Following Jesus Christ today - a compelling call to kingdom investment and transformation. 

E te whanau a te Karaiti, tena koutou, tena koutou, nga mihi nui ki a koutou.

E te tangata whenua, tena koutou.

E nga iwi taketake, tena koutou.

Nga pononga a Ihu Karaiti, tena koutou katoa.

Kei te mihi whanui ahau ki a koutou katoa, a kei te mihi hoki ki te kaupapa o tenei hui.

Ko Ngongotaha te maunga.

Ko Rotorua te moana.

Ko Rosemary Dewerse taku ingoa.

No reira, tena koutou, tena koutou, tena tatou katoa.

Greetings to you all. It’s a great privilege to be invited to deliver this plenary for the Common Life Missions Conference.

I began my role as the Mission Educator at St Johns College in Auckland at the beginning of this year. The first week that I began work the lectionary was inviting us to ponder the events of Mark 1, which, as the opening verse says, is all about “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, Son of God.”

The passage that particularly struck me that week from Mark 1 was Jesus passing along the Sea of Galilee and turning an ordinary day into an extra-ordinary one for four men whom he called to follow him. The astonishing thing is that they did! The writer of Mark, who so loves active adverbs, tells us that “immediately” Jesus issued his invitation they left their nets, their boats, their workers, and, for James and John, their father Zebedee, and followed him.

That week I found myself pondering this passage and all the stories in the gospels and Acts and across church history where people have done the same thing – hearing the invitation to follow Jesus they have done so. Whether it is in answering Jesus’ invitation for the first time or for a third or fourth etc time they have been willing to give up their known life and step into something completely new.

Does that describe you? I was wondering and have been wondering since if it describes me. Are we people who are so inspired by the good news of Jesus that we would be willing to leave our livelihoods, risk our reputations, sacrifice security and comfort if invited to do so? Are we people whose hearts, minds and souls exemplify the openness and willingness this requires, whether we are young or old, responding for the first time or responding again?

I was also wondering if we could say that our communities are made up of people whose hearing is attuned to the invitation of Jesus and who are poised and ready to respond in extra-ordinary ways. Does this describe the context and also the church you know and are part of?

What would I have done that day in Galilee if Jesus had issued me that invitation?  Would I have had the kind of heart, mind, and soul space that would have allowed me to respond ‘yes’? Do I now?

Mid-September last year I was in Amman Jordan and I met a group of Christian refugees from Mosul, Iraq. Three weeks before I met them ISIS had given them three days to decide whether they would convert to Islam and have to pay a large fine, or be killed. This group chose to flee because they wanted a chance at life but they were not prepared to give up their faith in Christ. They lost everything – money, papers, possessions, homes, and a 2000 year old Christian history in Mosul. I was profoundly challenged by their choice. What would I have done in their place? How important is Jesus to me? Would I put my faith in Christ over and above everything else in my life? What choice would you make?

This passage about Jesus calling his disciples and its challenge as to what is most important have stayed with me all year. Jesus’ invitation remains.

As one does, I wrote a song about this. I want to sing it to you, with the help of a friend, as a way of offering these reflections in a different form. I invite you to listen to the story the song tells, to listen to the invitation it extends and to reflect upon the question it asks.

Come, follow me.

Are you willing to live your life the way Jesus has in mind? Is that why you are here today, because something is drawing you toward a bigger life and you are hoping this conference will resource you in that?

Chris Wright is unfolding for us the great missional story of God as told to us in the Bible, whose original dream was to enjoy a genuine and good relationship with humanity, the pinnacle of creation as Genesis tells us, but who, in the face of that relationship being broken by us, has spent history initiating reconciliation. Of course, as the Hebrew Scriptures prove, humans, no matter how trusted, are not ultimately capable of helping restore what was so resoundingly fractured. And so in Jesus Christ we see God himself stepping into creation and through his life, death and resurrection demonstrating and achieving what we cannot. The wonder is that rather than finish it all off completely, God, in the interests of allowing us all to still be able to choose to be in relationship with our Maker, continues to invite us all to join in on God’s missional work of reconciliation.

This is a big vision. Can you feel the size of it? But how deeply and truly are we – as individuals, as whanau, as communities – prepared to commit to this and to what God might ask of us? How willing are you? How willing am I?

