Readings

Deuteronomy10:12-21 

This week I chose the readings suggested for the Sunday nearest to Waitangi Day and so we read from Deuteronomy.

Maurice Andrew draws our attention to verse twelve and thirteen

‘So now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord’

It is a theme that is repeated in a number of books throughout the Hebrew Bible.

He also tells the story of Tūhoe prophet Rua Kēnana who, according to historian Judith Binney, travelled with a big box strapped to a packhorse that contained a large English Language Bible. That was his equivalent of the Ark of the covenant which contained  the tablets of the law[1]

Matthew 6:19-24

This is a classic contrast between what appears to be of value in the ‘economy’ and what might be true ‘heavenly values.’  Bishop Mariann Budde tried to explain the difference to Donald Trump recently, but he didn’t seem to understand.  The basic claim of this gospel is that ‘You cannot serve God and wealth’. In terms of the Treaty covenant there always seems to be a pressure to pursue wealth above justice.

Sermon

My cousin Helen has adapted to retirement far better than I have.  She has planted out her sloping section, keeps chooks, and has an automatic lawn mower that sends her a text when it gets stuck.  She involved herself in a number of arts a crafts.  She even made me a small arty pot with a picture of my mum as a girl glazed on it.

In pursuit of such activities, she had occasion to email the treasurer of her pottery group, but he never received it.  The reason was that he had set his email system to block any email that contained Māori words.

At that point Dr Helen reverted to her former self and told him she is a linguist and he should know that all languages borrow from other languages.  English is a typical example of a language made up of words, past and present, from all over the world.  Furthermore, as a living language it is still adding words including from Te Reo.  That makes our English distinct to Aotearoa and that is good.

This nation of ours began with sea borne migration and the hidden actions of faithful people.  We can only guess what drove Māori across the Pacific.  However, the usual historic motivations, as the Hebrew Exodus tells us, are the search for food or flight from violence and slavery.

British colonists were mostly economic refugees and those escaping the class system, along with convicts escaping from Australia.  Helen’s father and my mother came from England with their parents between the two world wars.  We don’t quite know why, but the stories I remember from my grandfather about his experiences of the first world war make me think he wanted to avoid another war.

The Perry family came on the Amelia Thompson in 1841.  Our best guess why is that they had a large family and unemployment was becoming serious in England.  My mother used to tease my father by suggesting that as they came from Cornwell they were smugglers fleeing the gallows.

Both our families were able to migrate here because of a treaty with the first people of the land.  An agreement that outlined how two completely different cultures could come together yet still respect each other’s traditions.

Behind the pageantry and high-profile chiefs and officials the sighing the Treaty involved people who, in their own way, had a respect for law and order.  Māori in fact regarded it as a covenant in the biblical sense.  The story of Rua Kēnana’s box with a large bible in it illustrates how Māori quickly identified and adapted Christian tradition.

The traditional understanding of Christianity arriving on these shores is undoubtedly Marsden’s sermon on the beach on Christmas Day.  But even reading that story we come across the acts of kindness and friendship between individuals that made the event possible.

It is also worth considering that there was a time of individual European settlement amongst Māori communities.  Furthermore, Māori were trading with Australia and serving on whaling ships around the world.  So, there must have been many times the gospel was shared in one to one contacts or acts of healing kindness.

My father had a good knowledge of Te Reo and a number of Māori skills including carving.  He learned these interests and skills from the workers and their children on the family farm as he grew up.  Undoubtedly British culture and Christian faith was likewise shared with Māori in similar one to one contact as the best of both cultures was shared.

We can therefore conclude that Christian mission played a vital part in building the trust that made signing the Treaty possible.  

Certainly, there was also competition amongst tribes and a desire for power both economic and military among the Māori chiefs.  There was also a desire to choose the most helpful allies in the competing and sometimes violent world Māori were discovering.

There was also a blending of spiritual understanding along with a desire for a better future.

Furthermore, missionaries cultivated an image of the Queen as personally loving towards Māori.  This could be seen as somewhat conniving, but the missionaries most likely believed it to be true.  Victoria was a strong-willed woman who did a lot to firm up the British monarchy.

Henry Williams affirmed to Māori at Waitangi, that the Treaty was an act of love towards them on the part of the Queen. This thinking led many chiefs, who were by then, either Christian or associated with Christianity, to see the Treaty in terms of a spiritual bond – a covenant.

Unfortunately, some of the future misunderstanding has been because Pākehā see the treaty as simply a legal document that their lawyer can wiggle their way through.  But at the time of forming the Treaty there was good intent on behalf of the colonial powers.

