaining that the wise person – the one who builds a house on firm foundations – is the person who hears his words and acts on them. Fair enough, but answer me this – how do we hear his words?

I read a comment the other day from a supposedly intelligent leader of an Anglican group who was claiming that what we need as a church is not a debate about how we read the scriptures, but rather just to live according to the Bible. What he meant, of course, was his preferred version of the Bible.

How we read the Bible – how we hear Christ’s words – is one of our major challenges today.

Another story – and I’ve told this before – it’s a scene from an episode of the TV programme ‘Six Feet Under’. A young, gay funeral director who is involved in his church is asked to support the appointment of a radical new priest because obviously, being young and gay, he must want to see some changes. But no, he responds, ‘everything else in my life is changing, I need my church to stay the same.’

But of course it won’t, and never really has.

We do, whether we like it or not, live at a time in history where everything – our society, our culture, and our church – everything is changing, almost constantly it seems. In such changeable times it can be extremely hard to find solid groups to sink some foundations in. So when the ground keeps shifting perhaps it can be a lot more helpful to have a boat than a house.

That’s part of the point, of course, of our theme for today. Te Pouhere is the name given to our Anglican Church constitution and it’s a direct reference to the unique structure we’ve adopted. As each of our three tikanga, our cultural streams, develops in different ways the constitution seeks to offer us some points on connection and contact. Te Pouhere is literally the hitching post. For Maori it was the place where you tied up your waka at the end of the day. It wasn’t a piece of ground or a pa or a headquarters, just a place to tie up to so your boat didn’t get swept away by the tide.

So here’s the question; where are our pouhere? As we find ourselves on shaky ground more in need of a boat than a house, where are our hitching posts? Where are our points of connection?

The absolute pessimists among us would say there aren’t any. They’re virtually all gone. At a time when the ecumenical movement is in tatters and the mainline denominations, including our own, seem determined to tear themselves apart over one issue or another, not only has the common ground vanished, but so have all the hitching posts, that’s what the absolute pessimists would say. Personally, I’m more a moderate pessimist and I believe that while we’re lacking in common ground, there are still a few pouhere, including a major one that is at the heart of all this for us.

For all of us as Anglicans, as Christians, as sailors and passengers in this great boat of a Church, there was a key starting point for our voyage – our baptism. Evangelical or liberal, old or young, hands in the air or arms firmly crossed, wherever we find ourselves we all started at the same place. That’s why the font is one of the three key symbols in every Anglican Church. Alongside the altar and the lectern, where we hear the scriptures read, the font represents a point of connection for us all.

That’s why the font’s so important to me. That’s why even though our new font doesn’t weigh a ton and can be moved it will still live in the foyer, at the entrance to our worship space. So that every time we pass it, whenever we come into this great upside down boat, we’re reminded of where we all began and how we all connect.

There’s another thing about te pouhere – it was on Te Pouhere Sunday four years ago that I preached my first sermon in Havelock North and if you don’t remember it you’ll be shocked to know it included a couple of questions, and I’ve been asking them ever since: who are we, and why are we here? They’re questions I suspect we’ll never stop asking, but what I said in that first sermon and I’ll say again today is that it’s important as we do our asking and our exploring and as we go our separate ways at times and travel together at others, throughout all that it’s important that we find some hitching posts, some places where we make our connections, even when the waters are rough. The font can be one of those places. May we work together to find some more. Amen.