Stories from Maori history

The journey of the last few years of my life has gifted me the great privilege of coming to call a number of indigenous people of Aotearoa and of Australia my friends and whanau. Their faith in Jesus Christ, often in the face of great contradiction, change, and injustice I have found deeply challenging.

As I have read Maori history in particular I have discovered some amazing local examples of the courage, the perseverance, the love, the vision, and the trust that is required from us all if we are going to respond truly to the invitation of Jesus Christ.

For any of us today who wear our Christian faith or our Anglican tradition as a label but not much more, for any of us going through the motions of church, for any of us who love the Lord a little but would like to love him more, I offer you the stories of three early Maori Christians of Ngati Haua in the Waikato, all three from one whanau (one family), who 180 years ago were responsible for helping change the face of Aotearoa because they accepted the invitation to follow Jesus.

You might know their stories already. If you do, this afternoon I invite you to consider with me their lives once more and some of the wero, or challenge, they lay at our feet today.

The three Maori are Tarore, her father Ngakuku, and her uncle Wiremu Tamihana (whose original name was Tarapipipi Te Waharoa). These three all became Christians in the 1830s through the CMS missionary work of the Rev Alfred and Charlotte Brown who were invited by Tamihana’s father, Te Waharoa to live on the lands of his iwi or tribe and teach the people.

Tarore: “You have taught children and infants to tell of your strength” (Psalm 8:2, New Living Translation)

Let’s begin with Tarore. When in 1834 Charlotte Brown opened a school for those of Ngati Haua keen to learn to read, Ngakuku brought his daughter Tarore along. The text Charlotte Brown had to work from was a translation of the Gospel of Luke into the Maori language. Tarore was about 10 years old at the time. According to Ngati Haua oral tradition Tarore proved to be something of a child prodigy with an amazing memory. As she learned to read, Tarore began memorizing chunks of Luke’s gospel and it wasn’t long before she was being asked by her father to recite these texts to whomever would listen. He would then preach and invite the hearers to follow Jesus, as he had chosen to do.

It is said that sometimes 200-300 people would gather to listen to Tarore’s words from Luke and that she was considered an oracle, speaking words from God.

Her story, for those of you who know it, will of course take a tragic turn and we will consider that shortly, but I want to pause here and reflect.

How seriously do we listen to our children? How willing are we to let them join the grown ups and contribute from the gifts that God has given them for the good of our communities? I realise that for some cultures children are expected to listen and observe and wait their turn but in the gospels Jesus is very clear that all of us who are grown up are to welcome children, we are to look to them as models of humility, and we are to listen to what they have to say.

Matthew is one gospel that speaks about these very things. Matthew tells us about the value Jesus placed on children, in chapter 18 and 19 in particular. And then have you ever noticed in Matthew 21 an intriguing place where children are right in the thick of things? When Jesus cleanses the temple and then cures people there the writer records that there are children standing nearby crying out “Hosanna to the Son of David.” The synagogue leaders, we are told, are angered by the children and talk in a very despising way about them. But Jesus points out that scripture itself, in the Psalms, says that it will be children and even babies who will call the rest of us to praise our God.

I find myself deeply disturbed at times by the way in which we adults in the church neglect to teach, engage with, and allow ourselves to be ministered to by our children. In primary school our young ones are expected to memorise long dance routines, train long hours in sport, keep extending themselves in academics, and take on leadership responsibilities. But in too many churches I’ve experienced we ignore them, or we send them out the back never to be seen in the service, or we hand them colouring in to do, or we keep them in the kitchen, and we expect them to wait until they are at least adults, if not middle-aged, before we will let them lead, speak, pray for and teach us, and not just once a year.

I heard recently about a Three Tikanga gathering that happened in the middle of this year. During that gathering a panel of church leaders responded to a number of questions. One they were asked, with the focus on young people, was “Who are you intentionally discipling at the moment?” None of those leaders could provide a satisfactory answer.

We have a serious problem if those of us in leadership are not engaged in intentional discipling of the younger generations in the faith and are not giving them opportunities in meaningful ways to grow their gifts in service of others. Do we not believe that the gospel is good news and want others to know and believe also? Are we unable to see beyond our own exercising of our gifts and abilities? Do we not want to leave a legacy in the lives of people that will bring transformative change over generations? Are we unwilling to listen to what others might have to teach us?