James Stephen was the permanent undersecretary in the Colonial Office.  He was possibly the most influential civil servant of his time and was also profoundly influenced by the gospel.  James Stephen’s gospel convictions expressed themselves in a deep commitment to the abolition of slavery. That was championed by his brother-in-law William Wilberforce and others.

Stephen later became concerned about the negative impacts of colonisation on indigenous peoples.  Wanting to avoid a similar pattern in New Zealand he drafted the instructions for Lord Normandy which were given to William Hobson when he was sent to New Zealand in 1840.

Parts of the instruction were that all dealings with Māori must be conducted with sincerity, justice, and good faith.  They must not be permitted to enter into any contracts in which they might be ignorant and unintentional authors of injuries to themselves.  The instruction to Hobson was not to purchase from Māori any territory that would be essential, or highly conducive, to their own comfort, safety or subsistence.

The content of the Treaty was shaped by Stephen’s instructions and the instructions themselves were shaped by the gospel. [2]

When the trust in the Treaty was lost trust in the missionaries was also lost but Māori Christianity emerged in faiths like Ringatū and Ratana.  Rua Kenana founded a self-supporting pacifist settlement deep in the Urewera Mountains.  He also formed a bond with his Tūhoe people and the Presbyterian Church.  That connection is still strong today, as I suspect is their link with the Ringatū church.

Our Deuteronomy reading talks about welcoming strangers and treating them justly because of Israel’s experience in Egypt.  Certainly, those Pakeha who proposed and signed the Treaty were strangers in a strange land and had a vision of justice for all people.

However, I was recently offered a raffle ticket for a signed Tom Scott cartoon.  It depicted the signing of the treaty and Hobson is saying something like, ‘How would you feel if we inserted a clause that allowed subsequent governments to alter certain conditions of the Treaty.

In the drawing the chief, who has his pen on the page,  lifts his head with an interesting look.  I marvelled at the facial expression that Scott managed to get into that simple line drawing.

Certainly, a picture that contained a thousand words. ‘What’s that you say!’ ‘You have got to be joking’ or was it ‘You can tell young Victoria to take all her Pakeha home’.

But perhaps the key to understanding the present Treaty Principles Bill is that simple line from Matthew’s Gospel, ‘You cannot serve God and wealth’.

The Perrys that came in the Amelia Thompson and were anxious about the future employment of the boys owned or worked in an iron smelter.  They were told about the vast iron sand deposits in Taranaki and were encouraged to believe they could set up a smelter and exploit that resource.  They were not told that no Europeans knew how to make iron or steel out of iron sand in 1841.  In fact, the first output of steel from iron sand in Aotearoa happened in 1969, 128 years later.

I got to photograph the first commercial mining of the Taranaki iron sand.  That was pumped out to a ship and exported.  So, at last a Perry descendant got to invoice a day’s work associated with the dream that tempted my ancestors here.

My son Geoff discovered, in a set of history resources, a letter written by John Perry.  It had been requested and paid for by the New Zealand Company.  It was a sponsored testimonial extolling the opportunities open to those brave enough to endure the voyage.

Geoff was so annoyed at the exaggeration that he tossed the letter out.  Then he realised it was written by a relative.

The New Zealand Company well and truly served wealth.  They not only promised the exploitation of iron sand that could not be smelted they sold land they didn’t own and promised milk and honey without mentioning that ancient forests had to be cleared before pasture could be sown.  Once the settlers arrived, they certainly wanted the land they were promised.  They demanded that escape clause Tom Scott’s cartoon hinted at.  Furthermore, they had the numbers to elect a government that wanted growth and wealth.

Part of my training for ministry was a week at the Presbyterian Marae at Ōhope where, among other things, we were shown the confiscation line where land was taken for crimes Tūhoe did not commit.  We were also told of the raid to arrest Rua Kenana and his subsequent acquittal by a judge.

Much has been done to heal such wounds but now part of the coalition government, with eight percent of the vote, wants to open those past wounds again and their motive is still wealth.

Certainly, we are now a secular society that is not bound to ‘fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways.

But regardless of the wider community we are Christians and still called to live as Christ to others.  We are called to be an example to those around us.

We can certainly be encouraged by the woman bishop who called out one of the most powerful leaders in the world at his inauguration.  When I read some of Bishop Budde’s sermon I remembered Henry II supposedly said of Thomas Beckert: ‘Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?

As the priesthood of all believers, we too are called to be troublesome to the greedy.  The challenge of this year’s Waitangi Day is to speak out for a Treaty drafted by people of our faith. We must demand truth and justice in a world obsessed with wealth.

 

[1] Maurice Andrew The Old Testament in Aotearoa New Zealand (Wellington: DEFT 1999), p., 159.

[2] http://www.nzcms.org.nz/200-years/wp-content/uploads/The-Gospel-and-the-Treaty-of-Waitangi1.pdf