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Te Pouhere

 Bishop John Bluck reflects on the broken promises and the hope of the church’s tikanga partnerships 
Bishop John Bluck

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Te Pouhere

Transcript
The circus was finally coming to town. He was nine years old and he'd never been inside the Big Top. Please. Can I go mum, please? And Mum knew the price of the ticket and she said, we'll have to see. But every day he persisted. And finally weakly reluctantly she said, all right. Are you sure he would ask? Yes, she said I promise. Well, it proved to be a promise that she couldn't keep and 40 years later, he still has not forgiven her. They met one morning in 1936 in Parliament buildings. A suitably solemn venue for a prime minister and a profit to meet. Being Wellington. It was probably raining and blowing a gale just to add to the gravitas of the occasion. Michael Joseph Savage. The popular labor premiere. But not much loved by tahu potiki wiremu ratana. Four years before ratana had delivered a 30 thousand, strong petition to Parliament to make good on the Promises of the treaty. It hadn't happened. so, the prophet Came Calling Now ratana was an important figure for anglicans. Our Bishops had praised his work as a faith, healer, and an inspirational leader, In 1922, half the Anglican, Maori in Wellington became rotten of followers. My predecessor as the bishop of Y up, who had seconded a priest, the Reverend Perry Monroe to travel with the prophet and support him. So, the ties between us were very close. Embedded in the entrance to the rotten a temple to this day. Is a broken fragment from the Marsden cross. A tranny, oh-ho the, birthplace of our church, So, when the Bishops in their wisdom decided to excommunicate, ratana and his followers because he was becoming too powerful, and because he talked too much about angels. anger, and alienation set in that we have yet to recover from And when I tried to reopen a conversation with the Bishops, 50 years later about apologies and healing broken promises and reconciliation with the rotten a movement, no one. Maori or pakeha wanted to know. That 1936 meeting with Savage was all about the broken promises of the crown, not the church. Rotten, I did not do a lot of talking, but he did a lot of speaking symbolically. He brought three gifts to Savage. A kumara pierced with three who your feathers. A bird made extinct by predators that Pacquiao had introduced. And a vegetable that Maori had little land left to plant. And a green stone Ticky. That spoke of Maori riches and Mana now being destroyed. And a broken gold watch and chain belonging to rotten as father who had no money to repair it. Savage must have found this encounter challenging. Brother. He said these things are speaking to me. I can hear them. And it is reported, that Savage took the greenstone Tikki to his grave. the thing about broken promises big or small, Is that they weren't ever? Let you go until you do something about them. Those on the receiving end of the break. Refuse to forget them. Even if those on the delivering end suffer from amnesia. Or prejudice. Or just act dumb. Broken promises. Take on a life of Their Own. they reap a whirlwind one, that is gathering strength, now, with our American friends in Washington, and even in Britain, as a new front builds, over Northern Ireland, Every family represented in this church, this morning has had a taste of the power of broken promises. As we live through, the aftermath of bitter, divorces, and relationship breakups, and betrayals of friendships and violence and abuse. The church enjoys no immunity from these consequences of Promise breaking. In The Marvelous film called Calvary. An Irish priest. Innocent of any wrongdoing, suffers the backlash from his Village from generations of child abuse covered up by the church. His parishioners have come to hate the church. They loved even while still saying yes Father no father. It is extraordinary. How far we go to cover up, broken promises. perhaps because we know how powerful they are and what Havoc they can wreak Take the lengths, we have gone to to diminish, the Treaty of waitangi. Even without Winston's help. It started as the Bedrock of our nation. and only 32 years later, it had been declared a legal nullity by a learner judge We even managed to read translate the words of Hobson that he said to each Chief as the treaty was signed. Hurry, we tahi tartu. He, we tahi tartar. It doesn't translate as we are now one people as dr. Brash and the one New Zealand Foundation likes to claim. The true translation is we are two peoples together in one nation. Thankfully, we have since the 1970s started to redress these broken and forgotten and distorted promises