Anglican Taonga

2 Corinthians 5:14-21; Matthew 6:24-34

Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

I think it was Mark Twain who said that it wasn’t the bits of the Bible he didn’t understand that troubled him; rather, it was the bits he did understand. Our Gospel reading is one of those passages; it’s a familiar passage with a powerful message that we probably feel we understand but find very difficult to put into practice. After all, our Western society is built on being anxious about what we eat or drink or wear!

I have found it interesting to view other cultural perspectives in New Zealand. At the start of our academic year last year we had an opening service followed by a meal in the form of a Maori hangi. The students and staff of the Maori section of the College undertook to do this. The administration of the College wanted to send out invites with RSVP slips so that we would know exactly how many would be coming. But Maori and Pacific cultures do not work like that.

Central to their understanding is hospitality. Any invitation is understood to extend to the whanau, the extended family. Whereas we Westerners would try to restrict that to immediate family and to define who was entitled to come, Maori and Pacific Islanders would not dream of doing that. Basically you cater for as many as might want to come.

At this start of year meal they guessed that 170 might come; the basic approach was that if more come then we will all have a little less to eat, but if less come we will all have more to eat. As it happened a few less came and we all had plenty to eat.

The Pacific Islanders’ approach is a bit different. They will basically provide huge amounts of food to make sure that everyone has enough. Then at the end people take home any left over food to feed themselves for the following days.

The priorities are different; Westerners are concerned about not wasting food, about catering for the right number, about not going over budget! Maori and Pacific Islanders are concerned about not being properly hospitable to visitors. Which of those approaches is nearer to our Gospel reading?

CS Lewis wrote some wonderful science fiction alongside his theological books. My favourite is Voyage to Venus (sometimes entitled Perelandra). In this book Lewis conceives of Venus as a water-covered world (not unreasonable given the scientific knowledge of his day, though now we know it is far too hot for that).

The only human inhabitants are the first couple in an Eden-like innocence. They live on islands of plant matting floating on the ocean. With the movement of the ocean underneath the landscape is constantly changing - one minute a valley, the next minute a ridge. They have to live with whatever the next wave brings.

The command they are given by God is not to sleep on the one piece of Fixed Land - because that would be embodying a lack of trust in what God sends them , and trying to find security for themselves.

Lewis’ parable speaks to part of Jesus’ concerns in this passage. He encourages us to trust in what God provides, rather than getting obsessed with providing it for ourselves.

But isn’t that irresponsible? What about our responsibility to care for our loved ones? This is where I have found a NZ book I read last year very helpful. The book is Beyond Retribution by New Zealand theologian Chris Marshall.

In the book Marshall discusses the New Testament’s approach to crime and punishment and connects it to the New Zealand idea of restorative justice (one of the really good things about NZ that I will be taking back with me!). I also enjoyed the book because in the first few pages there was a footnote 8 which referred to an article by our very own Fred McElrea! In his book Marshall points out that the word we translate as righteousness contains the idea of justice.

As I have reflected on that in the light of this reading, perhaps one of the things that Jesus is saying that if our primary concern is justice - for the wealth of the earth to be shared justly - then we ourselves will be provided for along with everyone else. It’s an interesting thought - it means that we are to be rightly responsible towards those who depend upon us, but will do that in a context of just shares for all.

So perhaps the verse should read Seek first the Kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things will be added to you.

Another point that Marshall strongly makes is that so often our idea of justice is about just retribution – making sure that wrong-doing is punished, and that it is punished fairly. Marshall argues that we should instead see justice in terms of restorative justice – that justice is about putting things right.

In particular God’s justice is about putting things right; which is what the work of the cross is about; in the words of our NT reading in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, ie was putting things right between God and the world. Paul therefore implores us Be reconciled to God – allow things to be put right between you and God and then take a message of reconciliation – of putting things right – into the world.

As ambassadors for Christ, we Christ’s church have a task of putting the world right, of seeking the Kingdom of God and its justice and righteousness. How often we read our Gospel passage as individuals – when it also applies to us as a church. As a church we should be giving priority to seeking the Kingdom of God and his justice rather than giving priority to our finances – and then our finances will take care of themselves. Above all, both in New Zealand and in the Anglican Church worldwide, we should be giving priority to the Mission of God rather than to our differences whether cultural or theological.

Personal reflections

Two or three reflections upon the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia from our 2 years of experience here…
The first is that the Anglican Church here does seem to have lost its confidence about evangelism. There seems to be a polarization between those who say the important task is to bring people to Christ, and those who say that the important task is to work for justice.

I want to argue that both are equally important, and that both are related. The task and the message of reconciliation is about both. We call people to be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, to find forgiveness and eternal life in him. But we also call them to work with God and with us for the Kingdom of God and its justice, to put things right in the world.

