Anglican Taonga Eastertide 2011

EASTERTIDE 2011 // No.36

ANGLICAN TAONGA

EASTERTIDE 2011

Taonga A NGLICAN ANGLICAN G C

THE QUAKE

Honey from

the rock

HOW THE CHURCH HELPED PULL CHRISTCHURCH FROM THE BRINK

EASTERTIDE

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EDITORIAL

Counting the cost of the February quake: Dean Peter Beck, Archbishop David Moxon and Bishop Victoria Matthews.

Come fly with me...

Brian Thomas climbs above the gloom of Canterbury

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day-long meeting in Auckland last month – normally a grey necessity – this time offered a welcome reprieve from the gloom of Christchurch.

As the aircraft nosed above a blanket of cloud, we were suddenly bathed in sunshine and the cabin glowed with the promise of a new day. Hard to believe it had been there all along.

The inflight magazine, KiaOra, gave a glimpse of yet another world, though.

A world even further removed from the broken city we’d just left behind.

If there’s a fools’ paradise, then inflight magazines are the insiders’ guide. Which is why I’d love to know how many passengers actually meet the target market for KiaOra’s advertisers.

Take the Rocket Evoluzione coffee machine: a “high-end beast” that you’re welcome to test drive before you buy. Does $3950 sound like Fair Trade, Sir? Or the pair of cult denim jeans with faded knees: $415. Nicely anchored by Australian-designed Colonel Brogues: $585. Mind the puddles, Sir. And funniest of all: the Jaeger-Le Coultre wristwatch with sapphire crystal that opens Page 2

the door of an Aston Martin. At 15,883 euros, an absolute steal for car converters.

OK, KiaOra is not seriously suggesting that we should buy all this stuff. Inflight magazines are meant to offer a harmless distraction from the fact that we’re like trussed turkeys, 30,000ft up, and utterly dependent on a wing and a prayer.

As a resident of Muntville, however, I’ve learned of late that platinum coffee machines and Aston Martin watches are not all that necessary to a good life. Heck, they’re not even desirable when the power is out, the roof has collapsed, and the front yard is awash with bubblin’ crude.

Luxury items then become a flushing lavatory, clean water from a tap, warm clothes, hot soup, and someone to help us make it through the night.

Many of us who have endured the “deconstruction” of our old home town know that the landscape is not all that’s changed in recent months.

We’ve also lost the bookmarks to the story of our lives – the dancehall where we courted; the jewellery shop where we bought the ring; the stone church where we vented our joys and sorrows...

We’ve also lost a few grand illusions,

not least of all the dream that one day we might own that fine old residence on the corner of so-and-so. You know, the one with slated roof and towering chimneys and double-brick garage that would nicely accommodate two Aston Martins.

What a difference a day makes, because in the aftermath of the February 22 quake a colony of bulldozers descended on such mansions as though they were blots on the landscape. Which of course they were – after half a minute of seismic chaos.

The pride of House and Garden has thus gone the way of all landfill, along with highend coffee machines, designer wardrobes, and the cherished accumulations of several lifetimes. And we lie if we say it doesn’t hurt.

In the face of such losses, we desperately need stories that remind us of treasures which neither earthquake nor liquefaction can destroy – eternal values of generosity and kindness, which bubble up mysteriously in the most wretched of places. Among the most wretched of people.

That’s the focus of this Eastertide issue of Taonga. Good News, at the epicentre of bad news. Risen life, at the heart of brokenness. Alleluia!

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Anglican Taonga EASTERTIDE 2011

EASTERTIDE 2011

Contents 04

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Regular 42 Bosco Peters: Acedia, the noonday demon 43 Howard Pilgrim: A city with foundations 44 Craufurd Murray: Heads above the parapet 48 Books: A new study Bible, our own Susan Howatch, a thinkers' guide to sin, and a harvest of grace in Nelson 51 From the Far Side: Imogen de la Bere sees Jesus weep for Christchurch.

Anglican Taonga is published by the Commission on Communications and distributed to all ministry units and agencies of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia - Te Hahi Mihinare ki Aotearoa ki Niu Tireni ki nga Moutere o Te Moana Nui a Kiwa.

Editor Brian Thomas 214 Ilam Road Christchurch 8041 Ph 03 351-4404 bjthomas@orcon.net.nz Assistant Editor Julanne Clarke-Morris Ph 03 477-1556 julanneclarkemorris@gmail.com

Features

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A 20-page feature on how the church helped pull Christchurch from the brink

Here's a seedbed for spiritual insights

Honey from the rock

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ACC-15

Giving them a taste of Kiwi

26

Three wise men

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Distribution Chris Church Ph 03 351-4404 cfchurch@orcon.net.nz

First fruits from Bishopdale College

Advertising Brian Watkins Ph 06 875-8488 Mob 021 072-9892 Fax 09 353-1418 brian@grow.co.nz

Environment

COVER: Stephanie Joe offers food with a smile in quake-ravaged Christchurch.

Picture: Lloyd Ashton.

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The KJB

We salute a 400-year-old stroke of genius

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I was glad...

Royal wedding was divine

Fresh faces at the helm of St John's

Design Marcus Thomas Design Ph 04 389-6964 marcust@orcon.net.nz

Media Officer Lloyd Ashton Ph 09 521-4439 021 348-470 mediaofficer@ang.org.nz

Fruitful art

Resurrection jewellery

Education

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Students majoring in care of creation

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O Jerusalem A Kiwi pilgrimage to the Holy Land

39

Tsunami

Japan and NZ unite in prayer

A shard of my prized china has found new life as a unique, eye-catching pendant, writes Megan Blakie.

Caroline McGlinchy and Joanne Grove, co-owners of Wellington’s Smash Palace jewellery shop, volunteered three days of their time in April to ‘resurrect’ casualties of the February quake.

Nursing broken heirlooms, hundreds of women and an occasional man turned up to Caroline and Joanne’s workshop in a borrowed garage in Christchurch.

• For more 'resurrection' stories from the quake, turn to pages 4- 23.

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One thing that we learned from the quake is that the best policy is to offer people stuff and then give it to them – and then, somewhere in the middle of all that, it will turn up.

Lyndon Rogers

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The quake that struck Christchurch on February 22 wasn’t as powerful, the boffins say, as last September’s jolt. That’s cold comfort to most Cantabrians of course, as they mourn their dead, comfort their casualties, and survey the prodigious destruction the February quake wrought. From the minute the mayhem struck, Anglicans were struggling to help the most afflicted of their neighbours.

Lloyd Ashton has been finding out how some went about their tasks.

Honey from

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B

y the third day after the Christchurch quake, the only sensible way to approach the Rev Jolyon White was from upwind.

Straight after the 12:51pm jolt, the Social Justice Enabler for the Diocese of Christchurch had looked out the window of his mangled Barbadoes St flat, and seen smoke and flames billowing from some of the inner-city buildings.

He barrelled out his door, and ran through the mayhem towards the smoke.

Jolyon had learned advanced first aid as a mountaineer, and that afternoon and evening he was toiling away in the rubble with an ambulance crew.

He spent the next day in the city heaving masonry clear, dragging broken chimneys down, helping where he could.

He slept those first two nights in what he’d been standing in at 12:51pm: jeans, clerical shirt and dog-collar. His flat had already been red-stickered, so he couldn’t go back there to clean up.

“By the third day,” he says, “my clergy shirt stank really badly.

“It was stained, and the white collar was blackened.” He grins at the memory: “It probably looked better to me then that it ever had before.”

But by the third morning, Jolyon knew it was time to regroup. He biked to a mate’s place in Burnside, to shower, to borrow some clean clothes, and to set up his new base.

------------------------------------------------Burnside, in fact, is as good a place as any to begin this story.

It’s close to the airport, and it’s one of those north-western suburbs of

Christchurch which came through the quake relatively unscathed.

On account of that, 1500 quake refugees had slept those first couple of nights after the quake at Burnside High School.

That first evening, folk at St Tim’s Anglican Church in Burnside had also set up a couple of barbecues in the street outside their church.

They weren’t the only St Tim’s barbecues being fired up that evening. Lyndon Rogers, who’s a 20-year-old law student and a member of General Synod, lives in one of seven houses where St Tim’s students are working out their faith in their locality.

The folk in Lyndon’s Hollyford Ave, Bryndwr house set up a couple of barbecues in their garage – while others knocked on doors to check on neighbours, and to issue an invitation.

“Hey guys,” they’d say, “come round to our flat – and bring anyone who needs hot food or hot drinks, because we’ll have that.”

There were, however, minor difficulties attending that invitation.

No food, for example.

Lyndon reports that at that Hollyford Ave house their cupboards were bare.

They hadn’t even done that week’s grocery shopping.

But that didn’t put them off.

And the thing was, those bare cupboards weren’t a problem.

“We reckon we probably had 40 or 50 people around that evening,” says Lyndon.

“And food did turn up. In fact, we were able to feed people really well. We were actually able to eat the next day from the leftovers.

“One thing that we learned from the

quake is that the best policy is to offer people stuff and then give it to them – and then, somewhere in the middle of all that, it will turn up.”

He grins, too: “There are ridiculous scriptural parallels there, aren’t there?”

A

t 9am the following morning – on Wednesday Feb 23, that is – about 30 young adults gathered at St Tim’s to pray and brainstorm about what next to do.

There were a few of their seniors at that first meeting – including Matt Watts, vicar at St Tim’s, and John Day, the Diocese of Christchurch’s Archdeacon for Mission.

John and his family live nearby, and two of his children worship there.

Everybody knew it was a matter of establishing priorities.

And what did they decide was the most urgent priority? To go shopping. ›› CONTINUED TINUED RIGHT: Jolyon White

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a lot of work you did responding to the earthquake for which there is no tangible result. But with shovelling silt, you’d know you moved 73 wheelbarrows in a day – and that was great.”

W John day and Michael Earle.

OK. Conventional retail therapy wasn’t what they had in mind, as John explains: “One of the sadder things we learned after the September quake was that the thousands of cans of food which had toppled from supermarket shelves just got biffed.”

So on that Wednesday morning they knew that in supermarkets in north-west Christchurch, there’d be thousands of dinged and dirty cans in imminent danger of being slung out. While on the quakeslammed east side of town, church food banks would soon be crying out to restock.

So in between phoning around the parishes to check on people, John Day spent the morning hotfooting it around supermarkets.

He was wearing his dog-collar, and his goal was to convince them to give their damaged cans to the young people so they could cart them to the City Mission and to the parishes out east.

“The managers,” says John, “were so, so generous. We’ve got a Hiace van, and they filled that several times over – and we had other vans and cars as well.”

Having rescued those cans, the young people set about scrubbing them clean – of spilt sweet chilli sauce, for example – before they drove them east.

While some of the St Tim’s crew were engaged in can-rescue, others were on the phones.

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They rang around the parish list and found beds for 18 of the folk who’d spent that first night in the Burnside High gym.

“That was quite fun,” says Lyndon. “It was nothing massive, but it ended up relieving a bit of pressure, and for those 18 people it made quite a change.”

------------------------------------------------We’ve mentioned the loaves-and-fishes act at Hollyford Ave. In fact, each evening for the next couple of weeks, ladies from St Tim’s cooked for about 30 or 40 people who’d descend on the Hollyford Ave house – and that was after they’d made cut lunches for them.

Unlike that first night, though, the diners mostly weren’t folk from the highways and byways.

They were the young people from those seven St Tim’s houses – who by now had switched to digging silt from homes out east, and knocking on doors out that way to check on people.

Most days over that period St Tim’s sent out about 20 people on digging patrol.

Of course, St Tim’s wasn’t the only congregation contributing troops to the silt-shovelling army. From the Anglican churches in the north-west, for example, St Barnabas Fendalton, St Aidan’s Bryndwr and St Christopher’s Avonhead all supplied platoons of young diggers.

So what was it like shovelling silt?

“Satisfying,” reports Lyndon. “There’s

ith Bishop Victoria’s encouragement, Jolyon White and John Day began to work as a tag team.

They’d meet at the beginning and end of each day, with John knowing just where the parishes were at, and Jolyon with his feel for where the unmet needs were.

And the first thing John and Jolyon did was to stand back, and survey the scene.

They saw, for example, that about half a dozen parishes were trying to reach out to St Ambrose, in Breezes Rd Aranui.

Meanwhile, no one was lending a hand in New Brighton, just down the road.

That didn’t make much sense. So John and Jolyon began directing traffic.

They began to broker some working partnerships between churches in the leastaffected areas, mostly in the north-west, and the churches out east.

They arranged, for example, for St Tim’s Burnside and St James Riccarton to focus their efforts on St Ambrose – while they partnered St Barnabas Fendalton with St Chad’s Linwood, and St Augustine’s Cashmere with St John the Evangelist, Woolston.

And they arranged for St Christopher’s Avonhead to team up with the three New Brighton churches – St Andrew’s North New Brighton, St Faith’s New Brighton and St Luke’s South Brighton.

---------------------------------------------From the start, Jolyon White had made a point of liasing with Civil Defence, because he knew they had a group coordinating the welfare work in the city.

“It made sense to go to them and say: ‘This is who we are, this is what we can offer – how can we help? How can we fit in?’

And because of that relationship, Jolyon knew Civil Defence was hunting for halls to use as Recovery Assistance Centres.

He knew, too, that the hall at St Faith’s New Brighton would be ideal for one of those.

The St Faith’s vicar, Carlie Hannah, and Deacon Katrina Hill were all for hosting an RAC. They liked the other idea Jolyon was proposing, too – which was to clear the church paraphernalia from the room next to the hall, and replace it with sofas and

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EASTERTIDE 2011

soft chairs.

That way, stressed New Brightonites could take refuge in a comfortable lounge before or after tackling the form-filling that a visit to the nextdoor RAC usually entailed.

Katrina, who’s a vocational deacon, was on hand to smooth the link to the RAC centre. She works for Christian World Service, she was being paid by CWS to do that work.

There was, however, one more big problem in New Brighton.

In those first post-quake days, making contact with the outside world from there wasn’t easy.

The phones and the power were down, which meant no cellphones, no emails, no Facebook, not even an easy way check the earthquake news.

So Jolyon tracked down a generator, and a guy to mount an internet satellite dish on the roof of the hall.

By the Saturday – just five days after the quake – not only was there an RAC up and running at St Faith’s, but there was also a comfy lounge, with two computer terminals installed, running free wireless internet.

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hat same weekend, stats had started to surface showing that domestic violence in Christchurch was going through the roof.

No surprise, perhaps: homes were damaged, and stressed parents often had rellies land on them.

And because the schools were closed – they had no water or functioning loos – the kids were stuck at home with no TV, video or computers. Stress, upon stress.

That’s when Phil Trotter, the Diocesan Youth Adviser, stepped up to the plate.

By the second week he had kids’ programmes operating at St Luke’s New Brighton, St Chad’s Linwood, and St Ambrose Aranui.

Lyndon Rogers was involved with the St Tim’s crew helping out at St Ambrose Aranui. “When we started,” says Lyndon, “we met kids who were just gagging to get out of home.”

Those kids’ programmes wound up in the fourth week – just as most of the schools were reopening – and, for many, they were a bridge across troubled waters.

------------------------------------------------“I got to the stage,” Jolyon remembers, “where I was saying to anyone who was offering us anything,‘Yes’ – and we’d figure ›› CONTINUED

TOP: Helen Roud at one of St Chad’s Linwood community lunches MIDDLE: Are you being served? Catherine Bellwood (Halswell Baptist), Judith Bylett (St Peter’s Upper Riccarton) and Jenny Fletcher (St Mary’s Halswell).

BOTTOM: Outside the hall at St Faith’s New Brighton – Katrina Hill flanked by Shikha Khan (WINZ), Ngaire Lambie (MSD Christchurch, and team leader of the New Brighton RAC), and Lyn Pairama (MSD).

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some good way to use that later.

“It’s how these things work, I suppose.

You gather resources, and then find people who need them.”

That was a modus operandi that God seemed to favour, too.

Case in point: at St Chad’s, during the most intense period of the crisis, they were hosting twice-weekly community lunches where they were feeding 80, maybe 90 of their rattled neighbours.

But the priest in charge at St Chad’s, Helen Roud, wanted to reach wider still.

She was particularly concerned for the elderly stuck in their homes, too fearful to come out.

“One day,” she says, “I started saying to our people: ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we had a van? We could pick people up and bring them back here for a hot meal.’

“They could use a toilet that flushes, wash their hands with running hot water, and we could deliver them back home. That was a prayer on the run, I guess.”

A prayer, nonetheless, that God heard.

Because that same day, Jolyon had been offered a 12-seater van by the Thrifty car rental company – and he delivered it to St Chad’s the day after Helen had prayed for it.

That van wasn’t just used to pick up people for twice-weekly lunches, either.

Because a volunteer building team from the Church of the Saviour in Blockhouse Bay, in Auckland, had come down to help out in the eastern suburbs (see the sidebar story).

They already had the loan of a builder’s van. But they also relied on a door-knocking team going out in front, finding the jobs.

And they’d come to the conclusion that they needed another van to ferry their team around. They prayed about that, too – and the next day, word got through to them about the Thrifty van offer, and Helen offered to share it with them So that 12-seater van was in constant use. On Tuesdays and Fridays St Chad’s used it to fetch folk for their community lunches, while the builders used it the rest of the time.

---------------------------------------------On the Friday after the quake, the police began gathering families of victims for daily briefings at Burnside High School.

The police asked if clergy could also join those briefings, too.

So from the first Saturday, John Day attended all the daily briefings. He struck up relationships with the families, and as a result took a funeral and memorial service Page 8

TOP: Crucifer Jazzmin Dunning leads Anne Russell-Brighty, Alister Hendery and Helen Roud into St Chad's Linwood.

BOTTOM: The New Brighton RAC – aka St Faith’s church hall. That’s Katrina Hill, vocational deacon at St Faith’s, standing in the centre of the shot alongside her husband Jeff. Carlie Hannah, Vicar of New Brighton is behind Katrina.

for two of those lost in the CTV building.

He also linked people with parishes, and the British and Irish High Commissioners asked him to visit their citizens in hospital.

And two weeks after the quake, when the police organised a bus trip into the city centre for the families, Bishop Victoria, Jolyon and John were on board to support people and lead prayers at each of the locations where lives were lost.

Ecumenical things were happening, too. Bishop Victoria was working at church leaders’ level – while John and Jolyon were

meeting local clergy to discuss how they could best work together.

As the urgent phase calmed down, it became ever clearer that the church needed to complement and not duplicate what Civil Defence, MSD and the various civic and welfare agencies were doing.

It was clear, too, that many of these outfits have resources to offer the church – but often not much idea where to direct that help.

Help was at hand here, too. Because the Diocese of Dunedin had offered

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Stephanie Joe, one of the workers at the St Chad’s Linwood City Mission food bank.

Christchurch a half stipend, and that allowed Bishop Victoria to hire Michael Earle on a six month contract.

Michael, who used to be director of Anglican Care in Christchurch and who had just returned from a high-powered ecumenical post in Ireland, now has the task of forging links with those agencies.

Bishop Victoria also asked Peter Carrell (the Diocesan Director of Education) to team up with Lawrence Kimberley, the Archdeacon of Pegasus, in doing pastoral work in the eastern suburbs.

S

o what lessons can we take from all this?

Be prepared.

That’s how Jolyon White see things, anyway – and he sees the response of the young people at St Tim’s as proof of his

point. p “The reason,” he says, “that they were able to do such good work after the quake a – was because of the way their lives worked before it struck. b “They’d already grasped that Christianity it is not about Sunday. It’s about the way we live li our lives. It’s about being incarnational in our neighbourhoods.

“The stuff the young people at St Tim’s did d after the earthquake was an extension of o who they were anyway.”

