Te mea tuahai, Kororia ki Te Atua i runga rawa, Te Kaihanga o nga mea katoa, Te timatanga me te Otinga, Te arepa me te omeka

E nga mana, E nga reo, E nga hau e wha, tena koutou. Ki Ngati Whatua, tena koutou. E Te Maungatapu, ko Taranaki e tu ra tena koe, ki Te Waka Tokomaru, Te Waka Aotea, Te Waka Kurahaupo: Paraninihi ki Waitotara, tena koutou.

I bring the highest respects and condolences of this church, Te Hahi Mihinare ki Aotearoa, ki Niu Tireni, ki Nga Moutere o te Moana nui a Kiwa; to Beverley, to Sarah, Bridget and Jane, to Brian, Joe and Roger,  to Roimata, Ben, Isabella, Sophia, Zac and Willa. May God embrace you and comfort you this day.

Several weeks ago I was sitting with Paul at his home. Paul was aware of his prognosis and he said to me, in his usual direct and pithy way, “You learn a lot about yourself when you are facing death.” He later reflected as a kind of summary of everything that he had been sharing about his life vocation, “Having said all that, I am a priest and a bishop, that’s what I am.”
He said this with considerable emotion as if he was summing up his inner being. I got the impression that everything else in his life story took its bearings, at least in part, from this identity as a pihopa a iwi. Whether as a Governor General, a United Nations Observer, an Ahorangi, a Commonwealth Delegate, a University Chancellor, or a public speaker, all of these roles were informed by an indelible ordination. An ordering of his life. What is the heart of this ordering?

For a bishop, there is a calling to visioning, to servant leadership and to joy. “Do not allow the burdens and anxieties of your office to blunt your purpose or cloud your vision, but strive always to be pure in heart, to be Christ’s servant, to follow Jesus. May the vision of God enlighten your understanding. May God’s continuing call sustain your walk with Christ, and keep you joyful.”

For a priest there is a calling to proclamation of the beatitudes, to solidarity and to hope.  “Follow Christ whose servant you are. Share the burden of those whose cross is heavy. You are marked as a person who proclaims that among the truly blessed are the poor, the troubled, the powerless, the persecuted. You must be prepared to be what you proclaim. Serve Christ simply and willingly, and let your joy in Christ overcome all discouragement. Have no fear; be humble and full of hope.”

Hearing these words now, perhaps you can see Paul in them and them in Paul, in his very warm blooded own way. Paul embodied them, breathed them and lived them all his days.  We love him and respect him because he summed up so much of what it is to be an agent of the Kingdom of God in the community at large.

He was a hope peddler, a joy bringer, a courage bearer. He became a towering tree in the canopy of our forest notwithstanding moments of great challenge and sometimes pain. He was always forthcoming and honest about his humanity. 

Lloyd Ashton’s 2007 article “Becoming Paul Reeves” in the Taonga magazine traces the origins of all of this Christian identity to his time at St Thomas’ Newtown in Wellington. He once told me that what got him regularly involved there was an invitation to hold a candle. He had turned up at St Thomas’s when he was at primary school. He says, “‘My grandmother Gertrude, my father’s mother, was staying with us, and I remember her standing in the middle of the room and saying: ‘Is anybody coming with me to church?’ Nobody offered, except me.’ Young Paul signed on at St Thomas’, Newtown, and continued through the choir and youth group. Eventually, as a teenager, he came under the influence of a vicar called Nigel Williams. Nigel’s father, grandfather and great-grandfather before him had been bishops, and he was a strong influence. ‘I came to the point where I said: If I could live my life like that man, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.’” His mother Hilda became a great Anglican stalwart in due course also.

Paul’s faith matured intellectually through the Student Christian Movement at Victoria University and then later at St John’s College. Paul continued in the article with Lloyd, “At St John’s I fell in love with the psalms of the old prayer book, and still do love them. They seem to me to have a music, a rhythm and a cadence... we would recite all the psalms in the space of a month, and they are with me still. St John’s left me with a sense of discipline, and the idea that prayer surrounds the day.” 