Look around you. How are we going on proportions at this conference – of adults, young people, and children? Look at the logo for the conference. It has two, arguably three out of four hands that belong to children and young people…We need to be very careful that we don’t just talk about it but proactively welcome, include, and empower younger ones. If we do not pay attention to this one day we will turn around and there may be no one following us.

Whether we have been given an official leadership role by the church, or not, all of us who have taken up the invitation of Jesus to follow him have been commissioned by him to make disciples.

Who are you intentionally discipling at the moment? Who am I intentionally discipling?

As a Church we need to learn a lesson from Ngakuku. He took his daughter to school with him to learn about Jesus who could be found in the gospel of Luke. He also recognised a gift God had given his daughter and empowered her to exercise it. And as a church we need to learn from the people of Ngati Haua who accepted the wisdom of God as it was being spoken by a 10, 11 then 12 year old girl.

Ngakuku: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me” (John 14:1, NRSV)

Ngakuku, Tarore’s father, was one of the earliest converts amongst Ngati Haua to Christianity. It wasn’t easy accepting Jesus’ invitation. Early on he got very ill and was close to death. Those around him tried to tell him it was because he had abandoned Maori beliefs. He refused to stop praying to the Christian God, however, and when he became well again continued to grow a deep and lasting faith in Jesus. He would help the Rev Alfred Brown as he travelled, preaching the gospel, and as we heard, began taking his beloved daughter Tarore with him because of her gift of being able to speak the scriptures from memory.

But life was dangerous. Tribal conflict threatened the viability of the Brown’s school and in 1836 the decision was taken to move it away from Matamata over the hills to Tauranga. Ngakuku placed his three year old son on his back and with another mission helper, John Flatt, they evacuated twenty children, including his daughter Tarore. On 18 October 1836 they camped the night at Wairere Falls. Their camp fires had, however, attracted the attention of a raiding party from Rotorua and during the night they were attacked. Amazingly everyone escaped, until it was discovered that Tarore was not with the group.

Ngakuku was distraught when he found his daughter’s dead body, minus the gospel of Luke she kept around her neck in a flax kete. He carried her body back to the Pa at Matamata, deep in mourning.

After the funeral on the 20th October Ngakuku asked if he could speak. Among other things he said:

There lies my child; she has been murdered as a payment for your bad conduct; but do not you rise to seek a payment for her, God will do that. Let this be the finishing of the war with Rotorua. Now let peace be made.

This speech was hugely significant. Ngakuku had every right to ask for revenge for his daughter. It would have been the expected cultural path to take. But instead he asked for the opposite.

Paora Te Uita, according to oral tradition, was Tarore’s killer. He was disappointed to discover that the kete around her neck contained not treasure but a book. It lay neglected for a while until a slave named Ripehau, who could read and write was asked to read it to Te Uita. As he listened the warrior was convicted and became a Christian. He was full of repentance for killing Tarore and sent a message to Ngakuku asking if he could come and worship with him. Wary assent was given to this request. When Te Uita arrived it was noted that he was a visibly changed man. With great humility he asked for Ngakuku’s forgiveness. Ngakuku gave it.

This moment, along with Ngakuku’s funeral speech, is incredibly significant in the history of Aotearoa. For what happened there was counter cultural. The right to revenge, as an enacted principle was deeply embedded in Maori culture. But, following the example of Jesus Christ, Ngakuku chose to waive his right and forgive.

The repercussions of this act would spread forgiveness as an option, rather than revenge, across the lower North Island and even across the South Island. Tarore’s copy of Luke’s gospel was taken by Ripehau to his home tribe Ngati Toa, led by the feared warrior chief Te Rauparaha. As its message of forgiveness was read to Te Rauparaha’s son and nephew they were convicted by its message and committed themselves to travelling to every community in the South Island their chief Te Rauparaha had terrorised, asking them for forgiveness.

Ngakuku, in the midst of tragedy, by choosing to walk a very different path from the prevailing culture around him brought transformation to individuals and communities alike. The ripple effect of this one man’s decision was profound. God did seek payment for Tarore’s death. Out of her death rose possibility for peace.