Lyndon Rogers sees a continuity there, too. to “People only knew to come round on the th night of the earthquake, for example, because we already had relationships with b them. th ” But he also says that without support, the students would have crashed and burned. s “Because we were seen to be out doing cool stuff,” he said, “we got the glory. But if we’d had to come home, then cook dinner, we would’ve soon become exhausted – and ineffective.

“The ladies who cooked for us, and made our lunches, weren’t in a position to shovel silt or run kids’ programmes. But they were still able to do awesome things.

“It was the same with providing beds for quake refugees. Students never have spare rooms in their flats – but a bunch of families did. It was all our efforts, together.”

“We live in a culture where we are all about building ourselves up as individuals.

“The earthquake has taught us the opposite thing. That we need to be more reliant on each other. I’m almost sure that’s a gospel value.

“My other thought is that local communities respond way faster and more personally than big institutions can.

EASTERTIDE 2011

“For example, on the first night we doorknocked our neighbourhood. Civil defence managed that two weeks later.

“So it was the grassroots group and least institutional group that had the immediate effect.

“Another thing about living in our ‘hood was that we felt the needs as they arose: we knew how many of the people felt because we felt that way, too.

“We were very much in the same boat as them – and far closer to friendship because of that.”

F

or John Day, the earthquake has underlined for him the potential of the parish.

“To have our clergy and people on the ground, knowing their locality – for me, yet again, that highlights a strength of our Anglicanism.

“Knowing that we had all of our city covered with parishes, and that your parish was your first mission field, your pastoral care field... USAR were creating grids to map out the city. We have them in place already.

“Places like Linwood, North New Brighton, Aranui, Sumner, Shirley – in fact, all of our parishes – they’ve been outstanding in their practical Christian care of their neighbours.

“Relationships have been developed, and they’re a tremendous opportunity for growing the Kingdom.

“And I’m not just talking about bums on seats. I’m talking about churches being really good news for their neighbourhoods.

“I believe people will look back on this time and say: ‘You know what? The church did really well.’ ”

Whether it’s an L.Th for potential ministry, or a paper or two for your personal interest and knowledge, we can fit serious part-time courses around your lifestyle.

For further information contact the Academic Registrar Phone 0800 667 969 | eidts@xtra.co.nz | www.eidts.ac.nz

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uzan Munro sweeps her hand across the St Chad’s Linwood dining room.

Three weeks after the quake struck, the room is buzzing with folk who’ve dropped by for one of St Chad’s community lunches – and Suzan is grateful.

“This place,” she says, “has been incredible.”

Before the quake, church wasn’t a part of Suzan’s life. But within hours of the February 22 quake, all her friends had fled Christchurch.

“I was alone,” she says, “and it was really hard. But I saw that St Chad’s was open. I just walked in – and they gave me a hug and a cup of tea and said: ‘What can we do for you?’

“Even though no one could make what had happened go away, it was just wonderful knowing that someone cared.

“I’ve come back here nearly every day – it just takes away that isolation. You can talk about how you are feeling, too. That’s so important.”

S

Suzan Munro with Bindi, at lunch at St Chad’s Linwood.

Treasure in the rubble Suzan found her practical needs met at St Chad’s, too.

She does her weekly shopping on a Tuesday, and on February 22 she’d driven down to the Eastgate Mall to get her essentials.

At 12:51 she was in the Eastgate food court – and she saw the ceiling of McDonalds collapsing, glass exploding, and billowing clouds of dust spread through the mall.

She got out of the mall in one piece.

But her car was trapped. It was one of 53 parked on the top floor of the mall car park – and days went by before a crane lifted those cars out.

So Suzan had no shopping, no car, no idea where she could get her basics – and it was a Godsend for her to find the City Mission food bank operating at St Chad’s.

“They actually asked what I needed…

I’ve been overwhelmed by the kindness of people here. It gives me hope.”

---------------------------------------------For Helen Roud, the priest in charge of St Chad’s, there’s an irony about the earthquakes – because they’ve triggered the fulfilment of a dream.

Helen had first come to St Chad’s, part time, in the middle of 2008. She didn’t Page 10

find a big congregation. Nor a particularly confident community. In fact, there are quite a few vulnerable people in the neighbourhood.

Plenty of elderly, for example, solo parents and people who live with mental illness.

But when Helen saw St Chad’s, she saw a place where she knew community could flourish.

“My vision then,” she says, “was that this could be a wonderful hub. A place that was buzzing daily.”

Before the quake, the little St Chad’s crew, supported by Helen and parish deacon Anne Russell-Brighty, was already reaching out to the neighbours. They ran an op-shop, weekly friendship afternoons, and a monthly community lunch.

They didn’t run a food bank before the quake, simply because they could see no point in duplicating what was already on offer at nearby churches.

February 22 was a Tuesday afternoon, and St Chad’s was holding one of its friendship afternoons.

Helen was in the St Chad’s community garden with one of her parishioners at 12:51pm, and they were both pitched into the vege patch. They picked themselves up, brushed themselves off and swung into work.

“We immediately became a drop-in

centre, “ says Helen. “I went up the road and spoke with neighbours who’d come out of their houses: ‘If you want a safe place’, I said, ‘come over and have a cuppa’. A parishioner raced off and got a gas burner, and we were in action.

“It rained in the late afternoon and we collected rainwater so we didn’t run out of water. And 15 of us, plus a cat, slept overnight in one of the halls.”

---------------------------------------------Before the quake, St Chad’s had held community lunches once a month. For the first month after the quake, they held them twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays, and 80 to 90 people would turn up.

Catering for that many would have been a stretch at the best of times. And many of the folk who’d normally help out had had to leave town because their own homes were in chaos.

That’s when the Body came up trumps.

“Different parishes have been contacting us,” says Helen. “Especially ones in the northwest. ‘What can we do?’ they’d ask.

“The community meal was the perfect thing. We could say: ‘Would you like to come?

Bring food for a meal, and a few people to help serve it’.”

And come they did. St John’s Bishopdale,

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St Peter’s Upper Riccarton, St Barnabas Fendalton all pitched in. St Luke’s in the City, too.

And it wasn’t just the Anglicans. The Tuesday I was there, folk from Halswell Baptist and other Halswell churches had their sleeves rolled up in the kitchen.

“These across-town connections are a two-way ministry,” says Helen.“The people who come have lots to give us, which is just wonderful.

“But I think we give them something back, too.

They see another part of the church ministering in a different way.”

W

hen the February 22 quake struck, the City Mission lost access to its Hereford St headquarters.

Jolyon White put the Mission in touch with St Chad’s – and they could see the Linwood church was perfectly placed to meet needs in the east.

So by the end of the first week they had their food bank up and running out of the hall that St Chad’s normally uses for its op shop.

Then there were the kids’ programmes that Phil Trotter, the Diocesan Youth Adviser, ran out of St Chad’s for three weeks after the quake.

And if you think offering children’s programmes in the aftermath of a big quake is a bit goody-two shoes, well, think again. This is a low-decile area, with its share of solo parents.

“Parenting is challenging enough at the best of times,” says Helen, “On top of that you had post-earthquake trauma, the reality of damaged homes – with no water, power, sewer – and disrupted routines.

“With no school,” she says, “some caregivers were finding it very difficult. The structure of school is so important to them.

“For me,” says Helen, “co-ordinating, liaising, making sure that communication happens, has been a big part of my role.

“We did loads of flyers saying: This is what St Chad’s offers at the moment. We gave them to everyone. We’ve had people like Neale Tomlinson, our pastoral assistant, pounding the pavements. He’ll talk to anyone – and he found those who are in need.

“And the thing is, in the east word of mouth travels very fast.

“My prayer is that the closer connections we have now with our colleagues in the area, whether they be church, community or social workers, or city mission folk… that we can hold those, and take them forward.

“So that Christ’s mission in this place can be as effective as possible. Because that what we’re living out now is Kingdom community.

“I believe we’re seeing treasure in the rubble.”

EASTERTIDE 2011

Streams of blessing Julanne Clarke-Morris argues for community access to the wealth that falls from the sky

R

eturning home to her coastal suburb of Brighton after the February quake, Anglican deacon Katrina Hill found that her old wooden house had swayed and swung yet remained intact.

But as family and friends started to pour in, her house couldn’t offer much hospitality: the contents of smashed bottles covered her floor, and there was no water in the taps to clean it up.

And then Brighton’s wells came to the rescue.

More than 70 years back the Brighton seaside was an established holiday spot, well off the town supply and fed by home-dug wells sourcing the region’s natural artesian water.

When the February quake hit and the water went off, signs began appearing around the neighbourhood, offering water from backyard wells.

Standing in line for water, Katrina found herself looking to the bigger picture, “I thought how fortunate we are to have this water. Thank goodness we don’t have to fight for it, and that the community has control over this resource,” she said.

It could have been very different.

Katrina remembers five or so years back when the Christchurch City Council tried to make Brighton people cap their wells. Meters had appeared on water supply lines and rumours circulated that the council was set on a pay-for-water scheme.

That charge never eventuated – much to Katrina’s relief. As youth and schools educator for Christian World Service, she has seen how poor communities all over the world suffer from water commercialisation.

Take Sri Lanka, where CWS partner Monlar has to fight for the right to water. There, streams and rivers that used to be drawn on by small farmers have been fenced, concreted over and contained for the

use of large-scale industrial farms.

What was freely available for local families is now privately controlled and provided only at a cost.

For Monlar, it’s clear that removing access to water destroys the right to life. When the capacity to wash, drink and irrigate crops is taken away, the choice is to flee or face starvation.

The problem is that private water for industry returns much-needed revenues to government, so the poor are often denied a hearing to argue for what is rightfully theirs.

Media commentators are predicting a worldwide water shortage that will make the oil crisis look like a minor upset.

Water use and control is already the cause of bloody conflict, which looks set to rise. International focus groups such as the Ecumenical Water Network say it’s time that water was seen as a fundamental right and a resource that everyone has to save.

For Christians it’s also a spiritual issue. All of us live our faith through the imagery and experience of water.

In baptism we enter the waters of chaos at creation and pass to freedom with Israel through the Red Sea. And as we grow in faith we are sustained by the living water Jesus offered the woman at the well.

Concreting over the water of life and channelling it into commercial use is at odds with what many believe is a free gift of God. An animation on Youtube – “The Story of Bottled Water” – sums up the discussion by asking: “How did we get fooled into paying for something that falls out of the sky? What will it be next? Air?” Ecumenical Water Network http://www. oikoumene.org/en/activities/ewn-home.html The Story of Bottled Water http://storyofstuff.org/ bottledwater/

Page 11

ANGLICAN TAONGA

EASTERTIDE 2011

THE QUAKE

"The earthquake has shaken down walls, but it’s taken God to tear down the walls that the churches have put up amongst themselves” – observation from Chris Watson, from the Church of the Saviour, in Blockhouse Bay in Auckland, which sent a team to help out in the eastern suburbs.

Helping out in Aranui: Back row (L-R): Robert Graham, Lyn Knight, Rev. Eric Etwell, Geoff Bennett. Front row (L-R): Annelies Black, Alan Keys, Judith Coomer, Valma Keys. Annelies and Geoff are from the Church of The Saviour in Blockhouse Bay – and all the other folk are from St Christopher’s Avonhead.

Opening

F

or days, the builder’s van had been criss-crossing the eastern suburbs, jolting along its potholed roads en route to making emergency repairs to yet more damaged homes.

So when it pulled up outside a perfectly tidy-looking New Brighton cottage, with its neat row of clipped standard roses beside its driveway, you thought: Why? Nothing wrong here, surely?

It was only when you reached the back of the house that you had your answer – because there, on the sunroom floor, at the centre of a pile of debris, was a brick chimney, balanced precariously against an armchair.

At 12:51pm on February 22 the elderly man of the house had been in that armchair, quietly watching TV. He’d had a rude awakening.

That house was one of 130 eastern suburbs homes that the volunteers in that van had worked in during 10 hectic days in March.

The project had begun to take shape in Auckland, two Sundays after the quake.

The Church of the Saviour in Blockhouse Bay was praying for Christchurch. They’d already taken up a special collection for the city. But some wanted to do more.

So the parish put out the feelers to St Christopher’s, Avonhead. How would it be, Page 12

the doors

they asked, if we sent a repair team down your way?

That idea got a thumbs-up from St Christopher’s. In fact, St Christopher’s offered to help in any way they could – by billeting the team, for starters.

So that’s how Geoff Bennett, who runs his own building company, and Chris Watson came to be in Christchurch on March 9.

They had the use of Geoff’s brother’s builder’s van, and they began by following up leads already generated by a St Christopher’s door-knocking team.

Geoff and Chris were joined by another five Blockhouse Bay troops on the Saturday.

That same day word came through from St Chad’s Linwood that an extra van was available, which meant they could shuttle their own door-knocking team around.

They relocated to St Ambrose in Aranui on the Monday, because that was perfectly placed to be their nerve centre.

Annelies Black made contact with all the local parishes, and all the calls for help would come to her. She’d gather up all the info from the doorknockers – and dispatch the workers to the jobs.

The repair team’s aim was to make homes safe, secure, weather-tight – they fixed heaps of jammed doors, for instance – and to help restore shattered confidence. In that line, beside doing repairs to those 130 homes,

they even built a deck at St Luke’s South Brighton.

Annelies also logged the pastoral needs that the doorknockers had reported, and passed those on to the local parishes.

There were only seven in the Blockhouse Bay team, but they had the right collection of skills – they included a builder, an electrician, skilled handymen and Annelies, who works in admin – and they had heaps of support, too.

There was Frank and Dwayne, two Hamilton builders who’d worked in postconflict zones in Africa and Europe, and who’d driven down to help. And one day, when there was a mountain of silt to shift, they were joined by 26 Queensland policemen.

There was ongoing backup from St Christopher’s, of course, as well as from the Anglican churches in New Brighton, and Grace Vineyard New Brighton.

And there was maximum help from St Ambrose. Some of their ladies saw to it, for example, that there was a hearty spread on the table every lunchtime.

The main contingent of the Church of the Saviour team were in Christchurch for seven days, while Geoff and Chris were there for a few more days.

And their abiding impressions? As far as Annelies was concerned, it was the sense of new community that was most encouraging.

ANGLICAN TAONGA

Both among the churches, and among the individuals in the streets where they were working.

Seaton Black, Annelies’ husband, liked the way their efforts seemed to break a spell. “When we went into these houses,â€? he says, “some people we met were so shell shocked that three weeks after the quake they were still sitting there. “But once we ďŹ xed a door, for example, they started getting momentum. The small things we did seemed to break that horrible deadlock.â€?

For Chris Watson, it was the way the team jelled that encouraged him – and the way the churches were working together. “The earthquake has shaken down walls – but it’s taken God to tear down the walls that the churches have put up amongst themselves. “It was the most rewarding spiritual time I’ve had for probably 15 years. “People were so open to the Kingdom of God. You’d just talk away to people who hadn’t been to church since they got married when they were 20 – and now they were 80. “And when you felt the Holy Spirit was leading you to pray with people, they wouldn’t pussyfoot about.

“When we asked if we could pray, they’d just say: ‘Yes’. Straight away. Three weeks earlier, people would have shut the door in your face.�

For Geoff Bennett, the satisfaction wasn’t so much in the physical stuff they did – it was in the hope they generated. “And in the end,� he says, “I think hope was the thing they really needed.�

On the last Sunday Geoff and Chris were in Christchurch, they were invited by St Christopher’s to a farewell meal.

All the churches who’d contributed to the repair project – St Ambrose, St Faith’s, St Andrew’s, St Luke’s, plus Grace Vineyard, New Brighton – sent people.

At the later evening service, Geoff felt he had a word from the Lord for the people there. And that word was: ‘Thankyou’.

Geoff went on: “Where we used to be two – Auckland and Christchurch – from this moment on, we are now one. “Your grief, and your pain, is also ours.

And your rebuilding is also ours. Whatever we can do together in the future, let us be part of it.�

It was a word that resonated, apparently.

Because when Geoff shared that, there

EASTERTIDE 2011

wasn’t a dry eye in the place.

------------------------------------------------FOOTNOTE: The volunteer repair work didn’t stop when the Auckland team returned home.

Other builders showed up to carry on the good work – and the churches have set up structures to keep the momentum going.

They’ve set up “Christchurch Community Response� and are inviting churches to pray, to send teams of tradespeople to Christchurch for a week (CCR can billet folk, provide meals and arrange transport, for example) and to donate to the cause.

If your church has a team that will come to Christchurch, contact Bob Henderson at St Ambrose, Aranui, ph (03) 388-6699.

Donations will be used to cover the cost of building materials and admin.

Cheques should be made out to: St Christopher’s – Christchurch Community Response, 244 Avonhead Rd, Avonhead, Christchurch 8042.

Electronic donations can be made to: St Christopher’s Anglican Church ANZ Riccarton Branch Account number 01 08 19 0009353 00 Ref/Code: CCR

Lloyd Ashton

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Page 13

ANGLICAN TAONGA

EASTERTIDE 2011

THE QUAKE

Christian World Service coordinator Nick Clarke was caught at the epicentre of the February quake – and just as well. Because he has all the skills and experience necessary to cope with a world that is literally falling apart. Julanne Clarke-Morris reports

The right

T

hough badly shaken on February 22, Christian World Service (CWS) has pulled together to take a key role in the earthquake recovery.

The churches’ official aid and development agency, CWS was on many minds immediately after the quake because its offices are in the worst-hit zone of central Christchurch – and only one block from the teetering Grand Chancellor hotel.

But with all staff confirmed safe, CWS was soon back on deck in a virtual office, with several staff members taking a lead in the emergency response.

CWS finance officer Alison Hardie was in her fourth-floor Manchester Street office when the earthquake hit. “The building shook so violently,” she says. “It actually threw me from side to side under my desk.”

When the shaking stopped, Alison was terrified of what she’d see next. Seconds before the quake, two workers had gone past on scaffolding outside her office to replace windows damaged in an earlier quake.

“I expected to see their bodies on the ground,” she says. “But then we heard a tapping, and to our relief were able to let the workers in through a small opening in the window.”

Other staff members at CWS describe themselves as ‘case hardened’ from

The leadership of CWS staff won high praise from a government official.

Page 14

stuff exposure to crises overseas, but for Alison the disruptions of the tragedy have been a real eye-opener.

“It really teaches us a thing or two about what our international partners go through,” she says.

CWS staff evacuated immediately after the quake and joined thousands streaming out of the CBD. But not Nick Clarke, International Programme Coordinator for CWS and a former parishioner of St Tim’s Anglican Church in Burnside.

Armed with experience of other disaster zones and a qualification in international humanitarian assistance, Nick walked over to the nearest police officer, identified himself and offered help.

“He sent me to move people to the centre of the streets, then to direct them out of the CBD into the safer low-rise area in Moorhouse Ave,” Nick says. “A former firefighter and I teamed up and ran along Manchester Street giving out those instructions for about an hour.”

Over the next four hours Nick helped police in any way he could. And when the area was clear of people and vehicles, he was asked to join a team searching a building whose facade had collapsed.

“Some people had been killed there, but fortunately we found one survivor in the rubble. We stayed there till we’d done everything that could be done without big equipment.”

At six o’clock Nick caught a ride home to Kaiapoi with a man who’d just been rescued from the 22nd floor of the Grand Chancellor. But by 9pm Nick was back in town, offering his skills at the Emergency Operations Centre in the Art Gallery.

It was his first time on site from the onset of a disaster.

“When I did the emergency response course I imagined I’d be using it in places

like Haiti or Pakistan. I never expected to put it into practice in my own hometown,“ he says.

On that first night, Nick’s experience in the building industry saw him placed with a certified engineer on the first stage of redstickering – “a kind of building triage”.