that our forebears made on our behalf. The coomera, crop is flourishing. Inroads underway against the Predators that wiped out the hooyah. The Mana of the Ticky is rising again. And treaty settlements make the broken gold. Watch repairable. The treaty itself. Once illegible from water damage and rodents was rehoused last month. In a secure, state-of-the-art 10 million dollar vault. earthquake proofed, but still not immune from the seismic shocks of promises that wait to be honored And every little step toward that, honoring needs to be celebrated. Like the crown settlement this month with the people of parihaka. Whose Village was destroyed in 1881 and their leaders exiled. As punishment for their nonviolent resistance to land confiscation. There is a long way to go before the promises made to Maori are fully honored and we are able to enjoy the peace. That will come from that not just personally, it will be the sort of peace that the first testament writers described as shalom. when Justice is restored and the social fabric that surrounds us is woven strong and wide enough to embrace both rich and poor It's what today's Gospel means. When it talks of building our house on a rock, You can take that literally. Or symbolically, it's best to take it both ways. when you are building in a war-torn, earthquake-prone country like ours, We're getting better at acknowledging. The seismic risks of living in these shaky Isles, but we are still to recognize the devastation of the New Zealand Wars of the 1860s and is anglicans. We should do that because those Wars destroyed overnight, 40 Years of missionary work. And came close to discrediting the incredible achievements of our first Bishop. George Selwyn, But this tip. Oh, hurry Sunday. Is not a day to end by bemoaning our failures. This is a day to celebrate a marvelous achievement that happened in the general Synod to he notify nuit in 1992 in Hamilton when delegates from this parish. And all our church has brought a new Anglican Constitution into being that did honor the promises made in 1840 and to Already ever since. Promises of mutual recognition and respect shared decision-making and resources, the right of each tikanga to organize, its own Affairs, to choose different cultural, expressions of faith, and to keep open all avenues, that lead to the common ground. It was a revolutionary document. And it still baffles other parts of the Anglican communion. It sits into practice and law, a model of government that the crown has yet to catch up on. It's let's Maori party are and Pacifica be themselves yet. Stay connected. And to feel incomplete without each other. It ensures the church, we are building for a future, ulterior a country where Pacquiao will be a minority. As is rapidly happening in Auckland will be a church built on strong foundations, built on rock or to use the language of the Constitution where we will be moored to the same post. That's what two pohiri means. The Mooring post. That's what we call the central document of Anglican order. Pity. It doesn't also have a clause about sexual orientation and gender, as well as culture and ethnicity. But the spirit of justice and inclusion is, Will bedded in this document, as I'm sure, Maori will remind us again. Next year, when our general Synod comes to vote. It's not very often in this society that anglicans can feel ahead of the game. But when it comes to constitutions, In a country that doesn't have a written one. We are the Envy of most other institutions. How will we put it into practice is a different story? How eagerly we seek the Common Ground between cultures that the constitution compels us to search out? Is another story that we have yet to tell. And now theologians have yet to help us connect that common ground with the New Order In Christ that we heard about this morning in the epistle. At a conference in at Saint John's College. In October this year, we're going to revisit our failures along with our successes, in this groundbreaking Constitution, and our journey towards a just Society, by cultural and Multicultural, Saint Matthews is in the midst of this chaotic City on the doorstep of the City Mission is on the Frontline of that Journey. I would love to have told the story of our constitution to Savage and ratana at that meeting long ago. It would have given them both hope. Even if our Bishops at the time weren't so sure. And I would have liked to be able to tell our Bishops. That they're excommunication of the ratana church. Only served to add fuel to the fire of the movement that led to the election of the first Maori. Bishop Funny how things happen. Funny, how God's plans unfold? It's a bumpy ride. best to have a mooring post to hang on to In Jesus name we dare to say these things are men.