The great South African thinker about mission, David Bosch describes evangelism in these terms…

'Evangelism means enlisting people for the reign of God, liberating them from themselves, their sins, and their entanglements, so that they will be free for God and neighbour…. To win people to Jesus is to win their allegiance to God's priorities. God wills not only that we be rescued from hell and redeemed for heaven, but also that within us ~ and through our ministry also in society around us ~ the "fullness of Christ" be re-created, the image of God be restored in our lives and relationships'.

It is not enough for us to be content with our own salvation while ignoring sin and evil in the world . We are called to work for the transformation of the world, to work for justice and the Kingdom of God.

Leslie Newbigin wrote that:

Conversion is not a transference from one self-centred community to another; it is not a private peace with God while the whole world goes to rot. It is being caught up into God’s action of kingdom. It is being changed so that we can be agents of change.

The ‘conservative’ end of the Anglican Church needs to hear that call to be agents of change, that conversion of individuals should lead to working for the transformation of the world – for putting things right.

The ‘liberal’ end of the Anglican Church needs to recognize that this does also involve naming the name of Christ – that it is through a personal relationship with Christ that we can be changed to become agents of change.

My second reflection concerns the three-tikanga church. Some had said to me before I came out here that this looked like ‘ecclesiastical apartheid’. I don’t think it is, or at least I don’t think it is intended to be. I think behind it is an intention for reconciliation and justice, a concern to put right things that are wrong; which for our Maori brothers and sisters in particular includes putting right the wrongs of history, which is much more present to them than it is to European Pakeha.

American theologian Joel Green has some interesting thoughts about what was happening at Pentecost. It’s often argued that Pentecost represents a reversal of the dispersion of cultures after the tower of Babel, but Green in his recent book Seized by Truth argues that Babel represents a coerced unity dominated by one nation and by that nation’s language and culture, whereas Pentecost represents the different nations hearing the Gospel in their own language (and culture); and that unity is to be expressed by the common allegiance to Christ, rather than by a common culture.

The Church of England report ‘Mission Shaped Church’ argues that developing churches that minister to particular cultures can be good news for oppressed cultures; for too often unity results in dominance by one culture. “Good news for the poor is only truly good news when it empowers the poor or marginalised to form their own communities of faith, in which indigenous people work together for change and renewal.”

At the heart of three-tikanga church is the desire to empower Maori and Pacific church leadership so that Maori and Pacific churches can be agents of God’s transforming power in their own cultures.

But two things need to be said about this; the first is about inequality of resources. The Maori mission in Mangere has about 70,000 Maori parishioners. They have 4 non-stipendiary ministers. There seems to me to be considerable financial inequalities between different parts of Auckland, let alone between different parts of New Zealand. The average adult annual wage in Mangere is about $15,000.

Does not our Gospel reading about seeking first the Kingdom of God and his justice have something to say about this?
The second is about the need for real reconciliation which must involve building of relationships. There is a real problem in the three-tikanga church of people in different tikanga not knowing each other.

The church is to be a foretaste, sign and instrument of the Kingdom of God. That involves demonstrating the reconciling power of the Gospel. In the NZ context, that must be about demonstrating that Maori, Pacific and Pakeha can be reconciled to each other, and can live and work together in peace and justice. Where to begin that?

Perhaps a place to start might be to form a partnership with another church in a poorer part of Auckland, and/or from another tikanga. While I was at Synod, I was struck by the DVD being shown about the Hikoi of Hope (10 years ago). Talking to people there was a great sense of unity about that – though I know there were moments…. Perhaps the unity came through seeking together the Kingdom of God and his justice. I suspect the route to greater unity is not to talk about unity for its own sake, but rather to work together for the priorities of the Kingdom of God.

But beware of going into partnerships with the sense that the giving is all one way.

We all too easily have the view that we have the answers, they have the problems. British author Ann Morisy argues that rich suburban churches have much to gain from partnership with those in struggling circumstances. She talks about the importance of struggle to the kingdom of God and the well-being of the kingdom of God. She says that being alongside those who are poor and who know deeply the reality of struggle may be a thin place where God reveals himself in a very mysterious and real way.

She argues that suburban living (which she likens to living in a playpen) is poverty-stricken in terms of story and in terms of struggle. Partnership with others invites us out of our comfort zone to a place where we are beyond our own resources and therefore able to be reached by God; it invites us to enter places which will give us stories to tell. Such ‘journeying out’ is not just for the sake of the world; it is also for the sake of the church.

So as individuals and as a church, if we are seeking the Kingdom of God and his justice, a whole lot of other stuff we get all too easily worked up about might fall into its proper place.

David Jeans is the outgoing Dean of St John's College in Meadowbank. This sermon was preached at St Aidan's Church, Auckland, on May 25.