Working with engineers over the coming days, he was able to share the expertise and networks available through several Christchurch-based non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

As a result, he was given an office in the Operations Centre as Christchurch coordinator for the NGOs’ Disaster Relief Forum (NDRF). Sixteen agencies belong to the grouping, which normally responds to humanitarian disasters offshore.

The Forum’s NGOs based in Christchurch are Christian World Service, Adventist Development and Relief Agency, Caritas (through the Catholic Diocese), CBM (a Christian Disability Aid programme), World Vision, Oxfam, Rotary NZ, Save the Children and Tear Fund, with the Red Cross as an observer.

A

mong the tasks supported by the NGOs’ forum was ‘Operation Suburbs’, the Ministry of Social Development’s building inspection and welfare assessment project across the city.

“Drawing mostly from churches, we gathered around 200 volunteers for the house-to-house visiting teams – people who had the maturity and compassion to listen and assess people’s needs,” Nick says. “Their contribution was a valuable part of the operation.”

A further 200 volunteers through local NGOs were on hand again at the Hagley Park memorial service, listening to people’s stories or linking them with counsellors.

World Vision and the Salvation Army

ANGLICAN TAONGA

Nick Clarke at the Emergency Operations Centre in the Christchurch Art Gallery with CWS colleague Greg Jackson, who was seconded to support media relations for the NGOs’ Disaster Relief Forum in Christchurch.

set up a foodbank, the Adventists ran a tented food kitchen with support from other churches around the city, while the NGOs supported information centres, free internet sites and safe spaces where people could talk and be together.

Nick was heartened to see organisations supporting each other’s projects, both practically and financially.

News of this good work has reached the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) whose sustainable development fund is a key income source for NGOs. At a recent meeting on funding guidelines, the MFAT Deputy Secretary for Development, Amanda Ellis, offered lengthy praise for the NGO Forum’s work in Christchurch, including the leadership of CWS staff.

The Government’s last funding round to NGOs saw the CWS grant slashed by twothirds while other bodies lost even more.

So the official praise lifted hopes for more generous funding in future.

CWS staff have plenty to be thankful for, even though they have lost their base and all their hard copy files.

“We have no idea when we’ll get back into our building, or even what the

status of the building is,” says Director Pauline McKay. “We don’t even know if buildings will be put up again in that part of Christchurch.

“We had a trial run with no offices after the first quake (last September), but then we could go back in to retrieve things. Now we have to come up with creative solutions to keep going as we are.”

Thanks to CWS Board member and Anglican priest Graeme Nicholas and Palmerston North’s Godzone web-server, innovation has happened apace for CWS.

EASTERTIDE 2011

W Within a week, CWS staff were set up in a virtual office through a new web portal. v The quake has brought home the value of a long-held priority of CWS – a v partnership style of development based p on long-term relationships with local o organisations, in recognition that locals o know best how to identify and respond to k llocal needs.

“It’s increasingly important that Christchurch people are listened C tto, included and given appropriate rresponsibility for the work that needs to be done here,” says Pauline McKay. d She remembers the warning of a partner NGO in the Philippines after a hurricane N and typhoon wreaked havoc across the a iisland.

“The relief organisations came in and sswept them aside, with no concern for their perspective in the recovery. It was a double p blow for them to be hit by disaster and then b ssteamrolled by the international response,” sshe says.

Nick Clarke says the NGOs’ Disaster Relief Forum is determined to keep the local voice in the forefront.

“Of course we’ll need external input from people with specialist skills in areas such as infrastructure, health and education,” he says. “But we’ll be keeping sound community development principles at the top of the agenda.

“That means we’ll be saying, ‘Now it’s time to stop, listen to people, and make sure that local communities play a key part in choosing and providing the solutions’,” Nick says.

Julanne Clarke-Morris is assistant editor of Anglican Taonga.

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Page 15

ANGLICAN TAONGA

EASTERTIDE 2011

THE QUAKE

Restoration of broken buildings is not a big enough vision for Bishop Victoria Matthews. She’s much more intent on building bridges between church and community, and developing clergy-led ministries that draw people to Jesus Christ.

‘We’ve got to develop a spirituality that means you roll up your sleeves and you say your prayers,’ she says. ‘That’s ancient. That’s Franciscan.’

Taonga editor Brian Thomas caught the flying bishop in her cubby-hole of an office in the new diocesan centre at St Peter’s, Upper Riccarton, and asked what she has learned from the earthquakes, and where to from here.

Rebuilding

the faith of Canterbury

Page 16

ANGLICAN TAONGA

EASTERTIDE 2011

ABOVE: Off limits: Bishop Victoria outside her damaged home.

LEFT: Ex-cathedra: Bishop Victoria surveys her ruined cathedral.

Y

ou’ve been through three major earthquakes in Christchurch.

Are there any learnings for you as a bishop caught in the middle of a civil emergency?

The whole thing about being a bishop is to be both immediately responsive to whatever’s happening at the moment but then also to have in mind the big picture.

So very shortly after the September 4 earthquake I was saying to people, ‘Stop acting like this is a sprint; it’s a marathon.

And multiple marathons.’

I also was saying the opportunity for this to change us is extraordinary and exciting, and we’ve got to let that happen. So no strategic plan would be able to open doors like this has. Seize the moment!

My learnings? Don’t ever miss an opportunity to listen to the Spirit and to follow the lead of Christ in what otherwise looks like bad news.

How has the church measured up to the emergency? How has it not?

It’s good and bad. We’re much better at emergency response than we are in long term. So when people were able to make sandwiches and drive in water and bring people into their homes and do all those

things of the immediate aftermath, we rose to the occasion and did very well.

We are not as good at helping people change in the long run because as Anglicans and Christians we actually don’t want to leave our own comfort zone; so why would we be wanting other people to leave their comfort zones?

But very good things are happening. For instance, St Chad’s Linwood began to feed people because food was needed. They’re still feeding people but they understand that the need is for community, and a good way of building community and offering hospitality is over food.

Some of the people who come might still need food but they’re not developing a dependency because that would be wrong.

The parish of St Chad’s is actually building community. They’re saying ‘Come in, get to know people, because the more you get to know each other the more you will be resilient when you leave here.’ That’s very good.

I heard just the other day that the RSA had gone to the parish of HeathcoteMt Pleasant and said, ‘can we have the Anzac Day breakfast in your hall’. The vicar, Mary Giles, said, ‘certainly, it won’t be big enough but of course you can’. And they said, ‘we’re

going to get a big marquee, and afterwards we’ll give it to you.’

Now most parishes would say ‘what a wonderful gift, thanks very much.’ Mary had enough sense of the moment to say ‘no, we’ll keep the marquee but it will belong to the community’. So again there’s a bridge between church and community in terms of bringing people in.

If we do this right, and I don’t for a moment think that’s a guarantee, we will have re-established the church as the centre of the community and not ever think about church growth or things like that. It’s not about butts on pews. It’s about being at the heart of the community and being concerned for every aspect of people’s lives. Will we get there? I don’t know.

Tell us about the appeal to rebuild the faith of Canterbury.

It’s not about restoration; it’s a rebuild so it can be quite different from what it was. It is focussed on buildings, not programmes….

It’s for churches, for schools, and for buildings that house social services.

The reason that it’s buildings, not programmes, is that it was born of an ecumenical vision and we knew that once we got into programmes there would be

Page 17

ANGLICAN TAONGA

EASTERTIDE 2011

doctrinal differences and the whole thing would come to a halt.

So we said we actually can do more about bricks and mortar than we can about programmes. It looked like that was going to go ahead. I had the full support of (Roman Catholic) Bishop Barry Jones, who then tragically had a stroke. His advisers have said 'this is something we cannot speak on; you’re going to have to wait until he’s back', so the whole thing has gone into a holding pattern.

We can’t waste any more time, so the Dean and I will be leading it. And we will say to people, this is an opportunity for one of two things to happen: the nature of this level of devastation of property is an invitation to give in to the temptation to greed. We’ve already seen some of that, and I’m not putting blame at anyone’s door but already there’s been talk of huge gifts and appeals and so on. And I think, ‘Oh God, this could end up being so bad, where one gets a lot of money and someone gets nothing, and everybody ends up resenting each other’.

So I thought about the Gospel, and I said the Gospel is definitely not about greed; it’s about generosity and hospitality. So what happens if we write the rules for appeals to say we only fundraise for each other?

If we do that, we can only ask for money for someone we know something about.

And if there’s a whole lot of fundraising over here for someone over there and it doesn’t even look like that church is going to be built again… well, that’s all right because there’s now a relationship within the diocese and we’re in this together rather than separately.

So rebuilding the faith of Canterbury is about bricks and mortar, but at the deepest level it’s all about community and learning to work together for Christ and the Kingdom.

Do you foresee any changes in the diocesan structure as a response to the

‘We’ve got to re-design clergy-led ministry by saying we have to attract people to the Lord Jesus Christ’

Page 18

emergency? Parish amalgamations, for example.

It’s too early to talk about this at the parish level… For example, when St Luke’s (Kilmore Street) came and said ‘we’ve got to meet and decide about deconsecration and we’ve got to do it soon but we’re required to give so much notice,’ I said these are extraordinary times; just call a meeting.

I did the same with Holy Trinity Avonside and St John’s Latimer Square. When it comes to deconsecrate, there are very clear rules about how it’s to be done. But at present we can’t follow those rules. The first thing you’d do is take out the altar; who’s going in to die for this? And actually the altar probably isn’t there any more.

So there are quite significant rules and regulations, but what we’re doing is giving permission for what needs to be done.

We had a meeting of Standing Committee, and I had the property manager from CPT and the accountant present as well, because we talked in the Diocesan Strategic Plan about the three entities trying to work together. Actually, we now need to become one.

Anglican Care needs to be in much closer and deeper conversation with the diocese because if they start making isolated decisions it’s ridiculous. We need each other; we did before but now we know it. But it will be an evolution; it won’t be by resolution.

Are there any learnings for other dioceses to take on board?

It would be wise for dioceses to have a disaster plan far more than we had.

And the great learning is that we had the September earthquake and we talked about a disaster plan… We had some quite good conversations, but we actually didn’t do it.

So every diocese needs to ask those questions and get ready. And right now every school, just to give you an example, should be improving their disaster plan.

What happens if you have a group of children on a bus going somewhere and there’s a major earthquake? The only reason we (the church) did not have fatalities in the February earthquake is because most of the buildings that came down were already closed to the public from September. And I suspect that saved tens, if not hundreds, of lives.

In future in New Zealand we need to build for safety. After September all the talk was about heritage, and then 180 people died, and now we talk about safety. Let’s

ABOVE: Dean Peter Beck passes on encouragement to rescue worker Ralph Moore.

remember that and not go back to the other conversation.

What’s your spiritual vision for Christchurch in the aftermath of the quake?

I think we’re doing really, really well, and the only reason is that the people of God are praying. That’s something we’re going to forget really quickly, and we shouldn’t.

Prayer has to be absolutely integral to whatever our future is.

We’re right at the edge of people getting short-tempered with each other. We’ve done so well but we’re going to get really, really tired of this. So one of the things – and it’s very simple – is that the church needs to do what the church does well, which is to say that we can offer sanctuary. ‘Come in, light a candle, listen to some music, take 15 minutes and just re-centre yourself.’

Also, in terms of future vision, spiritual as well as practical, we’ve got to be at the absolute heart of the community. We’ve got to develop a spirituality that means you roll up your sleeves and you say your prayers. That’s ancient. That’s Franciscan.

Everywhere you look in Christian history, that has been understood. And you don’t do it as an individual; you do it as a community.

Those are all things that we’ve seen already. Now let’s not slide back into what we were before.

ANGLICAN TAONGA

ABOVE: Back to square one: Bishop John Gray surveys the ruins of ChristChurch Cathedral after the February 22 quake.

LEFT: Brothers in arms: Dean Peter Beck and Bishop John Gray find mutual support in the aftermath.

Clergy have suddenly found themselves in the frontline of the relief effort. Has the emergency reiterated or changed your views on ministry preparation and training?

When I was in theological education in Canada, we did a regular exercise with students. We would say: You’re about to be ordained and your bishop says to you, ‘I am quite prepared to ordain you but I have nowhere to send you other than to a geographic area. There’s no church, there’s no hall. Good luck with finding a place to live. You may need to get a job because I can’t actually pay you enough to keep you going. I think you already have a Bible and I’ll give you a prayer book. Good luck.’

How do you gather community? What we’ve been doing – and this is judgment stuff – is we’ve been practising our trade by attracting people to a building. That’s what the cathedral is: it’s the icon of the city… all these wonderful things, but in actual fact people like going to things like the City Mission carol service because it’s at the cathedral. People go to the building.

We’ve got to re-design clergy-led ministry by saying we actually have to attract people to the Lord Jesus Christ. And

we’ve not done that very well. We also talk about baptism, which is a rite of passage.

We talk about marriage… all these things, but we don’t talk about Jesus very much, and we’ve got to get to that.

I’m quite surprised even once to have heard clergy say, ‘My spouse isn’t very happy with the earthquakes and we may be moving somewhere else’. Excuse me? This is the Gospel. Where did you ever think it was going to be easy? It’s supposed to be much tougher than this.

That clergy voice usually isn’t from a place that’s been devastated; it’s usually in quite a safe location. But welcome to the uncertainty of human life. Get with the programme.

The church has suddenly become a pivotal player in the politics of rebuilding Christchurch, especially the cathedral. How has that felt for you personally?

A lot of the conversations would not have happened in Canada, so it’s been absolutely fascinating. And I’ve been delighted by the engagement with both civic and national leadership.

I have to say… there’s only one way of

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doing it, which is that no one but the church makes up the mind of the church. We’ve had to be clear about that. So for something as simple as the Memorial Service, there was a clear belief in some quarters that it should be non-specific and sort of generic in faith orientation.

And the answer to that was politely, respectfully, no – this is a Christian service and it will have interfaith participation that will be done with the highest level of respect and appreciation but we are not compromising what we believe. We owe that to the people.

When it comes to rebuilding something like the cathedral, the church will make the decision, and we will engage people at every possible level but no one but the church is going to make up the church’s mind because we might not then find the mind of Christ and we have to do that.

What forms of prayer or self-care have been most helpful to you in dealing with a prolonged emergency?

You have to keep a finger on your pulse.

You have to ask yourself ‘how am I doing?’

I find there’s been an awful lot of adrenalin in this, and that’s been fine for me. But at the same time, if I found myself really dragging, I would need to step out for a few hours or a day or whatever. So you have to be enormously self-aware.

I’ve never been a huge fan of all this stuff that gets written on self-care, but I am a huge fan of being self-aware and being centred and recognising that the energy one needs comes from God, not oneself.

I went for about three weeks sleeping in a different bed every night and having my dog (Jethro) in a kennel. And it wasn’t rocket science to know that wasn’t ultimately going to be good for me. So I snuck into the back garden and moved back into the unit where I sleep on a foamy on the floor but it’s still my space.

And then the construction company came to check on the house and found me – oh rats! They couldn’t have been nicer; thank goodness it was the day after the Memorial Service and at that moment I could do no wrong, so I got away with it. Otherwise I would have been turfed out on my ear.

But the structural engineer very kindly cut a gate in my back fence, which I call my Hobbit hole, so I come and go that way and don’t have to go near the house. That’s much better for me.

Would that work for others? Oh no. So they need to know what they need. At the end of the day, however wonderful, I don’t

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EASTERTIDE 2011

‘I was cold and wet and alone. I’d looked after people everywhere and I actually had nowhere to sleep – minor oversight. And then I said, Oh get it together’

need to sit down with a group of people and have conversation because I’ve done that all day. I need some space and some silence and a dog to drive me crazy. And I’ve got that.

Everyone seems convinced that Christchurch must have its cathedral.

As Bishop, what would sort of cathedral would you like to see?

I ask how urgent is it that we get a cathedral. I’m told, and this is part of the conversation with people in government, that re-creation of the cathedral will restore the confidence of the people.

If that is true, and I’m not totally sure it is, then time is of the essence. And that probably means building something very close to what was there.

If we decide that it doesn’t matter, and that confidence will be restored in a number of other ways, and that maybe we need to have ‘cathedral of the air’ for a while with services all over so that people begin to see God in other places, then I would say the sky’s the limit and the new cathedral will be very different.

The one thing that’s not being talked about enough is safety. We almost lost people last time. Could we rebuild what was there and be sure it’s safe? Because we cannot forget the possibility of another

earthquake.

So the question of a new cathedral is about timing and location – do we take people to other locations so that they know God is in all those other places too? Most of all it’s about safety.

What ministry opportunities do you see for a “new” cathedral in the life of the city and the diocese?

In the past the ministry of the cathedral has been largely personalised in the Dean and he’s done very, very well. But ministry should not be so associated with one person.

So I would hope that in future the cathedral will be known for more faces and more projects involving the wider community.

The cathedral does a wonderful Christmas appeal for Christian World Service, but does the cathedral have people working in other parts of the world to make those things happen. And should it?

The cathedral hosted the ‘Cathedral Takeover,’ which was a young persons’ event. But in actual fact the cathedralthat-was had no real space for children’s ministry and no teenagers beyond the severs and the choir in any given service.

There’s that passage in the Acts of the Apostles where Paul and Silas are in prison and the earthquake happens, the chains drop off, the doors fly open and they’re out of prison. The cathedral, which is every one’s first love, has still been in a prison of sorts. Will they allow themselves to be released? I hope so.

What was your lowest point in the February quake?

My lowest point, oddly enough, was on the day of the quake. I gathered up a bunch of people and said, ‘I’ve got a big house, I’ve got lots of bedrooms, just come with me.’

We walked up to the house and realised it hadn’t come through very well. So we went to the back and I went into the kitchen and got food and water and people

What actually happened on Feb 22?

The February 22 earthquake arose from the rupture of an 8km-square fault 1.2km beneath the southern edge of the Avon-Heathcote Estuary, according to GNS Science. The slip between the two sides of the fault was up to 1.5km.

The Port Hills have risen by about 40cm, while the Estuary mouth has moved westward by a few tens of centimetres. Land west of the Estuary has sunk by up to 10cm.

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Some buildings experienced twice the intensity of shaking that they were designed for. However, most buildings designed to current quake codes performed well, with little damage.

GNS Science notes that despite the tragic losses of life, engineers should be extremely proud of the way Christchurch’s modern buildings stood up to the February quake.

got looked after. The temperature was dropping of course.

Eventually I said I had to go down and check on whether I could help downtown, so we left. But by that point they had closed the city so I came back and very quickly people realised that I was not able to offer the hospitality I thought I would, so they went off to different places.

But at this point it was getting quite a bit colder so I threw on a jacket and walked over to the tent city in Hagley Park and went up to somebody, said who I was and asked what needed to be done. They said to go to everybody I could find and tell them to 'hang in there, it’s going to be a while but everybody will be given a meal, everyone will be given a place to sleep.’

So I did that, and it started to rain. My jacket wasn’t waterproof and I was getting quite cold, so finally I thought I have to go home because I’m just about done in.

By this point they were all being looked after and registered and so on, and I walked home and I kept meeting people and talking to them and I was getting really, really cold.

When I got back to the unit and the dog, I realised that I was cold and wet and alone. I’d looked after people everywhere and I actually had nowhere to sleep – minor oversight. And then I said, ‘Oh get it together.’

I dried myself off, pulled out my warmest sleeping bags, crawled in, and that was it. So it was a very low but a very brief moment because that’s the way I am. I felt the bottom drop out and then I said, ‘Sorry this isn’t just an option.’ I said to Jethro, ‘Come over here – you’re warm.’

And your highest point?

