Last Sunday, when Archbishop Brown Turei preached at the service to mark the 25th anniversary of Te Wairua Tapu, home to the Sydney Maori Anglican Fellowship, he began by recalling a baptism he’d conducted in Sydney more than 40 years earlier.
In 1969 he was one of a party led by the late Bishop Manu Bennett to dedicate a carved totara baptismal font in the Parramatta Cathedral.
That font was a gift from Maori in honour of Samuel Marsden who had set sail from Parramatta in 1814 to bring Te Rongopai to Aotearoa.
On that 1969 visit to Sydney the Rev Brown Turei was asked to baptise his niece; his wife Mihi’s sister had settled in Sydney, and his niece had been born there. As was the way in those days, he followed the rubric set down in the Book of Common Prayer.
At the moment of baptism, however, Rev Turei prayed the set prayers in te reo.
And having prayed that karakia, he looked up to see some of those gathered around him weeping for joy at hearing their mother tongue used at such a profound moment.
Those tears at that 1969 baptism, he suggested, hint at the hunger of a people seeking their identity as both Maori and Christian in a new land.
It’s a hunger that led, on October 27, 1985, to two momentous events for Sydney Maori: the dedication of a small Maori lawn cemetery at the vast Rookwood ‘Necropolis’ in Sydney – and the opening of Te Wairua Tapu, at 587 Elizabeth St, Redfern, led by the Rev, later Sir, Kingi Ihaaka.
These days, ‘Sydney MAF’ stands for the Sydney Maori Anglican Fellowship.
Back in 1985, MAF stood for Maori Arohanui Fellowship, because the Rev Ihaaka – who was already 65 when he took up the Sydney challenge – was charged with being chaplain to all Maori in Sydney, not just Anglicans.
According to the present Maori Missioner, Archdeacon Kaio Karipa, who has served in Sydney for the last 10 years, things have changed quite a bit over 25 years.
For one thing, when Sir Kingi launched Te Wairua Tapu, it was underwritten financially by the Home Mission Society of the Diocese of Sydney. These days, Te Wairua Tapu stands on its own two feet.
But at the same time, Maori in Sydney have generally drifted away from the church, says Rev Karipa. And as new generations have been born and raised in Australia he thinks they’ve lost touch with their cultural roots, too.
But on the evidence of the weekend, perhaps the bonds haven’t been broken after all.
One hundred and seventy Maori from all walks of life in Sydney packed a posh ballroom in a vast Bondi hotel last Saturday evening for a $100-a-head celebration dinner, and 250 people jammed into Te Wairua Tapu on Sunday for the 10:30am service.
Of course, there were jubilant reunions (many had come over from New Zealand, for example), and heaps of celebration and laughter.
Plenty of poignant moments, too – none more so than when Pastor Ray Minniecon, who is from the Kabi Kabi people of South-East Queensland, welcomed people on Saturday morning on behalf of the tangata whenua, the Aboriginal people.
He spoke to a gathering that included one Maori archbishop and three other Maori bishops – and he lamented that the Christian church had not cared for his people.
“Where are my bishops?” he asked. “Where are my clergy? Where is my church?”
He lamented, too, for the Garrigal people, who were the first people of the land on which the city of Sydney now stands – and of whom no trace now remains.
He then asked the question Jesus posed to Peter: “Who do you say I am?”
And the revelation that Peter witnessed to with his answer – “You are the Christ” – is the revelation that sustains and drives him now.
That question, and that answer, has the power to change lives for good, and it is the power that will drive Te Wairua Tapu for the next 25 years.
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