St Luke’s, Havelock North – Te Pouhere Sunday 2008 - Sermon

There are certain pivotal moments in the scriptures when something happens and from that point on nothing is ever again the same. Some of those moments are obvious, like Christmas, Easter and Pentecost, but some of them aren’t, like the events of Acts chapter 10.

The Book of Acts, part two of Luke’s Gospel, the creation story of the Church. Over its 28 chapters we learn how a localised sectarian Jewish movement spread throughout the world and into history, and within those 28 chapters chapter 10 represents a pivotal moment. Up until that moment the ‘church’ - if we can really call it that - was culturally, politically, religiously and physically Jewish – radically Jewish, yes, but Jewish nonetheless. Outsiders – Gentiles – were welcome and included, but only if they conformed to the Jewish expectations of circumcision and avoiding non-kosher foods and so forth. After chapter 10 that all changes.

The chapter opens in the administrative city of Caesarea and a Roman centurion named Cornelius who we’re told, despite being a Gentile, respects God and lives a prayerful life – already there are suggestions of something not quite orthodox here. Cornelius has a vision in which an angel tells him to send a messenger to Peter in Joppa – there are no whys or whats or anything, just do it, so he does.

Meanwhile in Joppa Peter is having a vision of his own. It’s lunchtime and Peter sees a vision of God providing for his hunger, but it’s all very wrong. Before him is laid shellfish and pork products and all manners of foods that are strictly banned for Jews to eat, and Peter says, ‘God, I can’t eat this.’ Every Jew knew that the codes dictating which foods could and couldn’t be eaten came from God himself, but here Peter’s faced with God overturning that and when he objects he’s told that what God has declared clean you must not call profane – whatever God has declared clean. It’s a stunning vision and it’s repeated three times – it always did take Peter a while to get it – but before he really has a chance to get it, Cornelius’ messenger arrives and he’s off to Caesarea.

When Peter arrives he discovers Cornelius is a Gentile and he goes ‘a-ha! This is what the vision was all about, God was telling me it’s OK to enter this Gentile’s house because God has declared him clean.’ So he enters Cornelius’ house and he talks to him – and this is where our Acts reading today comes from – he starts by telling Cornelius and the others there that now he understands God shows no partiality, and then he shares the gospel, the simple story of Jesus, and something incredible happens.

Suddenly, after Peter shares, the Spirit falls and all these Gentiles are speaking in tongues and worshipping God and Peter who thought he had it suddenly realises that what he thought he had was just the tip of the iceberg, because these Gentiles had received the gift of the Holy Spirit and every good Christian knew that the gift of the spirit was only for those in the household of faith. So despite the fact they were still Gentiles, regardless that they hadn’t been circumcised or even baptised, God had given them the Spirit so they were in, on God’s terms it seemed, not the terms that up until that point the early Christians had accepted.

And so here we are today. There is so much in Acts 10 we could dwell on and explore further and I’d just love to preach a series on simply this one chapter, but for today I want to just focus on relating it to the theme for this gathering.

Te Pouhere. It was on Te Pouhere Sunday five years ago that I preached my first sermon here at St Luke’s and I’ve preached on it every year since because I believe it’s an important subject. It’s certainly unique, unlike any other special day in our church calendar, Te Pouhere isn’t focused on a person or an event, but on a document – the constitution of our church signed in 1992 and given the name Te Pouhere – the hitching post. Its roots lie in the Maori renaissance of the 70s and 80s and in the preparation and publication of our New Zealand Prayer Book. When we adopted Te Pouhere in 1992 we not only changed the name of our church from the Church of the Province to the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, but we completely restructured ourselves into three tikanga, or cultural lines, each with a certain amount of autonomy and self-governance, but all bound to the same ultimate decision making body in General Synod and the rules and regulations that make up the Constitution.

It was a unique and radical change, and there have been plenty of critics ever since, with many claiming we have built our house on sand and eventually it will come crashing down. Supporters of Te Pouhere, however, would hail it as a pivotal moment for our church, in much the same vain as Acts chapter 10. Personally I think I want to describe myself as a critical supporter of Te Pouhere and our Church structure.

Thirty years ago I started attending an Anglican church in Taita in the Hutt Valley. Some of you will know Taita, but for those who don’t it’s a lower socio-economic area that sits on the edge of Pomare, a major state housing area. The Hutt Valley in general has 16% of its population listed as Maori, in Taita it’s more like 50%. At St Matthew’s we had a Maori curate and a few Maori parishioners, but in my 10 years in that parish I never once heard a word of Maori spoken in worship. Looking back I would describe it as a welcoming and open church that genuinely thought it was reasonably inclusive, but I doubt anybody ever asked on whose terms? Into whose culture were you welcome to be included? In whose language were you welcome to worship in?

In so many ways St Matthew’s, Taita, was a unique church, but in many, many more ways it wasn’t. Save for a few isolated pockets Anglican churches in this country were white, usually middle class or higher, and everyone was welcome as long as they were happy to fit into that profile. I recall a conversation with another ex-St Matter who countered my point with, ‘well there were never any Maori there to start with’ and leaving aside that it wasn’t true, my reply was simply, ‘are you surprised?’

Te Pouhere changed that in as much as all three of our tikanga are considered equal. There’s a whole different conversation to be had about tikanga Polynesia, but the major radical difference since 1992 is that Maori Anglicans have been given permission and resources to explore what it meant to worship in and as Maori, on their terms.

So that’s why I support Te Pouhere, because to me it isn’t a case of putting cultural politics above gospel values, it’s actually about acknowledging that faith and culture and politics are all interconnected anyway, with each informing and forming the other, and ultimately what we’re looking for is justice – the very first thing the prophet Micah says the Lord requires of us. Te Pouhere was and is an attempt to do justice and I support that unreservedly.

I’m also critical of it though because while I support the need to share power and resources and allow people to be in church in ways appropriate to them, I honestly believe that ultimately we must be more than that. At some point the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians had to find some ways to come together and work and worship together and it wasn’t easy and it wasn’t pretty – just ask Paul. The process was helped, of course, if both groups were willing to develop some understanding of each other and come to respect one another.

One of the major criticisms I have of Te Pouhere is that so many parishes in all three tikanga have used our church structure as an excuse to ignore the others. Why speak Maori here if they can go to their own church over there? Or, they’re all there anyway, so why should we bother? Let’s give our encouragement to the congregations at Waipatu and Omahu and elsewhere and carry on doing our own comfortable thing here.

We should be more than that. I have no problem with diversity, indeed I’ve spent most of my life in the church embracing it, but I believe we must always be working to move beyond our differences, within our differences, and come together sometimes at least.

I agree that the adoption of Te Pouhere was a pivotal moment, an Acts 10 moment, a point where things changed forever, now they need to change again. Now we need a moment that leads us into a time when it’s OK to be both apart and together, when it’s OK for us as pakeha to embrace all of what our church offers, and not just one little bit.

I don’t think our house is built on the sand, but now do I think we’re finished building yet. We need to keep up the construction, we need to find ways to make it bigger, and we need to reach a point where we can honestly say, as Peter did, that we truly understand that God shows no partiality and that Christ is Lord of all, and in saying that we might find that what we’ve discovered is only the tip of a whole new iceberg. May God make it so. Amen.