A number of times down at the Art Gallery we would finish media interviews, and because I’m the Bishop they would always ask ‘What is the Good News?’ Or ‘Where is God in this?’ And several times – and it surprised me every time – we would finish the interview and the interviewer would burst into tears and fall into my arms.

So the Good News still works.

It wasn’t a high point at all but it was deeply profound because I realised that they were doing their job when they were hurting just as much as anyone else. And the fact that someone could share the Good News broke through all their reserve.

It’s where the Gospel meets the pain of the world.

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Storytime: Ellen Bernstein helps out at the welfare centre.

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Amy Houben and Peter Bargh.

Working their passage St John’s students are tossed into the deep end of crisis ministry. Lloyd Ashton reports

O

nce exams are over for the year, students at St John’s College in Auckland are sent out to do fieldwork. It’s a chance to cut their teeth on the tasks of ministry in parishes.

Well, at the start of March, Rangi Nicholson, the acting Dean of Tikanga Maori at St John’s, suggested another kind of field assignment to Bishop John Gray.

How would it be, said Rangi, if we sent some students down for a few days to help with quake relief work at the Te Wai Pounamu Centre?

Sounds good, said Bishop John.

His 20-strong team had been going hard ever since the quake, and he knew they could use some help.

Each day they’d been out on the streets of East Christchurch, delivering food, water and essential supplies to stricken households. And back at the centre they were providing beds and meals to three families who’d lost their homes in the quake.

Bishop John made just one stipulation to Rangi Nicholson: don’t send me anyone who isn’t fit and able to work their passage.

He needn’t have worried on that score.

Take Stan Pilbrow, for instance. He’s the Tai Tokerau deacon who was chosen as

the St John’s team leader.

And before Stan came to St John’s, he’d spent 27 years in the army, finishing up a lieutenant-colonel. Not much chance he wouldn’t cope with Christchurch.

Or take Amy Houben, who’s a Diocese of Wellington student at St John’s – in earlier times she was an Air Force paramedic, and she’d served a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

And the other volunteers in the team – Megan Herles-Mooar (Christchurch), Ellen Bernstein (Waikato) and Peter Bargh (Auckland) – are no wallflowers, either.

They flew down in the early hours of Saturday March 5, and divided themselves into two teams.

One team made a point of providing a “ministry of presence” at the welfare centres;the other went out on the streets,

knocking on doors, and delivering care packages.

But one of the chief aims of the St John’s team, says Stan Pilbrow, was to give the Te Wai Pounamu team a spell.

So they took over the kitchen at Te Wai Pounamu for two days, cooking for up to 35 at a time and keeping the centre shipshape.

The St John’s team weren’t in Christchurch for long. Just four days, in fact Long enough, though, to impress Bishop John.

“You know me,” he says. “I say what I think. And they were fantastic.

“I think this experience has put them in a good position for ministry once they leave the college. What they focused on here… the college couldn’t buy that kind of experience.”

Amy outside the Romanian Orthodox Church in East Chch.

he St John’s students weren’t the only ones to lend a hand at the Te Wai Pounamu Centre.

Te Manawa of te Wheke sent the Revs Libby Heke-Huata and Te Akau Waaka-Cribb to help out, and Peter Minson, the Vicar of Blenheim’s Church of the Nativity, also showed up to support.

In fact, the Te Wai Pounamu Centre was also the focus for another helping operation: thanks to an invitation from Bishop John, 50 Maori wardens from all over the country worked out of there for three weeks.

T

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THE QUAKE

Auckland volunteers

stretched by needy Deborah Telford reports

A

uckland social workers SarahJane Shearman and Litia Bitu are no strangers to dealing with traumatised family members who feel unsafe in their own homes.

But the two women, who work for the Anglican Trust for Women and Children’s Family Start service in Otahuhu, say their social work skills were thoroughly tested when they volunteered to help Christchurch victims of the February 22 earthquake.

Helping old people, parents and children who were confused and stunned after having “all normality stripped from their lives” and who were often too scared to leave their homes was a hugely challenging but rewarding experience, they say.

ATWC sent Sarah-Jane and Litia to Christchurch for a week to work for the emergency response teams which the Salvation Army and New Zealand Christian Counselling Social Services (NZCCSS) have been coordinating.

ATWC – an Auckland charity that offers child-focused and family-based support, counselling, and pre-school services to more than 3000 people across the city – is sending more social workers to Christchurch over the coming months.

“There has been an overwhelming response from ATWC staff who generally

‘Everyone we talked to was concerned about other people who might be worse off than them’

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Litia Bitu and Sarah-Jane Shearman: sorely tested by the Christchurch quake.

want to volunteer their skills and experience to assist however they can in Christchurch,” says ATWC’s Director of Social Work, Judy Matai’a.

The Salvation Army and NZCCSS are targeting 280,000 households in Christchurch – many still lacking basic items, including fresh water.

“There were hundreds of families we could have helped,” says Sarah-Jane. “But after our first day we quickly realised that it was better to focus on quality than quantity – because there’s not much you can achieve by spending only a hour or so with people.”

Working in 13-person response teams, the ATWC social workers spent up to 12 hours a day visiting up to 30 families in Shirley, Linwood, Dallington, Richmond and Parklands.

As well as checking families’ access to water, food and toilets, the social workers tried to comfort people who could not sleep because they kept reliving the earthquake, mothers who were scared to drop their children at school, and people who were terrified of going outside.

Both women say they quickly found they could help most effectively by tracking down the right organisations and services to help people.

Litia, who comes from Nausori Village, near Suva, is used to dealing with the aftermath of floods and hurricanes.

She was shocked by the devastation in Christchurch but amazed at the selflessness and generosity of people there.

“Everyone we talked to was concerned about other people who they thought might be worse off than them,” Litia says.

“Often people would say no to a food voucher if they thought someone else in the neighbourhood might need it more.

“It was a very grounding experience.”

FOOTNOTE: ATWC has been helping mothers, children and families since 1858. It runs 12 different home, school and community-based programmes to help people to take control of their own decision-making and face the future with hope. To give to ATWC, visit www. atwc.org.nz , send a cheque payable to Anglican Trust for Women and Children to ATWC, PO Box 22363, or call 09 276 3729 .

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EASTERTIDE 2011

THE QUAKE

Lynda Patterson rubbishes the notion that God might be punishing us for our misdemeanours

Keeping safe with Jesus? Yeah...

M

y fuse is fairly short at the moment, but last week I picked up an email that made me lose it altogether. The subject line said, “Keep safe with Jesus.”

It originated somewhere in the States but it suggested that the Christchurch earthquake was orchestrated by God to rough up unbelievers. “No one who has true faith,” it said smugly, “is ever in any danger.

Embrace Jesus as your Saviour and you will be kept safe from all harm.”

This kind of theology is cruel and unbiblical. But in the midst of desolation, we so often look for explanations. In the face of sheer haphazard destruction, we struggle to understand.

Maybe there’s a logic to all this, we think.

Maybe God is punishing us for something.

Maybe I can use my faith to negotiate with God and he’ll keep me safe. But it simply isn’t true. We have to live with the randomness, even when it seems unbearable.

At a memorial service for a woman who died in the Press building collapse, I spoke to a man who had worked next to her. He’d got up to make a coffee when the quake hit and he watched the roof collapse directly above his desk.

He kept repeating, “Why wasn’t it me?”

There’s no system to explain why some people died, some were gravely injured and some walked away. We simply don’t know.

The Book of Job contains one of the earliest attempts to answer the question, “Where is God when we suffer?”

Job has lost his home and his family and his health, and three friends – Zophar, Eliphaz and Bildad – have sat down with him to try to make sense of it all.

Each tries to find an explanation, saying things like “God saves the humble and punishes the guilty,” which sounds like good religious common sense.

But they’re wrong. Because Job is innocent, and all the disasters that fall on him are not because he’s lost his faith, or because he’s conducting terrible secret sins in the privacy of his home.

So why does Job suffer? The book concludes, quite literally: “God knows.” All our speculations are just so many words.

In the fifth century, St Augustine – a theologian who was often wrong but always interesting – asked a good question: Why do some of us believe?

To answer, he made a distinction between two types of love: Uti, and Frui.

Uti is the sort of love we have for something that’s a means to an end. Money usually falls into this category. We don’t love it because we enjoy running the coins through our fingers, or because we get excited by the texture of the notes. We love it because of what we can buy with it, because of the freedom from anxiety it gives us.

Frui love is completely different. If there’s anyone in your life whose absence would make you feel as if the sun has gone out, then you are experiencing frui love.

Augustine said we have a habit of loving God with uti love; that our love is a sort of bargaining chip with God to help us get what we want in life.

God becomes a means to our treasured ends – a happier, healthier life with no glitches, and please, no unbearable losses.

But God prefers not to be used.

God wants us to love him, not because of what we might get out of it, but just because God is God, and because we would do anything for him.

As the Westminster Confession puts it: the chief end of humanity is to love God and enjoy him forever.

But behind the question of how we love God lurks a deeper one – what sort of God is it that we think we love? What is the image of God that drives us to do what we do?

If we love God because of what we hope to get from him, then we believe in a God who has the power to give us what we want but sometimes deliberately withholds it.

Then prayer becomes a sort of flirtation, or an attempt to appease, or some kind of barter. It’s hard to love God unreservedly when you are living with the continual anxiety that you might get something wrong and be punished, or that you may continue to live as decent a life as you can, and be punished anyway.

I suspect the Book of Job isn’t really about what it means for human beings to suffer, but rather what it means to be human when

God is really seen to be God. The earthquake brought us up against the sharp edge of real life. When someone we love is on the lists of the dead or missing, when we know people who narrowly avoided death, or others whose lives have been changed forever by their injuries… when we’re living with uncertainty about our future or in despair about our homes, there’s no room for make-believe. The God we believe in is beyond all our comfortable illusions.

In his lectures, C.S. Lewis used to say, rather smugly, that suffering is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world. But after he had experienced the agony of his wife’s illness and death, he reflected instead on how often God seemed to be silent in the face of our desperation.

In Lent we journey with Jesus as he prepares to go to Jerusalem, as he faces his own death. We don’t believe in a distant God who observes his creation through a microscope. We don’t believe in a God who slips on our humanity like a skin on a sausage but actually doesn’t feel a thing.

Our God is as fragile as we are. He suffers alongside us when we suffer, and he is as close to us as our own breath.

With the cross and the empty tomb, God has provided us with two events that defy all our efforts to domesticate them. Before them, and before the God who is present in them, our most eloquent words turn to dust.

The Ven Lynda Patterson is Theologian in Residence at ChristChurch Cathedral. This article was extracted from a Lenten sermon.

The Book of Job is about what it means to be human when God is really seen to be God

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ACC-15

All delegates will be given authentic experience of Aotearoa-NZ. Lloyd Ashton reports

he Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, will make his first visit to New Zealand in October next year.

Dr Williams will be here in his capacity as the President of the Anglican Consultative Council, which is holding its 15th session in Parnell’s Holy Trinity Cathedral from October 27 to November 7, 2012. Dr Williams will be accompanied by his wife, Jane.

And given that: • ACC meetings are major set pieces in the life of the Anglican Communion; and • The Communion is in a wobbly state; and • ACC-15 will focus on the proposed Anglican Covenant…

It’s a gathering bound to attract the attention of international media.

The Auckland-based group organising the hosting side of next year’s meeting won’t have any direct say over the shaping of the agenda for the meeting.

But they are determined that the delegates will have an authentic experience of Aotearoa New Zealand – and they’re hoping that will rub off on the way ACC goes about its business in Auckland.

So, what exactly will be those local influences on ACC-15?

Well, there’ll be an all-stops pulled powhiri on the first day for starters. That will probably feature a big kapa haka troupe, and

T

ACC delegates will disperse throughout the country, preaching in every diocese and hui amorangi

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ABC's first taste of

Kiwi

the powhiri will be held either at the Vector Arena in the CBD or at the big TelstraClear Pacific events centre in Manukau.

And on the Wednesday or Thursday of the first week the whole ACC meeting will suspend its deliberations for a day and travel en masse to Turangawaewae, for a session that’ll include a meeting with Kingi Tuheitia, the Maori King.

On the middle Sunday of the event, it’s customary for ACC delegates to disperse to churches close to the host venue to share in the worship of a local congregation.

But for ACC-15, the host working group wants to achieve something rather more ambitious.

It aims to have an ACC-15 delegate in the pulpit of every cathedral in New Zealand that Sunday morning, and at every major hui amorangi worship centre.

Through those experiences, says General Secretary Michael Hughes, the host

group organisers are hoping that the ACC visitors will imbibe something of the way we do church in these islands.

“We have an example here,” says Michael, “of three different cultural streams finding a constitutional way of working together, of holding together amidst diversity, and recognising, accepting and valuing difference – and not letting that pull us apart.

“We want our visitors to experience the way we’ve constitutionally geared ourselves to recognise differences and respect autonomy without pulling apart.”

Dr Tony Fitchett, the Dunedin GP who was in London in late March for the ACC standing committee meeting, agrees: “I did discuss with the ACC standing committee that our aim here is to be more than just a venue meeting – we want ACC15 to be an experience of this church and its tikanga. We want delegates to experience

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that, particularly through the Bible studies and the worship.

“I do think,” he says, “that we have some contribution to make in terms of letting people see for themselves something of how this church works – which is not the same as other churches.”

Tony Fitchett was at both the last ACC meetings, and says lessons have been learned from these.

“My hope would be that the meeting in Auckland can be constructive, and I think there are things that we can do to help that.

“One of them is to have a good process for discussing controversial issues.

“At the 2005 meeting in Nottingham the only hard discussion of controversial things took place in a formal debating session.”

Whereas, at ACC-14 in Jamaica, each delegate belonged to one of four “discernment groups” that ran throughout the whole of ACC. “Delegates were meeting every day in these groups, getting to know each other personally, and discussing the issues – and therefore people could talk much more openly, and in a much less threatening environment.

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“That whole relationship building thing made it much easier for people to discuss the issues, to disagree strongly – but still relate to each other, and accept that the other was a real person with value and integrity.

“I’m sure the intention is to carry on using that sort of process.”

T

here’s no doubt that the Covenant will be the major focus of the gathering. But Tony Fitchett says it’ll be too soon for any final and definitive picture to emerge about that.

“What ACC-14 asked for was for the churches to report progress on their dealings with covenant to ACC-15.

“The Episcopal Church, for instance, won’t have had a convention by that time, and a lot of provinces will be only partway through their deliberations. So it’ll be only a reporting thing.”

About 69 delegates are invited to ACC-15, with about the same number of extras expected to arrive – including Primates’ Standing Committee members, ACC staff, Anglican Communion network representatives, ecumenical figures and

Michael Hughes

Tony Fitchett

spouses. But whether they all turn up in Auckland remains to be seen.

“Whenever the Communion gathers now, there’s a possibility that some will see an opportunity not to come in order to protest,” says Michael Hughes.

“At the last Primates Meeting a handful stayed away, and at the last Lambeth Conference more than a handful stayed at home.

“Will some provinces choose to protest over ACC-15 by not sending delegates?

I would hope not. I would hope they will send their delegates so they can be part of the discussion.

Hui amorangi says no to Covenant

T

he central North Island hui amorangi of Te Manawa o Te Wheke has rejected the proposed Anglican Covenant on grounds that it poses a threat to Maori rangatiratanga (sovereignty).

Te Wheke believes the church in Aotearoa New Zealand should place greater priority on fulfilling promises to Maori in 1840 when the Treaty of Waitangi was signed by representatives of the British Crown and tribal chiefs representing tangata whenua.

The Treaty, which had significant input from CMS missionaries, guaranteed Maori “all the rights and powers of Sovereignty” and “full, exclusive and undisturbed possession of their Lands and Estates Forests Fisheries” for as long as they wish to keep them.

These promises were broken or ignored by settlers throughout the remainder of the 19th century, so that by the turn of the century Maori were

essentially landless, poverty-stricken and in severe decline.

The three-part resolution passed at Te Manawa o Te Wheke’s annual synod in April includes a clause that says the hui amorangi doesn’t believe the Covenant reflects “our understanding of being Anglican in these islands.”

That “understanding” reflects rights gained by Maori Anglicans and cemented into the revised 1992 Constitution of the Anglican Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia.

Under that constitution, Tikanga Maori is a full and equal partner in the affairs of the church, and no decisions can be taken

by General Synod/te Hinota Whanui without the consent of its three tikanga partners: Maori, Pakeha and Polynesia.

Maori Anglicans fear that the proposed Covenant would lead to an erosion of their sovereignty and a loss of their hardwon partnership rights. They fear, for instance, that they would have no input

into disciplinary hearings.

The Manawa o Te Wheke resolution – moved by the Rev Ngira Simmonds, and seconded by the Rev Moana Hall-Smith – will be considered by General Synod which meets in Fiji in July 2012.

There are four other hui amorangi in the province. All will hold synods this year, and their resolutions on the Covenant will contribute to the final position taken by Tikanga Maori at the 2012 General Synod.

All seven dioceses also are expected to consider the Covenant this year and bring recommendations to General Synod.

Lloyd Ashton

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PD E R EUAC CAH TIN OG N

The

heart

The three wise men at St John’s College: (from left) Frank Smith, Rangi Nicholson and Jim White.

has its reasons

When they held the powhiri at St John’s College in February, they were doing more than just turning the crank on another academic year.

‘Too many people in the Islands can only see things through Palagi eyes’ – Frank Smith

Reform is in the air at SJC. For a start, the college commissioner, Gail Thomson, is now in charge and mandated to make changes, and the presence of the three archbishops at the powhiri – a first for that day – seemed to underscore the embrace of reform.

But above all, you could see the change in the three men chosen to lead the college students this year.

Jim White, of course, was already at the helm of the College of the

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Southern Cross before the separate colleges were suspended by the 2010 General Synod.

These days, the proper terminology for Jim’s role is Dean of Tikanga Pakeha. But whatever the title, he’s still a fresh face.

Then there’s Frank Smith – Le Vaotogo Frank Smith – and Rangi Nicholson, who have been chosen to lead the Polynesian and Maori students, respectively, at St John’s.

For both men, that’s a new challenge. And as Lloyd Ashton has been finding out, each has quite a story to tell.

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F

rank Smith has been chosen to fill the slot that became vacant when the previous Dean of the College of the Diocese of Polynesia, Bishop Winston Halapua, became the diocesan Bishop of Polynesia and relocated to Suva.

Frank has the credentials for his new job, of course. Last September he was capped with his doctorate in theology by the University of Auckland.

But that’s not the only string to his bow.

Because Frank, who was born and raised in Samoa – he can whakapapa to just about all the nation states in the Pacific – is also a qualified dentist.

After Frank finished school, he headed straight to dental school in Fiji. But he’s not just a run-of-the-mill dentist, either.

In 1975 he went to Otago where he reeled in postgraduate qualifications in dentistry. And he was only just limbering up.

On his return to Samoa, Frank was asked to do some work in public health – and that led to him graduating MBBS, in 1979, from the Fiji School of Medicine. In other words, our qualified dentist became a qualified doctor.

He didn’t let up then, either.

After four years’ internship at Samoa’s National Hospital he again headed off to Wellington – and returned, three years later, as a consultant ophthalmologist.

By this time, Frank had also become a student of the way health systems work – and in 1992 he reeled in a Masters in Health Administration from the University of the Philippines in Manila.

So for the next eight years he divided his time between being a consultant ophthalmologist in Samoa, and a top administrator of its hospital system.

Whew.

Where was God amidst all this heavy-duty health work? Working in the background, it seems.

In the Philippines, Frank had been confronted with poverty. His eyes were opened. And when he returned to Samoa he began to see poverty in his own country.

That got him musing: What has governance got to do with this? There were deeper questions still. Such as: Where is God in all this?