Just because this is a story 180 years old let’s not pretend that it was easy. A piece of Ngakuku would have died the day Tarore was killed. He lost his beloved daughter and a partner in ministry. Ngati Haua lost their oracle from God, a very gifted young woman. But the night after she died Ngakuku chose to share with his people words from John 14:1: “Do not let your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me.” For Ngakuku it seems Jesus’ invitation was so compelling that in the midst of tragedy he chose to trust God. As Luke’s gospel speaks, Ngakuku, wanting to be a disciple, picked up his cross and followed Jesus. And in his act of forgiveness, he changed a culture.

Is this the kind of gospel we espouse? Do we believe that God, the work of Jesus, and the compassionate advocacy of the Spirit are so profoundly good that whatever we come up against in life we will continue to choose to believe, and we will make choices that honour God first? Is this the kind of gospel you hear in your churches? Is this the kind of gospel you live, preach and teach?

I wonder what counter-cultural transformative actions we are being called to today. Perhaps, like Ngakuku, it is the invitation to forgive someone or some others who have deeply wronged us. To let go of hurt. To let go of a grudge no matter how rightfully held. Forgiveness I would argue is still a countercultural move in our society where calls for revenge or promises never to forgive often find their way into our newspapers. When a person or a family acts as Ngakuku did there is community or national surprise. Such a move costs much. Sometimes it is misunderstood as weakness when that is far from the truth.

Is this your path, like Ngakuku?

Perhaps you do not need to forgive a stranger. Perhaps it is someone you know, in your family, a friend, someone in the church.

Perhaps your counter-cultural move is to speak out on issues and events that label and marginalize people, and to welcome all people, whomever they are and whatever they have done into your home and worship space.

Or perhaps your counter-cultural move is to refuse to act as others expect you to, because you know that to do so would be to deny the gospel, even if those others are family, or a community in which you have standing, including the Church.

Let’s not kid ourselves that such a path will be easy. It most probably will be costly and painful. The integrity of any action we take will lie in the quality of our character and the depth of our faith and belief in God. But this is the kind of work Jesus was engaged in. A mission of forgiveness, of welcome, of naming and refusing to engage in wrong.

Will we like Ngakuku follow Jesus on such paths? Picking up our cross will we choose to believe in God because we’ve been convinced by a vision bigger than what our culture offers us? Will we like Ngakuku preach a gospel that is bigger than our own immediate desires, hurts and concerns? Will we, like Ngakuku, be people who walk gospel talk and, risking much, lead our communities into life that transforms, because we truly believe God is good?

Wiremu Tamihana: And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?  (Micah 6:8)

In the 1830s another member of this same family, a cousin of Ngakuku’s, became a Christian. He was the second son of Ngati Haua’s head chief. A fine, intelligent, and impressive young man.

His father was feared. A notorious and cunning warrior and cannibal, Te Waharoa spent his life terrorising neighbouring iwi in the central North Island. Amazingly, though, Te Waharoa could see the benefits of hosting missionaries and allowed his son to attend the school he permitted the Browns to set up at Matamata. Little was Te Waharoa to know what this would mean for the iwi.

Tarapipipi, later known after baptism as Wiremu Tamihana, proved a very able student and a brilliant thinker when it came to wrestling with the implications for putting biblical and Maori understanding together and the ethical implications of this. He became a Christian and early on sensed a call to…peace-making. Ngati Haoa ultimately chose him as chief after Te Waharoa died because his older brother proved to be handsome but didn’t have the leadership qualities needed.

Rev Brown enjoyed teaching Tamihana and his friends but came to worry about him because Tamihana began missing Bible studies. It took a while for him to discover that Tamihana was busy living out the gospel through his Maori lens, organising huge peace feasts with the tribes his father had made into enemies. Such feasts, accompanied by gifts, were a traditional way of settling wrongs but not a mechanism Te Waharoa would ever have employed.

Not long after, Tamihana founded what would be the first of two Christian pa. With a picket fence instead of a palisade these pa were designed to house Maori who wanted to live lives defined by the gospel and not by warfare and violence. The second pa, which he founded and called Peria, would end up being home to 400 people.

But there was trouble on the horizon. British settlers were becoming greedy for land and the sovereignty promised to Maori chiefs in the Treaty of Waitangi was being disregarded. Tamihana became a very vocal critic, writing over the coming years many submissions to government protesting what was happening and taking every opportunity to speak to a vision of a bicultural nation in which Maori and British people could live together in ways that would respect each other.

