“I bring you glad tidings of great joy.”

In his charge to General Synod, Archbishop Brown Turei reflected on the text from the 2nd Chapter of the Gospel of Luke that Samuel Marsden had preached from on Christmas Day 1814: “I bring you glad tidings of great joy.”

Those words, he suggested, “are our Gospel beginnings, and our inheritance.” And he considered the part that Maori had had to play on that Christmas Day – and the experience of Maori Anglicans in the 200 years since then.

“We all know,” he said, “that Ruatara translated Samuel Marsden’s sermon for the Māori audience…

“What is not so well known is that Ruatara himself built the platform, the seating, the reading desk, and the pulpit that Marsden used to deliver the Gospel that day.

“You could say that’s been a work of generations of Māori ever since – providing a platform for the delivery of the Gospel.

“Māori gifted thousands of acres of land, donated materials and raised funds to build mission stations and churches, and enriched the settler church even while impoverishing themselves. Such was their belief in the promise of the Gospel: ‘I bring you glad tidings of great joy’.”

The Gospel that Marsden and Ruatara preached began to flourish in Aotearoa, Archbishop Brown said. Entire Māori communities took up the faith and joined with the settlers in sharing and preaching the Gospel.

Yet when the Church came to adopt a constitution in 1857, Maori had no say in formulating that, and little input over their life in the church – until the 1992 revision of the constitution enabled it to order itself according to its own tikanga and values.

“It had only taken 178 years, many prayers and much struggle, after that first sermon. But Māori were able to say, ‘I bring you glad tidings of great joy’.”

In 65 years as an ordained minister, Archbishop Brown said he had witnessed “many wonderful things” where Te Pihopatanga is concerned – and “more change and more growth than I think Marsden and Ruatara could have ever imagined.”

These changes, he added, “haven’t always come easy”.

“Occasionally we got things wrong. More often than not we got things right… eventually.

“We still have a lot of work to do.

“Let us not be afraid to challenge and change in the ways that our forebears did. Perhaps if we learn from their example, we will come to a place where we can say, ‘In Christ we move forward together.’

“Perhaps then we could turn to each other and say, with all hope and sincerity: ‘I bring you glad tidings of great joy’.”

• Footnote: for the unedited text of Archbishop Brown's charge, click here