Till then, Frank hadn’t been a regular churchgoer or Bible-reader. He couldn’t imagine the Almighty speaking today through that ancient text.

But the Almighty, it seems, is a lateral thinker – who had other, less conventional ways of catching Frank’s attention.

Such as: boy scouts.

Both Frank’s sons were scouts, and their scout troop was attached to All Saints’ Apia, the local Anglican church.

Bit by bit, Frank was drawn into the life of All Saints’.

He was fascinated by its disciplines and the logic he saw underpinning liturgical worship – and pretty soon Frank found himself pitchforked on to the vestry there.

Ten years later, in 1996, he was ordained a priest.

In the year 2000, the late Archbishop Jabez persuaded Frank to resign from his hospital work and to travel to New Zealand to undertake a BTheol. He was 53.

He’d wrapped that up by the end of 2002, and he wanted to return home. But he was persuaded to stay on, and last year he bagged his doctorate.

During all those years of higher education Frank had another quest going on.

That mission started when he was en route to New Zealand for his postgrad dental studies. On the plane he sat next to an Englishwoman who asked him about his part of the world.

Frank could rattle off impressive detail about the Canterbury Plains, for example.

About Australia, too. But he had little to contribute about his own land.

That troubled him, and started him on a quest for his identity as a Samoan.

In his early years as a doctor, he’d asked to practise in remote, rural areas, away from the inevitable contamination of traditional ways that city living brings.

That search for authenticity continues still, and it’s the topic he explores in his doctoral thesis: (The Johannine Jesus from a Samoan perspective – an intercultural reading of the fourth gospel.).

For Frank, these questions about identity are not matters of self-indulgence or mere personal curiosity. They’re about being able to successfully negotiate the present in the light of the past, and he believes they’re questions that Pacific Island nations must grapple with.

“Too many people in the Islands,” he says, “can only see things through Palagi eyes.”

Those issues of identity also have a bearing on the church being able to do

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authentic, effective mission in Polynesia.

“Tikanga Polynesia has specific mission needs,” he says. “It has specific social, economic and political problems, and we need to grapple with how the church can proclaim the gospel in these contexts.”

Furthermore, says Frank, St John’s College is in a unique position to train people to respond to those Polynesian needs.

The other thing that needs to be borne in mind, he says, is that ministry to Polynesians isn’t just ministry to a people ‘somewhere out there.’

He reminds us: Within 50 years, more than half the New Zealand population will have Pacific Island ancestry.

R

angi Nicholson – who is acting Te Ahorangi o Te Rau Kahikatea while Jenny Te Paa is on a year’s sabbatical – has spent much of his life travelling down that cultural recovery track, too.

And he too believes that those questions of identity are pivotal for the church.

In particular, he believes the question of the church’s commitment to genuine biculturalism, and to what he calls the “regenesis” of the Maori language, is critical not just to the survival of the Maori church but also to the mission of the Anglican Church in these islands.

“I am concerned,” says Rangi, “that so many young Maori people are being taught: “That the church is only an agent of colonisation; “That the missionaries tricked our ancestors; “That the church’s God is only a white man’s God. “These populist understandings are being spread by educated Maori. These teachers are saying that in order to be authentically Maori you have to ditch this white man’s God, and go back to the traditional atua.”

Rangi is 100 percent committed to his taha Maori, to being authentically Maori.

“But I am convinced,” he says, “that we don’t have to throw out the baby with the bathwater to be that.”

Much will depend, says Rangi, on the strength of the church’s commitment to Maori language, mission and ministry, and to the proclamation of the gospel through Maori language.

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For a Maori boy, a visit to the museum posed far more questions than it provided answers

“We need to reach the young leaders,” he says, “and their heart language is Maori.”

Rangi points out, too, that the mission field is huge: “Seventy-five percent of the Maori population is under the age of 40, and most of these young people are unchurched.”

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angi, who is 58, with links to Ngati Raukawa, Ngati Toa, Ngai Tahu and Ngati Kahungunu, was born in Levin, but grew up in Christchurch.

He remembers those questions of

identity coming into sharp focus for him when his primary school class was visiting the Christchurch Museum.

Their task that day was to inspect various Maori artefacts in glass cases – and in those times, such a cursory inspection of relics amounted to ‘doing the Maori’.

For a Maori boy, that museum visit posed far more questions than it provided answers.

He finished high school in 1969, and spent the following year at Canterbury University preparing for law school. But he abandoned that path and, in 1971, headed to Victoria University to study Maori language and culture.

These were the headiest days of the Maori Renaissance, and Rangi was in the thick of things.

He joined the Te Reo Maori Society, which was campaigning for recognition of the Maori language, he worked with Hana Jackson and Nga Tamatoa on the petition to have Maori offered in schools, and he joined those lobbying for a Maori TV production unit.

On the study front, Rangi reeled in his BA, trained as a secondary school teacher,

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and went on to teach Maori and English as a second language.

Rangi was also involved with Professor Whatarangi Winiata in the early working out of Whakatupuranga Rua Mano – Generation 2000, a 25-year plan that guided the development of Ngati Raukawa in the southern North Island, and of Te Wananga o Raukawa in Otaki, and he directed total immersion Maori language courses at TWOR. From 1986-89 he worked at Whitireia Polytec in Porirua, and in 1989 Professor Mason Durie persuaded Rangi to become a fulltime lecturer at Massey in Palmerston North, and to teach the language and research the rebirth of te reo there.

There’d been some developments where Rangi’s faith is concerned, too.

He’d been raised in a Christian home, and he has an impressive whakapapa in faith: on his mum’s side, he’s the descendent of a Wesleyan missionary who signed the Treaty, and on his dad’s side he’s the mokopuna of chiefs who also signed the Treaty.

For a few years, Rangi’s faith went on the backburner. But there were a couple of incidents that caused him to rethink.

At one point, for example, he’d been confronted with a case of mate Maori, and while he was caught up in the intensity of running total immersion Maori language workshops he’d become, he says, “aware again of the spiritual side of life.”

While he was at TWOR he’d been attending monthly Anglican church services at his marae, Ngatokowaru, just outside Levin – and that’s where the late Hapai (later Bishop Hapai) Winiata first suggested he should think about going to St John’s College.

That idea stayed with him, and in 1992 he headed north to St John’s. He gained his BTheol, lectured in Maori for the Melbourne College of Divinity and at Auckland University, and was ordained deacon.

After that he lectured at the University of Canterbury, then polished off his MA in linguistics while he was teaching at the Christchurch College of Education.

In 2000 Archbishop Hui Vercoe persuaded him to head north again to become Director of Maori Language Development at the Rotorua taapapa.

“Bishop Hui dangled a carrot in front of me,” he recalls. “He said: you can begin work on your doctoral thesis while you’re there.”

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There was never much doubt about the topic of that thesis: it would be in contextual theology, and it would focus on the regenesis of the Maori language and on the church’s responsibilities where language and culture are concerned.

Rangi’s thesis is called Ko te mea nui, ko te aroha: theological perspectives on Maori language and cultural regenesis policy and practice of the Anglican Church, and in it he casts a spotlight on how the church is performing against five benchmarks – the four standing resolutions on biculturalism it adopted in 1986, and the ACC mission statement.

Those bicultural standing resolutions require candidates for ordination to receive training in Maori language and cultural studies “of sufficient rigour, intensity and depth” so that they can fluently lead “all of the important tikanga karakia in Maori” and so that they can “perform ably on marae and in other Maori settings”.

They also encourage: • “The selective use of Maori words in spoken and written English” and for Maori speakers “to correct English speakers’ misuse of Maori words.”

• “Congregations and trustees to make church property available for kohanga reo and adult language programmes:” • And all educational bodies associated with the Anglican Church in these islands “to accept the study of Maori language as an integral part of their

teaching programmes”… and be “urged to include… an understanding of the principles of partnership and bicultural development and marae kawa in those teaching programmes.”

I

n his thesis Rangi considers the latest economic, political, constitutional debates on bicultural partnership in the light of the Treaty, and he has reviewed the writings of 23 contemporary Maori theologians.

And on the strength of his research he makes what he describes as “a call to the church for bold, loving transformation.”

Developing his thesis, he says, wasn’t an abstract exercise.

“It was a prayerful, spiritual journey,” he says. “Every day I was praying, every time I sat down to study or write I would pray.

“I’m 58 – and you only take on a doctoral thesis at my age if you’re absolutely passionate about it.”

Now that he’s nailed his doctorate, Rangi is looking to help others.

“A critical part of my job now is to discern the God-given gifts of staff and students, and how these may be delivered for mission and ministry.

“Tikanga Maori has a huge task to prepare students for effective mission and ministry – not only in Maori contexts, but also for a three tikanga church.”

But that’s not a task he shrinks from.

“With God’s help and blessing,” says Rangi, “I can make a contribution.”

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Jenny's Book Dr Jenny Te Paa is using her sabbatical to publish her PhD and collected writings in book form.

Her PhD proposed a model for bicultural theological education – and she says many Anglican seminaries and theological colleges “have adapted the principles for inclusivity and honouring diversity” which she outlined there.

Jenny has a wide network of international connections – and she says she’s also exploring ways of enabling faculty and students to interact with the wider Communion through exchanges, research, mission and higher-level scholarship opportunities.

Last year the Graduate Theological Union of Berkeley in California awarded Jenny its alumna of the year award – and posted a brief video of her talking about her life and work at: http:// www.gtu.edu/multimedia/ video/?searchterm=Jenny%20 Te%20Paa

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E D U C AT I O N

Photo: Barry Doig

Hats off to theological education: (from left) Alistair Smith (DipTh), Rev Nathaniel Petterson (BTheol), Karen Elliott (BTheol), Rev Zane Elliott (BTheol), and Rev Di Griffin (BMin). Inset: Dr Rod Thompson.

Groaning and

graduation

Helen Stephen-Smith

S

tudying for a theological degree can be like giving birth – both delightful and agonising – according to the Rev Dr Rod Thompson, national principal of Laidlaw College.

Addressing the inaugural graduation of Bishopdale Theological College in the Nelson cathedral at the end of March, Dr Thompson described how his two granddaughters were birthed out of groaning which is part of the created order that Paul speaks of in Romans 8:22.

“New life,” he added, “will always be looking for the full future of God’s Kingdom.”

Dr Thompson’s address came after interviews with the five graduating students who expressed similar ideas.

One spoke of being “petrified” before the first class, and another said she felt unsure that she would be able to complete three years of fulltime study.

At times, some graduands felt like giving up when inspiration for essays was slow in coming, or when Greek seemed

Hidden Country Having Faith in Aotearoa New Zealand John Bluck's autobiography $34.95. Available from Epworth Books, Box 17255, Wellington 6147 sales@epworthbooks.org.nz

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like double-dutch. But all spoke of the encouragement and support given by tutors and staff throughout their studies, especially when they felt stressed by deadlines.

This was the help they needed to “birth” their degrees.

The Ven Dr Tim Harris, Dean of Bishopdale Theological College, noted the importance of education and learning so that students of the College are equipped for ministry wherever their lives take them.

One graduand, Alistair Smith, has been inspired to continue with graduate study because he finds deeper knowledge answers his questions. The Rev Nathaniel Petterson found time to think through some heresies, as well as enjoying the study of God’s grace.

The Rev Zane Elliott and his wife Karen, now ministering in Dunedin, have found that their degree course enables them to say why they believe what they believe.

The Rev Di Griffin is putting her pastoral knowledge to practical use in her work.

In the main address, Dr Thompson spoke of being inspired by the story of Hans and Sophie Scholl, students at Munich University in the early 1940s. They were members of the White Rose group who were arrested by the Gestapo and beheaded. Why? Because they wrote about truth, love and goodness in leaflets that were distributed to oppose Hitler’s Nazi regime.

Dr Thompson urged his listeners to follow the example of the Scholls in being aware of the goodness of God, while struggling with lies, deception and violence.

Dr Thompson’s final advice to the graduates was that as agents of the Kingdom of God they should be “incisive and intelligent for the church and for the world.

Celebrate goodness, and confront all things with grace,” he urged.

Bishop Richard Ellena presented graduands with their formal degree documents, and priests were given a Bishopdale preaching scarf.

The worshipful ceremony included a moving mihi from the Ven Andy Joseph, the Rev Dr Graham O’Brien singing The trumpet shall sound, an aria from Handel’s Messiah, and readings on wisdom from Proverbs (8: 1-11) and 1 Corinthians (1:20-31).

Prayers were led by Bishop Derek Eaton, whose vision led to the foundation of the college.

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The fifth and last section of Ken Booth’s study guide, God’s NeverEnding Story, covers our New Zealand story.

Our secular histories are good but have little to say about the church and less about God. Church histories have little room to consider our general history.

So how can we begin to link God’s story with our story? We’re not in the habit of doing that.

There’s a lot of general history in this section of God’s Never-Ending Story, as well as stories from the churches.

There are accounts of early Maori culture, settler hopes and dreams, Maori disillusionment, various social changes like votes for women and the consumer society that emerged after World War II, right down to the revolution of the 1980s and the changed patterns that followed.

Ken began with a conviction that somewhere in that story are to be found the threads of God’s neverending story of fashioning a people.

Those threads are not obvious and certainly aren’t confined to the churches. The history of Israel in the Old Testament may have been written to show whether the people were faithful to the covenant, but that does not work in New Zealand.

We have to read New Zealand’s story with eyes of faith, constantly asking, What do we really believe? What is our faith calling us to do?

Anyone intrigued by such questions can order Book 5 of God’s Neverending Story from Theology House, 30 Church Lane, Christchurch 8014.

Ph 03 355-9145. admin@theologyhouse.ac.nz The cost is $20 each, with a discount for study sets.

Megan Blakie

The end of the never-ending story

Alicia Landis dis (left) of the Creation Care Study programme with students eron and Kerry Merchant at the former convent in Kaikoura.

Max Cameron

Sold on Creation Megan Blakie

A

n old convent tucked away on the outskirts of Kaikoura township is home to overseas students studying Christian environmentalism.

Up to 20 undergraduates at a time, from Canada and the United States, live and study at the converted site while attending the Creation Care Study Programme established by Kiwiborn educationist Dr Chris Elisara.

The students come from a range of state and Christian universities, and are encouraged to connect with local churches during their 3½month stay.

“We feel welcomed by the Kaikoura community and in particular by the different churches here,” says programme director Courtnay Wilson.

Anglican priest-in-charge Owen Haring says the students who attend St Peter’s make a positive contribution. Three of the programme’s seven permanent staff are also part of the church’s music group.

The independently run study programme moved to the tranquil Kaikoura site in 2008 but has been operating in New Zealand for a decade. Students study theology, sustainable community development and ecology towards their four-year degrees.

“Our students don’t just come from science backgrounds or even theology; they come from all different areas of study,” says programme administrator Alicia Landis.

“Hopefully, they integrate what they’ve learned here into whatever that area is – whether it’s business or biology.”

Kerry Merchant, a 21-year-old from Boston who is majoring in English and environmental science, says the programme has helped her to make connections between faith and caring for the environment.

“If I really care for God, and for people, I’m gonna care for the land because the land affects the people and [caring for] it affects my character,” she says.

Max Cameron, a 20-year-old Anglican from Vancouver, is concerned about methods of production and would like to see householders make more informed choices.

“People need to stop being detached from where their food and clothes come from, and thow they manage resources around the home – such as throwing away rubbish,” he challenges.

Courtnay says the goal of the programme is not only to foster an appreciation of nature but also to develop Christian discipleship.

“We want [the students] to have a heartbeat for caring for people and places, and those two things are very deeply interwoven.”

Alicia observes that the interaction between students and local churchgoers – which includes an initial stay with families before transferring to the convent – has a huge positive impact on the students.

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PILGRIMAGE

As the fires of revolution swept round the Arab world, a bomb blast next to Jerusalem’s central bus station on March 22 was another brutal reminder that peace in the Middle East has always been a fragile flower.

It was the first fatal attack in Jerusalem since 2004 and stoked fears of a fresh round of hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians. Tragically, the one fatality was neither Jewish nor Palestinian, but a 59-year-old Briton studying to be a Bible translator at the Hebrew University.

College in East Jerusalem, and he notes that to the Western eye Old Jerusalem doesn’t look to be worth the struggle.

In the harsh light of day it’s a tumble of sepulchred stone surmounted by busy towers, spires, minarets and the golden crown of Islam. Even the olive trees look tired and scratchy.

But as the sun dips and the native rock turns to honey, the legacy of tumult and tension seems to soften and Jerusalem becomes yet again the most compelling destination on earth...

Taonga editor Brian Thomas has just returned from a course at St George’s

Jerusalem,

o Jerusalem...

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.

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As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you… had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes” (Luke 19:41-42) wo thousand years on, the tears still flow. For Jerusalem, the Holy City, is just as divided, just as conflicted, as it was in Jesus’ day.

Perched on a ridge in the Judean hills, Jerusalem has been the seat of religious devotion, fanaticism and bloodymindedness for more than 3000 years.

No other city on earth is as well versed in heaven – and hell. No other city is as hotly contested by saints, prophets, martyrs and politicians. And there lies the enduring tragedy of old Jerusalem: it is three sacred cities in one, and therefore “exclusive property” for three radically different faiths.

• Jews claim Jerusalem (Yerushalayim) as the summit where God tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his son Isaac.

It’s also where David laid to rest the Ark of the Covenant and established the kingdom of Israel, and where Solomon built the first great temple.

• Muslims venerate Jerusalem (Al-Quds) as the point of ascent for Mohammed on his night journey to “the farthermost place.”

Fittingly, the 35-acre Haram al-Sharif/ Temple Mount is surmounted by the golden crown of Islam, the Al-Aqsa mosque.

• As for Christians… well, the very stones of the city are precious to the universal church because they were bloodied by the feet of Jesus on his way to the cross. The cavernous Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a few blocks from the AlAqsa mosque, enshrines Jesus’ death and resurrection and is therefore a magnet for millions.

Synagogues, mosques, churches, shrines – all rub cornerstones in this most ancient of fortresses. And the miracle is that their many adherents rub shoulders on footpaths every day, albeit across chasms of belief and culture.

---------------------------------------------Unravelling the history of Jerusalem is like peeling an onion: layer upon layer of ethnic and religious difference go back as far as 5000 years, when the place was just a Jebusite village in the wilderness.

T

Moreover, from the time that David first laid claim to it, Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, besieged over 22 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, and given so many makeovers that hardly anything of the Old City remains intact.

Excavations are everywhere – some so deep as to warrant safety fences – but these only confirm the layered lineage.

“Is this the actual place where Jesus …?”

It’s the question uppermost in our pilgrim minds as we pick our way through the city, but course director Andrew Mayes is a scholar and therefore careful not to overstep the historical bounds. “We just don’t know,” he says with a hint of resignation.

“This is the general area, but so many changes have occurred since then.”

The same historical ambiguity attaches to the shrines and reliqueries that abound in the Old City. Pilgrims are fair game for local entrepreneurs, so it pays to be sceptical if offered a splinter of the true cross or the toenail of a martyr.

A story that I hope and pray is not apocryphal tells of a tour party being ushered into a Jerusalem shrine and shown a seasoned skull said to belong to John the Baptist.

Further into the tour, the party shuffles into another shrine to be shown another skull, also said to be that of John the Baptist.

“Hold on, we’ve already seen John’s

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skull,” says an alert pilgrim.

“Ah, yes,” concedes the tour guide, “but the other one was John when he was younger.”

Not withstanding entrepreneurial excess, Jerusalem is so well defined by Scripture that it’s impossible to walk its cobbled streets without brushing against some reference to the Old, Old Story.