Following a time at the University of Oxford and an English curacy, Paul became a curate in Tokoroa.  Paul said he knew Aquinas’ Five Proofs for the Existence of God, but nobody in Tokoroa asked him about that. However, he discovered he had the ability to relate to people: creating youth groups and visiting extensively within and beyond the church community. During these days Paul was also visiting Beverley who was teaching in Hamilton at the time.

Paul’s vocation and ordination then took him to Okato where the encounter with Parihaka and his own whakapapa given to him at Owae Marae at Waitara began to shape him deeply and fully. This Maori identity later flowed into his vocation as a priest and bishop and made him into somebody who became one of the first visible ordained bridges between tikanga maori and tikanga pakeha in this church, and later in this nation, and then the world. 

Later his ministry as a church history lecturer at St John’s College, and then in episcopacy both in Waiapu and Auckland, he was known for his courage, down to earthness, creativity as well as what it means to be an authentic contemporary Christian gospel witness within Aotearoa New Zealand. This was evidenced by his positioning over the 1975 land march, the 1981 Springbok tour, the ordination of women, and the uplifting of St Marys Cathedral Parnell. Internationally, the Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie asked him to go to South Africa to be one of the small Anglican support group for Archbishop Desmond Tutu who was being investigated by a South African government commission. Paul told me that the value of an Anglican communion often lay in its capacity to offer international solidarity to Anglican representatives in highly vulnerable contexts.

It was at the Raukawa Marae at Otaki following his election as Archbishop where he was given the name “Tikitiki o te Rangi” which means Plume of the Heavens. There he blessed a patu pounamu, a greenstone patu, and spoke of having one leg in the pakeha world and one leg in the maori world and that he was beginning to feel the stretch. 

In the churches’ progress towards its three tikanga constitution, Paul is a transitional figure. At his last General Synod as Archbishop he did his best to let the church know that change was on the way. He said to the Synod regarding this constitution which was to be based on principles outlined in the treaty of Waitangi, “There is something big here.” The whole course of our church’s story was transformed for ever after that.

In the years since his ministry as Archbishop, the same indelible qualities of ordination come through. Through Te Atiawa/ crown negotiations, where he encouraged attempts at a just settlement and introduced the possibility of forgiveness, through chairing a commission to reviewing Fiji’s 1990 constitution, through to special envoy work in Guyana and South Africa. 

And through all of this there was a bubbly champagne like joy.  Once the small plane carrying Bishop Sir Paul and Lady Beverley in Guyana overshot a makeshift runway and careered wildly towards the river. As they screeched to a halt among the riverbank reeds Paul said, “That got me a nice hug from my wife: let’s go back and do it again.”

In the words of the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, Reverend Canon Kenneth Kearon “Archbishop Sir Paul Reeves was a towering figure in the recent history of his native New Zealand and in the worldwide Anglican Communion. Reconciliation and service were his watchwords, and as bishop, archbishop and as Governor General he expressed in his life the gospel imperative of reconciliation and the breaking down of barriers of all kinds in church and society. He celebrated and brought to prominence his Maori heritage in the life of the nation and the church in a way that honoured and respected all.

With his death the church and the global community have lost one of its great iconic figures.”

We all know that we are in the presence of greatness, a kind of Ariki of the church and an Ariki of these islands.  We are commending a remarkable life to the God who gave it, we are noticing the huge space in the canopy of our lives which has suddenly been created by the falling of a giant totara. But the life of this totara is not over, it will continue to nurture the ground where it falls, enabling other young totara to rise up and grow tall.

Above all and in all and through all there is Paul’s faith, hope and love to encourage us now, which because they come from God in Christ, will never die.  Paul is now living within the nearer presence of God, God in whom we live and move and have our being. From this place we can say with Paul:
Refresh us E Te Kaihanga, by the wellsprings of grace

Lead us E Ihowa, in the journey of justice

Guide us E Te Atua, on the pathways of peace 

E te Pihopa Ta Paora, haere, haere, haere, Haere ki nga ringaringa o Te Hepara Pai.

Moe mai, moe mai, moe mai, i roto i te rangimarie a Te Ariki.