But he wasn’t listened to. In fact Governor Grey one day left him standing for hours on the doorstep after he’d travelled from Matamata to Auckland to protest what was happening, and then sent a servant out to tell this chief with considerable mana to go away. Such disrespect was a turning point for Tamihana. From there he poured his energies into helping bring an idea of a Maori King movement into reality, in the hope that a Maori king would be respected and heard by the British Governor. But George Grey was not the kind of man to respect Maori. When war came to the Waikato Tamihana ended up taking up arms after an infamous incident in which twelve Maori men, women and children were burned alive by British troops. For him it was the last straw.

In 1863 Gottfried Lindauer painted this portrait of Wiremu Tamihana. Ironically this man who throughout his life was actively involved again and again in trying to initiate peace amongst his own people and with the British is decorated with a brace of bullets.

Look into his eyes. These are the eyes of a man who had great a vision but who over his lifetime saw it ruined. He lost his Christian pa. His people lost their land. His mana was diminished. His vision of a nation where Maori and British lived as equals was destroyed. The Maori king was a fugitive. And many of Ngati Haua, disillusioned, rejected Christianity. He himself caught tuberculosis and died in 1866.

But it would be wrong of us to remember only the end of his story for Tamihana was a man who across his life was driven by a truly good and far-reaching vision. He was prepared to risk everything to see it realised. The choices he made, however history might judge him, were always made out of this vision, a vision that longed to see peace in Aotearoa and all peoples respected and treated as equals. It was a vision birthed in his Maoritanga and in his Christian faith. To me he is a Nelson Mandela-type figure. In fact, 40 years after his death a man who had known him and who went on to become a senior politician in the British government, who worked under such giants as Disraeli and Gladstone, said of Wiremu Tamihana “I have met many statesmen in the course of my long life, but none superior in intellect and character to this Maori chief.” An amazing testimony! As one commentator has pointed out, it’s not whether you win the race but how you run the race that matters.

What is your vision? Do you have one? Is it a vision born out of who you are and the call of God on your life and something you are prepared to give your life’s energy to? Do you have a vision you would be prepared to risk everything for, including the respect of your peers or the respect of those holding power? Would you be willing to risk the power you yourself might currently enjoy for the sake of the vision God has given you? What about your popularity, your home, your possessions?

If you don’t have a vision, you should be asking God for one. Ask for a vision for your family, a vision for your workplace, a vision for your community, a vision for this world of ours.

A vision should not be something we only ever talk about. It should be something we are prepared to throw our lives and all our gifts and resources into because we believe in it. And whatever the end result may be we keep on, because it is too important to give up on.

What is your vision? What does Jesus’ invitation to you look like?

Sometimes I wonder if we in the church have vision big enough. In my experience we too often seem happy to maintain the status quo, to bog ourselves down in committees, to talk more than act, to leave it to others or assume our leaders are doing something about it. Too many of us seem happy to confine our faith expression to Sundays and reciting the prayer book. Does it even matter if God is present or not? Too often we focus on ourselves and our own needs and anxieties rather than lifting our heads, looking beyond ourselves and listening to what the Spirit of God is saying and inviting us to be part of.

We have all been invited by Jesus to be people who live transformed lives and who bring in his name transformation for the better to our communities.

The Bible is full of stories of individuals and communities whose lives were driven by a vision and a hope and a calling shaped by God. They included young ones – Mary is said to have been 13 or14 when she said ‘yes’ to becoming the mother of God’s son – and they included old – Moses was 80 when he met God in a burning bush and was asked to set God’s people free. They included the fearful – think of Gideon – the brash – think of Peter – and the despised – think of Ruth the woman from Moab who taught faithfulness to her mother-in-law. The Bible is also full of stories of those who lost vision – think of the Israelites in the desert, a generation who didn’t make it to the promised land because they took their eyes away from God. And the Bible has stories of those who cared more for themselves or for the rules and rituals than for their God – think of many kings in the Old Testament, and the religious leaders in the New.

What will be your story? What is your vision? And in what is it grounded?

A closing invitation

Who are you intentionally discipling?

What counter-cultural move might you be being called to make (and for what context)?

What is your God-given vision? OR pray for one.

He honore he kororia

Maungarongo ki te whenua

Whakaro pai e ki nga tangata katoa

Ake ake

Ake ake Amine

Te Atua, te piringa
 Toku oranga.

(Books for sale)

Ma te Atua koutou e arahi e manaaki. Amine.