On an orientation mission we pause at a chiselled doorway to consult our map, only to be prised apart by a succession of people bent on genuflection. “Excuse me, but what’s behind the door?” asks Fred, our ever-curious librarian from Harvard.

No answer; just a look of disdain – which puzzles us further. Until we see, above the door, a Roman numeral that has nothing to do with the street address. In ignorance we have stumbled on the Fifth Station of the Cross along the Via Dolorosa.

The same shudder of awareness sweeps over us as we come upon the Damascus Gate, one of six portals into the Old City.

Approaching it from the outside, I’m disappointed that the limestone battlements aren’t grander, taller. Then I see, huddled against the ancient door, a young Palestinian mother with a baby. She is begging in the shadow of the same archway, on the same cruel stones, as generations of poor have begged since the time of Jesus, and earlier.

His words resonate still: “The poor you

St GEORGE’S COLLEGE, Jerusalem, is an international study centre in the garden surrounds of the Anglican cathedral, a short walk from the Old City.

It offers 20 en-suite rooms and an extensive library, lecture room, chapel and common room.

Courses this year include “The Palestine of Jesus”, “St Paul and the early church”.“Abraham, yesterday and today”, “Ways in the wilderness”, an excursion to Jordan, and a programme for youth.

Fees vary according to the itinerary and cover all meals, accommodation, transport, admission charges, and even gratuities. The most popular course, “The Palestine of Jesus,” costs US$2905 and runs for two weeks.

The Dean is Rev Dr Stephen Need, from Nottingham, while the Course Director is Canon Dr Andrew Mayes from Chichester.

Stephen’s specialty is St Paul and Turkey, and Andrew’s interest is spirituality.

The college’s postal address is Box 1248, Jerusalem 91000, Israel. www.sgcjerusalem.org

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will always have with you, but you will not always have me.” (Matt 26:11) ---------------------------------------------e sit and watch, entranced, as a timeless procession files in and out of the city walls: Palestinian girls, beautifully groomed in mandatory headscarves and long, tailored coats; older women weighed down by centuries-old domesticity and the ritual of daily bread and vegetables; loud barrow boys in T-shirts and jeans, balancing huge trays of pita rolls on their heads; and of course the Ultra-Orthodox Jews, a race apart in their black frockcoats, phylacteries, kippas and prayer books.

“And here comes a donkey!” cries Chris. Sure enough: through the Damascus Gate it comes, clip-clopping straight from the pages of the Illustrated Bible. A line of sleek tourist buses beyond the gate offers an incongruous backdrop to the donkey procession but that’s Jerusalem: antiquity and modernity, cheek by jowl.

It’s a very long way from Aotearoa-New Zealand, and our sense of dislocation is suddenly heightened by the call of the muezzin, exhorting Muslims to prayer.

We’ve heard it on television many times, but the actual sound is much louder, much more intrusive, than expected.

Minarets all over the city broadcast the call five times daily – a tradition said to stretch back as far as Muhammad, when a muezzin called Bilal ibn Ribah took to the streets to urge the faithful to prayer.

For centuries the muezzin sang live from the top of the minaret: a vocational calling in itself. Today most minarets play recorded

W

voices that soar above the noise of city traffic. Strangely, we soon grow used to the interruption, even discovering an errie beauty in the swoop and swirl of a tone scale quite unlike our own.

---------------------------------------------Christian newcomers to Jerusalem face a rude awakening. The city is so central to our story that we expect it still to be teeming with brothers and sisters in the Faith. Not so.

Christians make up less than 2 percent of the total in greater Jerusalem – far fewer than 12,000 – and this number is in freefall as younger Palestinians seek a better life away from the Israeli yoke, preferably n North America.

It’s a depressing prospect: the cradle of worldwide Christianity reduced to little more than a theme park. And yet that’s the prediction of a former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey.

Up-to-date demographics are hard to pin down in the ongoing dispute between Jew and Palestinian because possession counts for everything in Jerusalem. In 2009, however, Jews and non-Arabs accounted for 475,000 (64%) of the 760,800 total, while Muslims numbered 250,000 (33%).

A paradox is that the proliferation of Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem is still not keeping pace with the Palestinian birthrate.

An even greater shock awaits the naïve Christian, though: God’s Chosen People don’t want a bar of us.

Christian Zionists the world over fail to grasp this fundamental reality. Jews may be our spiritual ancestors, but Palestinian Christians are our brothers and sisters by virtue of our common baptism.

THE FOUR QUARTERS of Jerusalem’s Old City – Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Armenian – evolved after the Muslim sultan Saladin conquered the city in 1187. Jews eventually moved into the area around the Wailing Wall, Muslims into the area around the Dome of the rock, and Christians into the area around the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. An Armenian community had already formed in the south-western corner of the city around St James’ Cathedral.

The division of quarters has never been rigid, with Jews living in the Armenian Quarter, Muslims in the Christian Quarter, and so on.

However, each quarter has its own identity and is defined by streets as well as religion and culture.

Page 34

Which is why we spent one Sunday morning with the people of St Andrew’s Parish in Ramallah, a Palestinian stronghold on the West Bank. The priest, Fr Hanna Dally, has a solemn manner that lends gravity to his preaching – a wake-up call for obedience in all things. But he’s clearly chuffed to have us along, and preaches at length in English (for our benefit?) as well as in Arabic.

Coffee in the hall afterwards is no different from a New Zealand parish gathering: we chat politely with the locals while half a dozen kids ricochet a soccer ball off the walls.

Fr Dally’s sermon also makes more sense as he shares his sadness at seeing so many of his young people seduced by secularism and materialism.

Who said East and West shall never meet? y contrast, our approach to the fabled Western Wall points up the old religious and ethnic tensions because we make the mistake of venturing out on Shabbat, the Jewish holy day of rest, and are turned back by Israeli soldiers. “Come back tomorrow,” they say brusquely.

The Wall (colloquially called the Wailing Wall) sits at the very heart of Judaism, because it’s all that is left of the massive retaining wall that King Herod built round the Temple two millennia ago.

After the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70AD, the Temple Mount was shunned by Jews for hundreds of years – and even today no devout Jew will set foot on the Mount plaza for fear of trespassing on the holiest of holies, the inner Temple site.

But they do turn up to the Western Wall in droves – men and women in separate sections – to say their prayers or to stuff written petitions (teztezls) between the stones. These petitions are cleared away only a few times a year, to be buried in a Jewish cemetery.

We’ve been warned to dress modestly – no bare legs or shoulders – and to cover our heads. Thankfully, there’s a stall offering white skull caps (yarmulkas) for unprepared males.

I wait for a space, then press my forehead against stone that has been polished by aeons of prayer. In such a hallowed place, only a fool would say in his heart that there is no God.

B

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ABOVE: The Western Wall of Solomon’s Temple, at the base of the Temple Mount. The larger area (top) is for men only. The women have their own, smaller area (above).

LEFT: An Ultra-Orthodox Jew carries the weight of Torah.

Photos by Tom Donlan

ABOVE: Excavations at the Pools of Bethsaida. Layer upon layer of stonework reveals a history of conquest and adaptation.

LEFT: Palestinian women in the Muslim Quarter. Although governed by a strict dress code, they’re not averse to lipstick, mascara and even extended eyelashes.

LEFT TOP: Headwear for the well-dressed woman in the Muslim Quarter.

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Brian Thomas continues his pilgrimage...

Who is your neighbour? ltra-Orthodox Jews are a law unto themselves and stay darkly aloof from Christian and Muslim, even when paths cross.

We tasted this disdain firsthand when a Hasidic Jew climbed aboard our shuttle bus from Tel Aviv. The only empty seat was across the aisle from my wife Chris, and the man’s countenance dropped at the prospect of sitting so close to a Western woman.

We faced a longish ride to Jerusalem, though, and religious scruples took a back seat to bodily comfort as he sat down stiffly – but only until another seat became vacant.

Two young Palestinian musicians, on the other hand, chatted with us throughout the journey and even showed us their instruments: peculiarly shaped lutes that might have struck a chord with King David.

In fact, the reception we got from all Palestinians – Muslim as well as Christian – was spontaneous and warm.

“English?” they would venture.

“No, Kiwis… New Zealanders.”

“Ah, New Zealand!” Their grins looked genuine, reflecting a universal perception of Kiwis as good sports with no political axes to grind.

Of course, the street vendors’ charm usually was driven by an ulterior motive – spelt “shekel.” One vendor asked where I came from, then claimed to be the friend of a high-ranking Kiwi army officer. Such a small world.

But the Dale Carnegie manual paled alongside the technique of a young shoe salesman who, on hearing that we were from St George's College, instantly produced a photo of his class at St George’s School next to the cathedral.

He seemed so proud of his Anglican connection that my resolve to haggle wilted and I handed him the asking price, 200 shekels (($100), for a pair of imitation leather boots from Turkey.

From one Turkey to another, it turns out; for shopkeepers in the vicinity of St George’s College have long perfected the tug of a school photo on an Anglican pilgrim’s heart.

“Always haggle,” said a college staff member when I told him about my purchase. “It’s part of the culture here.”

Well, yes... But it was still a nice pair of boots at that price, and who could blame the salesman for seizing on Anglican goodwill.

A much more innocent and heartwarming

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Graffiti guru Banksy’s comical take on the wall.

encounter occurred in the Old City when Chris and her friend Amanda said hello to a middle-aged Palestinian woman and were whisked home for coffee. Just like that: off a cobbled alley and through a tall, weathered door that looked like the entrance to a carpenter’s workshop.

So much for appearances, because our women eventually emerged from this humble dwelling, wide-eyed at Middle Eastern hospitality. They’d been introduced to three generations of Muslim women (none of whom was conversant in English) and treated to Turkish coffee even though they were strangers literally off the street.

(They parted on a promise to stay in touch. And sure enough, following our return, a letter carrying a Jerusalem postmark invited Chris back for a family wedding.)

How different the Holy Lands – indeed, the whole world – would be if politicians could latch on to such generosity of heart. As it is, greater Jerusalem is laced with checkpoints where Israeli soldiers maintain order at the point of a machine-gun.

For the fact is that Jerusalem – ostensibly an international city – is under military occupation. The 1948 United Nations resolution that was meant to cement the borders of Israel has crumbled with successive wars and land-grabs, leaving the city acutely at odds with itself and therefore a flashpoint for religious and ethnic extremism.

In the ceasefire to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the United Nations ruled that East Jerusalem (and indeed the entire West Bank

of the Jordan River) would be controlled by Jordan, while West Jerusalem would belong to Israel. The Six Day War of 1967 changed all that, however, when Israeli soldiers took over the West Bank and effectively annexed East Jerusalem.

Since then, the Palestinian Authority has been allowed some jurisdiction over the West Bank, but the Israeli Defence Forces still call the shots. Literally so – as anyone crossing Jerusalem soon realises.

Before leaving St George’s College our busload was drilled in how to behave at checkpoints: “Don’t try to be clever with the Israeli soldiers. In fact, don’t say anything. Just hold up your passports, like so…”

Who were we to argue? Especially when two teenage conscripts climbed aboard, weapons at the ready. The fragility of peace in the Middle East takes on new meaning when the muzzle of a loaded rifle brushes your elbow.

We’d heard about the wall, of course, but the height and length were a shock. Slab concrete up to three storeys high, topped with razor wire and stretching for hundreds of kilometres.

Initially, we thought it was there to separate Jews from Palestinians. Wrong.

Much of the wall snakes through Palestinian communities, controlling day-to-day movement across the city.

But humour redeems the ugliest of vistas. Palestinian residents have plastered the wall with cartoons and slogans, and one enterprising cafe-owner has turned the concrete into a giant billboard for his specialty, “Wall Burgers.”

“Guerrilla artist” Banksy went one better and turned the wall into an international gallery. Armed with stencils and spraycans, the English graffiti guru travelled to Palestine in 2007 and adorned the wall with a series of “Holiday Snaps” parodying the military occupation.

“Jerusalem is the ultimate activity-holiday destination for graffiti writers,” he quipped on his website. But Israeli soldiers were not the only ones to take umbridge. An old Palestinian bystander remarked that Banksy’s artwork made the wall look beautiful – and that in itself was offensive. “We don’t want it to be beautiful,” the man said. “We hate this wall. Go home!”

Israelis will argue that Palestinian terrorism necessitates such overt security.

ANGLICAN TAONGA

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ot all Jews sit comfortably with Israel’s settlements. One of the strongest critics is David Grossman, an acclaimed novelist and essayist, who argues that the State of Israel will never truly inherit the Promised Land and live up to its God-given potential, for as long as it acts illegally in the Palestinian territories.

“The primary purpose of Zionism,” he writes, “was that Jews could return home to create one place in the world where the Jewish individual and the Jewish nation would truly feel at home.

“It was to be a place where they would not be treated as guests or strangers to be tolerated, and not as parasites, but as the inhabitants and the landlords of their home.

And at this state of tranquillity and security

Photo: Broo ke Easton

They’ll also point out that the army presence makes the city safe now for tourists like us to visit. And that’s true. We felt safer in Jerusalem by night than we do in central Christchurch.

But time and again we heard from Palestinians just how hard it is for them to live an ordinary life amid so many restrictions.

“It’s definitely getting worse,” said a disconsolate taxi-driver. “We can’t get travel permits, and we can’t get building permits.

All because the Israelis want Jerusalem for themselves.”

One of the Palestinian staff at St George’s College echoed the taxi-driver’s frustration, saying that unless he got up at 4.30am he risked being late for work due to checkpoint delays.

As it was, he counted himself luckier than most because his work at the college qualifies him for a travel permit. Without that job, he might not be allowed to cross the city at all.

The greatest obstacle to peaceful coexistence, however, is the Israeli settlements that are slowly spreading across the occupied territories. The international community agrees that they are illegal; even the United States, Israel’s strongest ally, wants a freeze on them.

But Israel refuses to back off, for good reason. The surest way to build a homeland is to plant families in the soil, and thereby to raise successive generations of children who call no other place “home”.

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ABOVE: Beauty soothes the savage breast… as St George’s pilgrim Ingrid Easton coaxes some warmth from two Israeli soldiers in Old Jerusalem. All Israeli men serve three years in the army, while women usually do two. UltraOrthodox Jews are exempted from military service in order to study Torah. Ultra-Orthodox also receive a pension so that they don’t have to find paid employment. This provision – set in place soon after Israel became a state – was to replace scholars lost in the Holocaust. However, a few thousand Ultra-Orthodox 50 years ago have grown to a million today, which means a whopping welfare bill for the state. Secular Israelis are not impressed.

we have not yet arrived.”

Grossman goes further: “An absurd and destructive state has emerged whereby a vast share of Israel’s national energies, financial and emotional and human assets, and political and national enthusiasm have been invested … in a territory that most Israelis do not feel belongs to them in any full, natural, or harmonious sense.

“I would hope that by relinquishing the (Palestinian) territories and ending the occupation … most Israelis will be restored to the authentic emotions of their identity.”

Six years on, Grossman’s vision seems little more than a pipedream as Israel cements its hold on the West Bank. In January, moreover, al-Jazeera TV released a cache of leaked Palestinian records revealing that in May 2008 the Palestinian Authority was prepared to let Israel have nearly all the settlement land in East Jerusalem in return for gains elsewhere. And Israel still said no.

The Palestinian Authority has, of course, denounced the leaks as a “propaganda game,” but there’s no denying that its cause has been seriously undermined. Saeb Erekat, Palestine’s chief negotiator, felt compelled to resign after the source of the leaks was traced to his own office.

As the London Guardian editorialised, the leaked documents underline three things about the players in the Middle Eastern peace process: weakness and desperation on the part of the Palestinian leaders; an unyielding correctness by the Israeli negotiators; and a thinly disguised

US contempt for the Palestinians, despite Obama’s tough public stance towards Israel.

In fact, the Palestinians have all but given up on the Americans, especially after the US apparently bowed to Israeli pressure and vetoed an Arab resolution in the UN Security Council in mid-February.

The draft resolution, backed by all 14 other members of the Council, condemned Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories as “obstacles to peace.” But the US ambassador, Susan Rice, used her veto on grounds that the resolution “risked hardening the positions of both sides and could encourage parties to stay out of negotiations.”

Sadly, the reverse looks to be true, with the Palestinians now refusing to rejoin the negotiating table.

A further disappointment for the worldwide church is that the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem, a Palestinian, has been denied residency in his own diocese. Why so?

Because of improper land dealings, says Israel’s Interior Ministry.

Bishop Suheil Dawani not only denies any wrongdoing. He’s also fighting his case in the Israeli courts. Meanwhile, his diocese has asked Israeli President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior Anglicans and politicians in the United States and Britain to intervene.

It's a long shot, but then we are talking about the land of miracles.

In the next issue of Anglican Taonga, we ask why Jesus took the high ground before walking to Jerusalem.

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EASTERTIDE 2011

Time to boycott, says theologian or a “dangerous man” Naim Ateek hardly instils fear and loathing.

He’s pushing 74, looks as though a robust game of petanque would stretch him physically, and he’s dead against any form of violence.

But Dr Ateek is also founder and head of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Centre in Jerusalem – and there lies the rub. To some Jewish extremists, he’s an anti-Semite in sheep’s clothing who is committed to the elimination of Israel, and therefore worse than Hamas.

Well, Dr Ateek spent an evening with us at St George’s College, and while he slammed Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, he also argued for a two-state solution that brooks no violence from either side.

Not that he holds out much hope of it.

“The peace process has failed,” he said gloomily, referring to Israel’s latest refusal to heed Barack Obama’s call for a freeze on Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.

“Obama understands, but in the US there are forces stronger than the Administration,” he added. “The relationship between the United States and Israel is unbreakable.

Israel (still) gets the lion’s share of US aid – $3 billion a year, with no ties – so Israel has won.”

That’s not to say that Dr Ateek believes Palestinians should lie down and accept the

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occupation. Quite the opposite.

The Palestinian Authority should withdraw from further negotiations and take on a policy of non-violent resistance, he said. That means a boycott of Israeli goods, divestment from Israeli business, and international sanctions against the “apartheid state” of Israel.

The worldwide church didn’t escape his anger during our meeting. “I’m disgusted by the leadership of churches who won’t speak out,” he said.

In fact, he thinks Christians have unwittingly fuelled Zionist expansionism.

Zionism was originally a secular movement, motivated by the Holocaust, he explained, but after the 1967 war came a shift to religious Zionism.

Backed by Christian Zionists who looked to the Second Coming of Christ, Israel substituted the Bible for the Holocaust as motivation for a Jewish state.

“And the Bible is stronger than the Holocaust,” Dr Ateek observed.

A more optimistic visitor to the college was Dr Yakir Englander, a Jewish academic who comes from Ultra-Orthodox roots but now pins his hope on Kids4Peace, an Anglican initiative that takes Jewish, Palestinian and Christian children from Jerusalem to the U.S. for summer camps.

As he put it, the aim of the programme is to bring people together in the present –

Dr Ateek.

“to create soldiers for a non-violent army” – rather than to attempt a grand political settlement for the future.

Kids4Peace sounds miniscule, but with all the international schemes coming to nought, perhaps the long-term answer in Jerusalem really is for more inhabitants to become like little children.

Brian Thomas Naim Ateek was the first to articulate a Palestinian theology of liberation in his book, Justice, and only Justice, a Palestinian Theology of Liberation (Orbis, 1989). A former Canon of St George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem, he lectures widely at home and abroad.

His latest book, A Palestinian Christian Cry for Reconciliation, was published by Orbis in 2008.

ABOVE: View from the Dominus Flevit Church. overlooking the Garden of Gethsemene and the Temple Mount. The wrought iron frame of the window suggests Jesus’ crown of thorns.

LEFT: A tray of pita breads en route to a market stall in Jerusalem.

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Living Liturgy alternative free until July WePray, a “little brother” of Living Liturgy, can be downloaded for free until July.

