plaited faith

 

SERMON PREACHED AT St MARY’S NORTH OAMARU

and St Martin’s, Duntroon

Te Pouhere (June 19^th) 2022

 

 

Ko te Karaiti te pou herenga waka

Whakapaingia te Atua to tatou Kai-hanga

 

READINGS:

 

Isaiah 42: 10-20

2 Cor 5:14-19

John 15: 9-17

You won’t have cause to know this, but for two years before I moved into this diocese I had the privilege of being a part of, and one of the priests at, a small Māori hahi in South Napier, called Te Pou Herenga Waka o te Whakapono: the post that anchors the waka of faith. The linguists amongst you may notice the connection between the name of this Sunday, Te Pouhere, and the words of that congregation’s name, te pou herenga.

The hitching post, if you like, of faith, to which all Christ-faith communities must be tethered.

A week ago we explored something of the meaning of the Trinity, and I hope I conveyed at least to some extent the idea that to speak of the Trinity is to speak the language of love. There is the love God has for us, but also the community of perfect, inseparable love that is the impossible, interconnected community of Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit,  in whom we are called to live and act.

Yet that can be all terribly ethereal and out there. Not meaningless out there, but out beyond our understanding, no matter who we are.

For us there is the demand of applied love. The Trinity of love is applied in the invasion of our lives by Jesus, by the resurrection hope that he brings, by the Spirit who makes Jesus’ presence and love possible through space and time, even by the act of love that is God’s activity in creating us and sharing with us the immense unfathomable mysteries of creation.

But that is still “out there.” We are not called, as the cliché goes, to be so heavenly-minded that we are no earthly good.

We are called to express our love in the realities of being human, the realities of human experience, the realities of our chain of being. We are called to express this in the interconnection that is the body of Christ. See how Christians love each other. Within that body of Christ, too, we are called to love within our small faith communities, our congregations. In the wisdom of our province, we have been called to be intentional in expressing that love across the plaits of three tikanga.

How?

What does it mean?

Since I have accidentally stumbled into a role as an historian I inevitably emphasise history. What do we know about the history of our church community? But more importantly, what do we know of the history of relationships across our varied cultures?

It is no mistake that the wise women and men who drew up the lectionary have taken us to passages about union and love. The gospel passage takes us back to Jesus’ final instructions to his followers, and it is no accident that those instructions are all about love. Though it is also no accident that if we put today’s words about love into their context in John’s gospel-account, we find that Jesus makes clear that such love is possible only through deep connection with the Vine. Jesus had said earlier, and now he makes clear once more, that to be bearers of Christ-love we must be deeply grafted, grafted thought discipline, onto that Vine.

If we turn to Paul and read him correctly, we will find that the lens through which he sees all Christian behaviour is that of love. How well do we love? The famous Hymn to Love that we know as 1 Corinthians 13, the passage made known to a whole new generation back at the time of the death of Lady Diana Spencer, summarises the demands and the signs of love. Do we show them? Do I?

John makes clear that love is no chance thing. Over and again he uses the word “remain.” It is a word implying discipline, demanding discipline. To do so, to remain in Christ as Anglican Christians in Aotearoa we are called to look deeply at our relationship with our Māori and Pacifica sisters and brothers, to acknowledge and seek to redress the disadvantages across the decades that they have experienced, to affirm symbolically and actually oneness in Christ-love.

In historical terms it is worth remembering that it was Māori who reinvigorated Christianity across Aotearoa New Zealand, and especially here in the Deep South, after Marsden’s initial overtures faded. If we value our faith we need to harbour deep appreciation, and express that appreciation, more, that aroha, that love, as best we can. It is our task to acknowledge the resource inequities across our tikanga. It is our task to listen especially to the cries de cœur from our co-tikanga in their under-resourced state. It is our task to share resources, not dumping second hand cast-offs but offering of our best to our whanau in faith. It is out task to learn from the telogical voices of our co-tikanga. 

We must learn how to express and practice faith-love. To be immersed in the Vine that is Christ we must with discipline learn to listen, to love, and to act in solidarity with our Māori and Pacifica sisters and brothers. It is to that we are recalled each Te Pouhere Sunday – by the Spirit of God to renew with discipline our love, in and for the tethering post that is Christ.