It includes the whole of A New Zealand Prayer Book, He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa, the lectionary, additional prayers and sentences in a variety of languages, hymnals, clipart, and Ashes to Fire, For All the Saints and Celebrating Common Prayer.

The contract for Living Liturgy was set to expire at the end of last year but the Norwegian owner, Duplo Data Ltd, was reluctant to sever ties with New Zealand.

Japan & NZ unite in prayer

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iwis and Japanese joined in song and prayer at Waiapu Cathedral, Napier, on April 10, one month on from the Japanese quake and

tsunami.

The 300-strong congregation comprised business folk, school pupils, and those with family connections to Japan.

Mr Takashi Ato, Director of the Japan Information and Cultural Centre of the Embassy, explained that the Japanese character for the word “people” is two strokes leaning on each other, emphasizing our dependence on each other.

Mr Ian Kennedy, NZ’s ambassador to Japan, sent this message: “One lasting image from the television coverage is of a grandmother who lost her whole family standing alongside a small plum tree planted on the day that her granddaughter was born in the garden where her home once stood.

“Somehow the tree alone withstood the storm, providing a sad reminder of a life cut short but a life still celebrated with buds beginning to form.

“My prayer follows from that example: to commit ourselves to standing alongside one another, always mindful of the shared tragedy of Christchurch and Tohoku but determined not to be daunted by it and to build further on the people-to-people contacts, trade, tourism and investment linkages that define the relationship between Japan and New Zealand.”

Buddhist prayers were led by Fujiko

Ikegami from the Temple Koudo-san in Yokohama, who came to Napier especially for the service.

Music was provided by the Cathedral and Civic Choirs, and Annette Taurima sang a haunting song in Japanese, “Haru Ko”.

Dean Helen Jacobi was impressed by the way so many people prepared for the service. “Beautiful flower arrangements were provided and people worked hard to make sure anyone with Japan connections knew about the service. It was a huge privilege to welcome the Buddhist women who led the prayers.”

Just over $2247 was collected for the Red Cross appeal for Japan.

Dagfinn Skogoey, Duplo Data vicepresident and creator of the original LabOra Worship software, says Living Liturgy is very much a Kiwi work.

“We still remember Bishop George [Connor] spending his summer vacation in a very cold and wet Norway working day and night – literally – to enter all the New Zealand Prayer Book information into the databases.”

Duplo Data intends therefore to market and service Living Liturgy directly via its New Zealand representative, the Rev Brian Dawson (Vicar of Havelock North), and also to launch WePray as an alternative resource.

Brian says that eventually WePray will be offered through an annual licence in the same way as Living Liturgy. But up until July people can download and use the new programme free of charge with no commitment to ongoing costs.

“WePray is simply the resource library from the other programme, with a few improvements and additions,” Brian says.

“We really want to encourage people to give it a try. Some have told us that they find Living Liturgy too difficult or more than they really need, and WePray is designed to address that.

“This is for clergy, lay leaders, parish offices – anyone who needs access to prayers and more and doesn’t want to spend ages looking for them.”

More information on WePray or Living Liturgy is available at www.mylabora. com/ANZ

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ART & SPIRITUALITY

Fruits of

divinity

Julanne ClarkeMorris learns that an artist’s palette is a seedbed of deep, spiritual insights

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lenty of visual artists, of various faiths and none, say there’s a distinctly spiritual dimension to their work. Perhaps it’s because communicating without words leaves us more open to the imagination or to influences of the heart – what we might call the movement of the Spirit.

Psychology and philosophy have plenty to say on how that can work, but it’s a simple technical skill that can often open the viewer’s mind to the spiritual dimension.

Visual artists engage in careful training of both the eye and the mind as acute observers of the world. Translating reality

in this way can give a kind of prophetic distance, enabling insight into things not as they expect to look but as elements of shape, tone and colour in 2D or 3D space.

Like prayer, the intense focus that comes from making art in this way allows a mental separation, an intellectual distance from normal life, that opens up the possibility of recognising God’s presence.

Here and there glimpses of heaven may appear – unexpected perspectives on reality that act as catalysts for spiritual reflection.

In his book, The Poetics of Space French philosopher Gaston Bachelard describes the experience of discovering the biggest

ANGLICAN TAONGA

truths through close observation of the tiniest details.

Bachelard pictures a child lying in a field on a summer’s day, watching insects move around under their forest canopy of grass.

Engrossed, the child suddenly becomes aware of his own enormous size compared to the insects’ smallness. Then he compares himself to the scale of the sky – and grasps the immensity of the universe.

So, with such a feast of spiritual insights available to us from artists, why doesn’t the church take art more seriously as a way of engaging and developing faith?

Perhaps the scope of artistic imagination is too scary or too undefined. Or is there a leftover anxiety from the Reformation’s iconoclasts, whose hatred of images destroyed centuries of faithful attempts to approach the divine in art?

Whatever the hesitation, we live in a world that is orienting itself to image-based communication at breakneck speed. All the more reason for Christians to wake up to art and to engage with it as a resource for spirituality and education.

For Arrowtown-based priest and artist Patricia (Pat) Jones, art is an unquestioned source of spiritual sustenance.

“Art brings joy, it uplifts. Its beauty points us to the essential goodness of creation,” she says.

As a trained artist and seasoned practitioner of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd – a children’s faith education programme – Pat has years of experience in art as a resource for spiritual formation.

“Painting figures for the Catechesis and watching children learn with them has been a wonderful experience,” she says.

“It’s very enriching to make art that teaches the deepest mysteries of the faith to young children.”

Pat is saddened by the loss of art in Protestant traditions, and is drawn to churches that celebrate art to the fullest.

“What I love is going into churches full of art. Especially the Eastern Orthodox churches where everything you see – the wall paintings, the mosiacs, the icons, the carvings – all point to God. “It is so spiritual, so absolutely beautiful, it just lifts the soul. In comparison, when you walk into an empty church you have only your own resources to rely on.”

A graduate in both theology and fine arts, Pat wonders whether some Christian suspicion of art is really a lack of education.

She wishes that people would approach art with more curiosity and expectation, as Europe’s illiterate populations did in the Middle Ages.

“In medieval times everyone knew how to view art. They were taught to decipher meaning and approached an image expecting to find its message – they were looking for the story.”

In Pat’s painting there’s always a good story that flows from the kernel of an idea.

“At the moment I’m working on a painting of a tree, inspired by an ancient English poem called The Dream of the Rood,” Pat says.” This poem tells of the crucifixion from the perspective of the tree that became the

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cross of Christ. It’s an exciting prospect.”

Although the artist starts with an intention, a painting must be given the chance to speak in its own voice, “An artwork can communicate things the artist didn’t intend,” Pat says.

“Sometimes you stand back from your own painting and find a meaning that you didn’t expect to see. Those surprises make you wonder, where did that come from?”

Pat’s recent exhibition at Dunedin’s Rocda Gallery took the humble pear as her starting point for reflection.

For Pat, the pears in her garden were pregnant with evocative symbols. For instance, she found in them the seeds that fall to die and be reborn – death and resurrection. t the end of July a Dunedin symposium will allow theologians to engage more deeply with art in the hope of “mending the world.”

“A Confluence of Theology and the Arts” runs from July 29-30 at the Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership and is designed to allow art and theology to enrich and challenge each other in the development of faith and spirituality.

For more information or to register for the conference go to: http://tomendtheworld. wordpress.com/ To contact Christian artists, look for The Chrysalis Seed, a network of Christian artists in Aotearoa-NZ at http://www. csartspace.org.nz

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Bosco Peters looks for an antitode to acedia – a universal condition that manifests itself in pointless distractions

demon

The noonday

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he sun beats down unremittingly from a cloudless sky bleached ashen. The monk, alone in the desert, finds every minute of the day excruciating. Pointless. The zeal and passion of his early years in the wilderness have faded in the relentless desert sun.

The devotional practices he once relished are now oppressive, wearisome, and dull.

His spirit has desiccated. He just doesn’t care. Vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What do people gain from all their toil under the sun?

The early desert monastics were among the first to identify this visit of the noonday demon. They called the demon, acedia – derived from the Greek, to not care.

How often have you heard a sermon on acedia? We’ve all heard of the seven deadly sins, and can probably reel off most if not all of them. But the list used to be eight.

Evagrius Ponticus, in 375AD, developed a list of eight patterns of deadly “thoughts”.

Two centuries after Evagrius, Pope Gregory I did us a disservice in my opinion.

In developing the idea of seven deadly sins, he combined acedia with tristitia (sorrow) and called it sloth.

Evagrius describes the monk at the middle of the day finding the day dragging endlessly. The monk keeps wondering how long until the next meal. He hates this place, this way of life, this work. If anyone has upset the monk recently, the demon reminds him of this, just to increase his revulsion. The monk starts to fantasise about other places where things will go better, and where God can be more worthily worshipped. He thinks of better times past, and grows anxious about the endless years ahead.

Acedia is hard to translate. I suggest restlessness, purposelessness, meaninglessness, aimlessness, a lack of caring. Having acedia (post-Gregory) as a subcategory of sloth is confusing, as acedia can manifest itself not only in idleness but also in meaningless, frenetic activity, in pointless busyness.

Sooner or later we all encounter acedia

in the repetitive routines of life: paperwork, laundry, dishes, and other housework…

Many in contemporary society look at monasticism and the desert tradition of spirituality, and ask: “What’s the point of a life like that?” In fact, this is the very question that they don’t have the nerve to ask of all that absorbs us.

In our culture there is feverish activity which generates its own momentum of further exertion. We can be readily swamped with a false sense of urgency.

So many of us fill our lives with instant, inconsequential communication. And this in turn prompts ill-considered, inane, immediate responses.

Some fill their time producing or demanding pointless reports that everyone secretly knows are little read and seldom acted upon. Even when we are “relaxing” from our exhausting labours, we fill our time with pointless distractions.

We’re a culture, a society suffering from acedia. And the church is not immune, despite our call to be counter-cultural.

Individuals move from community to community, from worship style to worship style, from prayer approach to prayer approach, from relationship to relationship,

The church is not immune to acedia, despite our call to be counter-cultural Page 42

marriage to marriage, restlessly seeking the perfect community, the latest worship song, the latest teaching or trendy preacher, the perfect denomination, the perfect partner.

I often get emails to my liturgy website in the form of, “Our community used ashes last Ash Wednesday, can you please give us ideas for a different way to celebrate Ash Wednesday this year?” Different is better. We avoid monotony and boredom as the new sins.

For centuries clergy and laity prayed Daily Prayer, the disciplined praying of the psalms and meditating on the scriptures that goes back through the desert monastics and into our Jewish roots. But in the 1980s General Synod and all diocesan synods passed legislation removing this requirement from clergy. Too boring, I guess.

And so we lose our very vocation as church. We lose our sense of perspective.

We forget that we are signed with the cross.

We overlook that we are called, not to gain anything but to lose everything; not to be first but last; not to live but to die.

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he monastic solutions include perseverance, fidelity to our liturgical discipline, and community.

Few know of the Western monastic vow of stability. “Stay in your cell and your cell will teach you everything,” the desert monastics taught. Stay in your marriage, your parish community, pray the Daily Office daily, celebrate liturgical life and discipline day by day, week by week, year by year until these wear away our false self, and the true self in Christ is manifest.

Know that when you hit acedia, as most of us do, millions have been in this place before you.

Evagrius has a promise if we overcome acedia. It’s a promise born from the concrete experience of the numerous people he was drawing his insights from.

Conquer acedia and you will have “deep peace and inexpressible joy”.

If nothing else keeps us going, maybe that promise is something to hold on to.

The Rev Bosco Peters runs New Zealand’s most-visited Christian website www.liturgy.co.nz

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SCRIPTURE

Howard Pilgrim asks whether our vision of God’s purpose necessarily involves church architecture

A city with

foundations ormer Cantabrians living well away from Christchurch watched aghast as two huge earthquakes and thousands of aftershocks covered our “Garden City” in a heap of silt, leaving thousands of its citizens homeless and reducing many heritage buildings to rubble.

Christchurch is the place to which I gravitated as a university student, then remained for most of my working life, and I still treasure it for its enduring place in my inner geography.

So much for nostalgia! The city’s more loyal inhabitants face issues of survival, accepting makeshift arrangements for power, water and sewerage in the face of winter, and a threatened central government takeover of the city’s rebuilding. What is the core mission of the church in this ongoing crisis?

Few Christians would argue with the bishop and dean who stood before their ruined cathedral proclaiming, “This is just bricks and mortar: all that matters right now is caring for the people.” True, the people’s welfare is of greater value that even our most hallowed buildings. But what happens when we are asked whether we plan to rebuild our places of worship? What issues does that raise for our post-Christendom missional consciousness?

“The earthquake was not an act of God ... God’s initiative is to be found in what happens next,” they said. When a shaken community unites to survive and to grieve, we have no difficulty in finding God’s care in that process. But then what?

Is the risen Christ calling his people to a long-term project in bricks and mortar, or should we be resetting our sights on something much more peoplefocused? Does our vision of God’s purpose necessarily involve church architecture?

A thousand years of European Christians certainly thought so, as did our Anglican forebears on these shaky islands. We would question their vision only if we believed God was awakening us to something more true to the gospel.

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church A radical critique of our inherited churchbuilding tradition might be supported by a reading of such New Testament passages as Hebrews 12:26-27: “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven.” This phrase “Yet once more” indicates the removal of what is shaken – that is, created things – so that what cannot be shaken may remain.

Maybe it’s getting too literal to see every earthquake as a divine shakeup when you choose to live above the collision of two tectonic plates. But when virtually all the church buildings in your community fall down at once, should Christians consider that there might be a special message in it, for those with ears to hear? Especially when the epistle writer goes on, “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe; for indeed our God is a consuming fire.” (12:28-29) Most of the earlier argument in that epistle has sought to establish the reality of an unseen, heavenly realm into which Christ has gone as our great high priest and now reigns as king. Combine this vision with these words in chapter 13, “For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come,” and we might conclude that our true home is in heaven and our mission is to encourage others to set their hopes on that unshakeable reality beyond this present troubled life.

I’ve heard many such sermons, but they are not necessarily right, nor typically Anglican.

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here may be a better way of reading Hebrews. In 11:10 we’re told that Abraham “looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” That city was Jerusalem, the earthly city in the promised land, which he was not yet able to possess. So in the meantime he lived in a tent, trusting that God’s promised city would be inhabited by his descendents.

The foundations of that city were the

promises of God God. It was “heavenly” in its origin, but not in its eventual location. When God was ready, it would be built on earth.

We too have received an unshakeable promise of the kingdom of God over which Christ is already reigning in heaven. Jesus taught us to pray “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth,” rather than “Take us away to your kingdom in heaven.”

No existing social order constitutes the “abiding home” for which we long, but no other place than planet Earth is given as the locality in which it will appear. This world is indeed our home and we are not just passing through, which makes it the right place for us to build our places of worship as signs of the hidden reality of God’s presence and of God’s reign breaking into our midst.

Our commitment to that purpose is an expression of a faith that founds the cities and sanctuaries we build on the faithful creativity of God. What is tested through this recent calamity, then, is our trust in God and our resolve to join in his ongoing project of creation. Indeed, God’s shaking of heavens and earth promised in Hebrews quotes the post-exilic prophet Haggai, whose short book is entirely devoted to rebuking Jewish leaders for trying to rebuild Jerusalem as a secular city without its temple.

The promised shakeup of the nations would not only provide a safe political space in which to rebuild the temple, but even empty foreign pockets to resource the project! Can God be telling us that rebuilding Christchurch without its church buildings is not an option?

I have indicated two very different ways of responding to the same text – each will seem obvious to some readers and implausible to others. Resolving the theological differences they represent may clarify our Anglican mission as we walk with the Diocese of Christchurch in the challenging years ahead.

The Rev Dr Howard Pilgrim lives in Napier.

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SPIRITUALITY

Craufurd Murray reflects on the costs of war – especially to religious faith

Heads above the parapet

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pen on the desk beside me is my uncle’s British Expeditionary Force armyissue notebook from the First World War. He was a chaplain in France, and his service included a 12-month posting to a casualty clearing station.

Glancing down the first page of burials he conducted, I notice 12 regiments mentioned. Details include: army number, name, initials, regiment, date of death, religion, grave number, where the body came from, cause of death, date of burial.

One soldier belonged to an Australian Tunnelling Company, although not the company featured in the 2010 film, Beneath Hill 60. Most of the men listed in the notebook came from hospitals or forward field-aid stations. It’s easy to recognise when a major offensive was taking place as a rush of entries reads: “From the trenches…killed in action.” Endlessly, the letters “g.s.w.” (gunshot wound) appear, and his notes reveal where wounds were inflicted.

The ugliness and human cost of war leaps out from these pages, but unrecorded is the pain of loss that would have been felt acutely by their families.

Even for those with strong faith, war raises perplexing questions about the nature of God. War has brought people to faith and turned others from it. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French priest who chose to remain as a stretcher-bearer in the trenches and who lost two brothers in battle, said: “More than ever I believe that life is beautiful, in the grimmest circumstances – when you can see God, ever-present, in them.”

This challenging statement was written immediately after his experiences in the terrible fighting at Ypres.

The history of war shows that we find it much easier to fight and resort to violence and to strengthen the capacity for military response, than to work out how to live in

peace. We fight for a peace we do not know how to sustain, yet armed conflict creates even more problems.

The Decade to Overcome Violence, launched by the World Council of Churches in 2001, was an attempt to unleash the church’s energy to confront all divisions of race, gender, age or culture, while striving to realise justice and peace. It seems to have had little impact.

Perhaps the idea that we could transform entrenched attitudes of aggression and prejudice, campaign against evil and ‘generate a sustainable culture of peace’ (Dublin 2004 ‘Prevention of Violent Conflict’) seemed too big to tackle.

Perhaps our dilemma is that we believe there are situations where violence is justified. The United Nations Security Council resolution to establish a no-fly zone over Libya is a case in point.

Although we may see perpetrators of oppressive acts of violence as morally degenerate, sentiment without practical engagement means we are taking no responsibility for change.

‘ The kind of world we live in is made by the kind of people who live in it’ Page 44

The church has an impressive record of relief work, dealing with the consequences rather than the causes of human crises. It needs at institutional and individual levels to engage more purposefully with the political and commercial world.

Governments and multi-nationals have to be challenged over policies that trigger or inflict violence. The church should speak out more forcefully against abuse of people, animals, and the natural world in relation to the production of consumer goods.

This may seem like stepping into a minefield, but an example of what can be achieved and how people can be mobilized to express concern and exert legitimate pressure, is shown by Avaaz.org – a small, dedicated group with a courageous global campaign network.

It was reassuring to read, in the last edition of Anglican Taonga, about the church’s active involvement in confronting family violence in the South Pacific.

In The Song of the Bird, Anthony de Mello recalls from the month of the October Revolution in 1917, that the Russian church’s leadership was involved in a passionate debate about the colour of a certain liturgical vestment! This may be apocryphal, but it’s a salutary reminder that the church will lose its way if it refuses to involve itself in the issues facing society.

The Anglican Communion Covenant calls us to be open to leadership that enables “God’s people to respond in courageous witness to the power of the gospel in the world” (1.2.6).

One of the outstanding features of Anzac Day is that it involves us all. We remember and honour the sacrifice and courage of those who fought and died.

Within this mixture of grief and gratitude is a message that speaks to the past, present and future of our nation.

Anzac Day is not just for those who have seen military service or lived through times of war. Young people attend the dawn parades in large numbers. They have a clear grasp of the significance of the day in a world racked by violence, abuse of human rights, fear tactics of extremists, and frequent sabre rattling.

ANGLICAN TAONGA

EASTERTIDE 2011

The last word

in marathons Their generation can see how multiculturalism, lauded in many post-World War II societies, has brought about segregation and marginalisation of minority groups. It’s among the young of our society, who understand the toxic effects of aggressive behaviour and brutality, that the ideal of “a sustainable culture of peace” has to take root.

T

he Student Army in Christchurch following the recent earthquakes has given a reminder, far beyond its practical works, of the contribution the young can make.

Brother Roger of Taize had an unshakeable confidence in the young: “We who are older must listen and never condemn…and grasp the very best of the creative intuitions alive in the hearts of today’s youth.”

“The springs of good and evil are within

ourselves. The kind of world we live in is made by the kind of people who live in it. There is no such thing as fear or hate.

There are only individuals who fear and hate. If people were changed, these forces would be gone” (James Reid).

We can choose to create peace or strife. We can make all the difference to someone else for good or ill.

Jesus’ words, “in everything treat others as you would have them treat you”, are a vital principle (they have even been used recently in advertising by a bank!).

St Paul presents another dimension by reminding us that, from a Christian perspective, we are all temples of God’s Spirit.

Craufurd Murray is a Canon Emeritus of ChristChurch Cathedral, and President of St George’s Hospital Incorporated Society.

“No sleep till Revelation” was Dean Jamie Allen’s achievement in Holy Week. And he picked up $15,000 towards a new youth ministry enabler along the way.

Dean Jamie was spearheading a nonstop read-aloud by Taranaki’s cathedral community to mark the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible.

Starting at 7.30am on Palm Sunday, he reached the end of Revelation three nights and four days later. Five-minute breaks were filled by a team of volunteers, young and old, in various languages – including Te Reo, French, Welsh and Afrikaans.

“I began with plenty of gusto and energy,” Dean Jamie says. “Other deans in New Zealand offered to read Genesis 1 at the same time, which gave a lovely sense of collegial support.

“We knew we would constrain the Word by reading it only in the cathedral, so we arranged to visit and read in the CBD (remembering Jesus in the marketplaces); by the beach (giving thanks for the Bible’s arrival on these shores); on Owae Marae (alternate chapters in Te Reo Maori and English); and in a boat on the Tasman Sea (giving thanks for the Word going out from these shores, and praying for those on the water).”

Dean Jamie says he was amazed by the shape of Scripture. “Humankind is consumed by details. We need to extrapolate and to cover every base, whereas God calls us into a dance, almost an improvisation with the Holy Trinity."

He admits the exercise wasn’t without tears.

“I cried through a long section of Isaiah’s prophecy. And one night Handel’s Messiah was sung in the cathedral during the reading. I have never been so affected as I was by hearing ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’.”

He says that by the end of Malachi the team was yearning to hear the name of Jesus – “and when we did, we laughed, we cried and we cheered.”

The target for the appointment of a Taranaki youth ministry enabler is $25,000. If you’d like to help, go to www.taranakicathedral.org.nz

Page 45

ANGLICAN TAONGA

EASTERTIDE 2011

BOOKS

The KJB...

a stroke of genius that proves there’s wisdom in forming a committee Peter Carrell delves into the history of a 400-year-old masterpiece

I

t’s 400 years since the King James Bible (KJB) was published in 1611. Time to take stock of this remarkable version of the Bible. Despite the popularity and prestige of the KJB accrued over the centuries, it was not obvious in the beginning that the King James Bible would become a bestseller, dominating the charts for over 300 years.

It had a great rival, the Geneva Bible, which was brilliant for its time, perfectly sized for portability and full of notes. The Geneva Bible would be available for 30 more years in Britain, finally driven from bookshops by legal edict reacting to an anti-royalist tendency in its notes.

The KJB also had its critics whose reaction amounted to ‘not a good translation’ whether deemed inaccurate or without literary merit or both. But in time the KJB got a grip on its readers and hearers. Certain expressions passed into the common currency of the English language. Beyond its influence on everyday

‘No bishop, no king,’ insisted James, knowing that a bishop was easier to control than a presbytery

Page 46

language, the KJB acquired the status of ‘great literature.’

Who would have thought that a conference at Hampton Court in 1604, called to debate the claims of the Puritans that the Church of England needed root and branch reform (out with bishops, off with surplices), would lead to this popular masterpiece?

Canny James I, extremely wary of Puritans from his time as James VI among their Presbyterian Scottish counterparts, was having none of their claims. “No bishop, no king,” he stubbornly insisted, knowing that a bishop was easier to control than a presbytery.

But one request made by the Puritans struck a chord with James. Could they have a new Bible in English? When James said “Yes” they must have felt like a dog finally thrown a bone. Perhaps James I was throwing them a bone, but he had at

least one agenda of his own that he was furthering. That anti-royalist tendency of the Geneva Bible irked.

“No notes,” was his condition for the new Bible. Without notes the Bible would be troubled to develop an anti-royalist theme.

The translators got the hint, by the way.

‘Tyrant,’ which occurred many times in the Geneva Bible as a translation for a bad king, never appears in the KJB. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the KJB’s publication was not its unlikely origins but the methodology of translating it.

In the days of Shakespeare, Milton, and other geniuses of English, surely the task would be given to a wordsmith extraordinaire? Not at all. In good bureaucratic fashion the government of the day organised a systematic committee approach.

Six companies, each with nine scholars, took on a part of the Bible each. Mostly our hearts sink when we pick up a book produced by a committee. But this committee made the Bible sing. Wellversed in the original languages, among their number were those who knew how to turn an English phrase as sweetly as a mastercarver turns a piece of wood or stone into a thing of beauty.

A

ctually, there was one wordsmith extraordinaire in their midst, the ghost of William Tyndale.

Martyred in 1536, his words lived on, through successive precursors to the KJB (the Matthew’s, Great, Geneva, and Bishops’ Bibles). Some estimates of the words retained in the KJB of his own translations of the New and (most of) the Old Testament are up around the 80% mark.

The precise percentage need not trouble us. The genius of the six companies

ANGLICAN TAONGA

of translators would consist of recognising Tyndale’s brilliance most of the time and occasionally improving on him.

Now, however, with the exception of some purple patches of poetry and prose such as Psalm 23 and the Beatitudes, the KJB has outlived its usefulness as a Bible we want to read devotionally or to hear in public worship. This 400th anniversary is a good time to acknowledge the greatness of the KJB as a much-appreciated translation of the Bible, as a literary masterpiece through many previous ages, and as the patriarch and matriarch of many translations used today.

Perhaps it’s also a good time to review the course of Bible translations in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. When we recall, for instance, that the KJB served the English-speaking churches both of the British Isles and North America so well for over three centuries, do we need as many translations as we have today? Contrary to the tendency to celebrate the variety of translations available today, could we challenge ourselves and ask why not have a new KJB in common usage for the 21st23rd centuries?

It’s true that defenders of today’s plethora of translations can argue that the KJB took a while to be properly appreciated for its translational and literary merits. Thus we may yet see one of the pack emerging as both a great and a standard English version for the next century or so. It’s also true that we accentuate the differences in English languages: American/British, academic/ everyday, indigenous/second language.

Then there is the matter of theological differences with quite a few translations being drawn from the conservative ends of the church. Is a different version for different expectations such a bad thing? After all, we live in a pluralist, postmodern, channelsurfing age.

I

suggest we press for another dominant, popular yet prestigious translation to be the true child and heir of the KJB. The choices noted above are driven in part by publishing houses. Have the churches given too much control over the future of the English Bible to commercial interests?

But there’s another serious issue. Every translation in circulation today has serious flaws when measured against factors

EASTERTIDE 2011

cherished in the KJB. Few have literary merit, and the ones that do are inconsistent.

They also struggle to win merit awards as accurate translations.

But none of this means all is lost. It just means that we need to sort ourselves out better as a Christian community.

My personal recipe for a great Bible, popularly received, respected for its accuracy in translation and felicity in language, is one that stands in the tradition of the KJB, includes both up-to-date vocabulary and time-honoured ‘biblical’ favourites (e.g. ‘blessed’ rather than ‘happy’), and accurately represents the original languages.

The NRSV is almost there. It has some faults, and supporters of it could profitably ask what needs revising in it to gain the support of more conservative Christians.

After a recent visit to these shores I know just the man to lend his name to the project.

Yes, King William’s Bible is a vision waiting to become a reality.

The Rev Dr Peter Carrell is Director of Theology House in Christchurch.

• The new HCSB Study Bible is reviewed overleaf.

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ANGLICAN TAONGA

EASTERTIDE 2011

BOOKS

A fine translation – but do we really need another?

Charity begins at home FREEING GRACE BY CHARITY NORMAN

HCSB STUDY BIBLE (HOLMAN CHRISTIAN STANDARD BIBLE) NASHVILLE: HOLMAN BIBLE PUBLISHERS, 2010.

2272 PP PLUS MAPS. 978-1-5864-0506-9.

(ALLEN AND UNWIN 2010).

HELEN JACOBI

PETER CARRELL

Freeing Grace is the title of a brand-new novel

by Charity Norman (pictured), the daughter of an English vicar and a parishioner at Waiapu Cathedral in Napier.

The characters in her novel include an English curate, David, his Nigerian-born wife Leila, a New Zealander called Jake, and Grace’s unusual birth family, the Harrisons.

Charity tells parallel stories of the characters which gradually converge – and by the time they do, you won’t be able to put the book down.

At times poetic, hilarious, and very moving, the story tells how baby Grace changes everyone, even those who never meet her.

The glimpses of parish life can only have been written by someone who has been there: the phone calls and the expectations of parishioners; the lovely description of the confirmation class and their understanding of the birth of Samuel; the joy of a baptism; and the support of the vicar and his wife for Leila and David.

There are many other threads in the novel: family loyalty and betrayal, love and trust, hope and despair. It’s an easy, relaxing read that will make you laugh and cry.

Here’s hoping our own Anglican novelist writes many more. Susan Howatch, move over.

The Very Rev Helen Jacobi is Dean of Waiapu Cathedral.

In my mind I carry a brief history of English Bible translations, beginning with the King James Bible (KJB) and running through familiar versions such as RSV, NRSV, NEB, REB, GNB, JB, NJB, NIV, TNIV, ESV and the NKJB. So, where does the HCSB or the Holman Christian Standard Bible fit in?

It’s a fresh translation, first published in full in 2004, sponsored by Holman, who brought together over 100 scholars, all committed to biblical inerrancy.

A feature of this translation is that it’s based on ‘optimal equivalence’ – a balanced middle way between two kinds of translations, formal equivalence (‘word-for-word’) and dynamic equivalence (‘thought-for-thought’).

Essentially, this means the publishers are trying to produce a Bible that is as accurate and readable as possible. But in reality this translation reads like those in the KJB tradition (e.g. RSV, NRSV, ESV), and that begs the question: why yet another translation?

Reasons given in the introduction are unconvincing. Yes, there is a need for fresh translation in each generation, but we already have more than enough for our generation.

True, HCSB does one or two things rarely seen in other translations, such as translating doulos as ‘slave’ and not as ‘servant.’ But that scarcely warrants the time and energy of 100 scholars, to say nothing of the paper and ink used to produce yet another Bible translation.

After a monogamous relationship with the KJB for so many centuries, when will the English-speaking Christian community stop its promiscuous affairs with so many Bible translations?

We might also observe that there are plenty of ‘study Bibles’ around these days. And while it’s fair of individual publishers to publish a ‘study version’ among their offerings, the question a parsimonious purchaser will ask is whether this particular study Bible offers something not found in other study Bibles.

The HCSB Study Bible is well set out and offers plenty of explanatory notes of various kinds (textual, exegetical, lexical, cross-referential), but this reviewer does not see it offering anything new.

For those with no study Bible on their shelves and either a partiality or indifference towards the most conservative of biblical scholarship, the HCSB Bible will be a great investment.

Otherwise, stick with what is already faithfully meeting your study Bible needs.

The Rev Dr Peter Carrell is Director of Theology House in Christchurch.

Education for Ministry People Ministering to People

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For information about joining or forming a group with a trained mentor in your area, contact: The National Administrator Education for Ministry PO Box 12-046, Wellington Email: Website:

Page 48

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ANGLICAN GLIC TAONGA

EASTERTIDE 2011

BOOKS

Wrestling with the meaning of sin today THINKERS’ GUIDE TO SIN: TALKING ABOUT WRONGDOING TODAY, EDITED BY NEIL DARRAGH (AUCKLAND: ACCENT PUBLICATIONS, 2010).

LYNDA PATTERSON

“Adam ate the apple,” goes a Hungarian proverb, “and our teeth still ache.”

Sin – and everything the word stands for – is a concept slowly evolving out of our cultural vocabulary. In this book of essays edited by Neil Darragh of Auckland University, a variety of authors wrestle with the topic of how exactly we begin to speak credibly about sin today.

The essays are divided into four main sections. Part one considers the shifts in our contemporary understanding of sin, and begins with a helpful definition of terms by Darragh.

Sin has traditionally been

understood within a legal or moral framework as crime or disobedience. Increasingly, it is interpreted as a psychological or relational distortion – as a failure to love or to become authentically human, or as a series of broken relationships with God, the world, each other and ourselves.

The drift seems to be towards a fuzzy sense of ‘wrongdoing’ but Darragh fires a warning shot across the bows. “Sin-talk deals not with mistakes and unavoidable action but with things for which we are to some extent responsible.”

The second and third sections of the book look at the roots of sin and the grey areas at the edges of sin and wrongdoing.

In an excellent essay, Nicola Hoggard-Creegan considers our grammars of redemption,

and returns to the Christus Victor atonement theme to make us more aware of the need to foster virtue and imitate Christ.

Andrew Bradstock’s essay, entitled “How many cyclists did I murder today?” considers sin, guilt and obsessive behaviour from a pastoral perspective using Martin Luther and John Bunyan as historical case studies.

The final section, "Naming the New Sins", contains – perhaps of necessity – the most variety of the book.

Robyn McPhail applies insights about sin from the book of Joel to rural ministry, and

Michael Hughes makes a helpful connection between liberation theology and ministry to young people in his essay on sin and youth.

This book recognizes that “sin” is a word with little currency outside the Christian Church, and attempts to bridge the gap without simply erasing the concept altogether.

The sheer variety of perspectives on offer are the book’s greatest strength. It is a thoughtful and provocative read.

The Ven Lynda Patterson is Theologian-inResidence at ChristChurch Cathedral.

Nelson: coherent, concerned and socially involved HARVEST OF GRACE: ESSAYS IN CELEBRATION OF 150 YEARS OF MISSION IN THE ANGLICAN DIOCESE OF NELSON EDITED BY R. BESTER (NELSON: STANDING COMMITTEE OF THE DIOCESE OF NELSON, 2010.

388 PP. ISBN 978-0-473-1777-5).

PETER LINEHAM

Back in 1958 H.F. Ault wrote a solid account of the diocese of Nelson, which included accounts of each parish and a thorough if circumspect treatment of the bishops and eras of diocesan progress.

Like a number of dioceses, Nelson took the opportunity of its 150th anniversary to commission a new history of the diocese. However, it is not a full history; its account of the first 80 years of the diocese

consists largely of a summary

by Brandon Sparrow of the first five bishops (Hobhouse, Suter, Mules, Sadlier and Hilliard).

The format of the rest of the book is a series of essays on aspects of the diocese.

John and Hilary Mitchell contribute two very fine essays on Anglican Maori in the region. John Meadowcroft writes on Bishopdale College in its various manifestations.

There are essays on Bishop Stephenson (by Susan Ledingham) and Bishop MulmeMoir (by Catriona Williamson), overlapping essays on Bishop Sutton by Mark Chamberlain and Jenny Dawson, a chapter

by Robin Kingston on Bishop Eaton, and a concluding essay on the evangelical character of the diocese by Peter Carrell.

Nelson Diocese, with its evangelical flavour and its early 20th century link with the Diocese of Sydney, has a distinctive character, and a welcome aspect of many of these essays is an exploration of this distinctiveness. As Peter Carrell emphasises, there are marked differences from the Irish Protestant zeal of Sydney. Consequently, Nelson Anglicanism was not much disrupted by Bishop Sutton’s high church approach. Sutton and the Evangelicals all wanted a confessional Anglicanism.

This is a very interesting volume for me, since I grew up in a corner of the Nelson Diocese. Anglicans in much of New Zealand do not well understand theological diversity. This small and

untypical diocese is shown to be coherent, concerned and socially involved. However, this is a very bishop-centred account; there is little mention of parish life, and the West Coast parishes are hardly mentioned.

The place of the church in society is touched on only in the chapters by the Mitchells and Dawson.

Nelson as a region was and is a place of great religious diversity and today has the lowest proportion of nominal Christians of anywhere in New Zealand. However evangelical they may be, Nelson Anglicans have not been able to dent this atmosphere.

Associate Professor Peter Lineham heads up the School of History, Philosophy and Classics at Massey University. in Albany.

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ANGLICAN TAONGA

EASTERTIDE 2011

THE WEDDING

I was glad... this marriage was just divine Surprise! Brian Thomas finds himself in the box seat at the royal wedding

A

s archetypal Southern Man, I can hardly believe that I watched the royal wedding.

Right through. It was, without doubt, the best costume drama in ages: a high feast of gorgeous frocks, processing to divine music. And that was just the male clergy; some of the women were even more colourful.

As for the hats… “Leave the dishes and come and watch,” I said to my wife.

“Victoria Beckham is wearing a phylactery1, while one of Prince Andrew’s daughters has antlers.

Hand-sculpted by the House of Fergie?”

If the telecast had been payto-view, I’d have traded my Stihl chainsaw for it. And it was worth the price of safety goggles just to see the rich and famous having to display their tickets on entry.

Welcome to my world, Elton John.

Kate’s frock lived up to the commentators’ hype, complementing perfectly the traditional service and setting.

I’m not surprised that an Abbey verger broke into cartwheels at the end. Fine lace and exquisite liturgy do that to some churchmen.

But let’s not overlook something even more remarkable: the wedding was very religious. And everyone, even the young and the restless, loved it.

As any Anglican priest knows, Page 50

most couples today – even those marrying in church – do not see God as pivotal to their union. He’s lucky even to make the guest list.

I shall never forget the reaction of one bride-to-be when I informed her that I would ask the congregation to pray after the exchange of vows. “No problem,” she responded cheerfully. “You can talk to Mickey Mouse as far as I’m concerned.”

Well, William and Kate’s wedding was something else.

They opted for a form from the revised Book of Common Prayer, which pulls no punches on the centrality of Christ in “solemnization of matrimony.”

Listen again to the bidding, which talks of marriage as “signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church; which holy estate Christ adorned and beautified with his presence, and first miracle that he wrought, in Cana of Galilee…”

The old prayer book is not for faint-hearted clergy because it’s full of tongue-twisting phrases that can reduce the ill-prepared to a spitting image of Rowan Atkinson.

Not so the unflappable John Hall, Dean of Westminster, who took his time and enunciated so beautifully that he’s bound to awaken a universal yearning for ye olde nuptials. Clergy, be afraid...

Bishop Richard Chartres’ homily was equally crafted but

“I give three my troth”: William and Kate make their vows before the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.

also eminently sensible.

Standout sentence? “Marriage should transform, as husband and wife make one another their work of art. It is possible to transform as long as we don’t harbour ambitions to reform our partners…

Each must give the other space and freedom.”

As you’d expect, the combined choirs of Westminster Abbey and Her Majesty’s Chapel Royal were heavenly. And I can’t resist a promo at this point: if you loved the music at the wedding and you live in a cathedral city, why wait for another royal nuptial before indulging again? Pop along to your local cathedral and soak up the same repertoire, Sunday by Sunday.

You don’t even need a ticket – although a set of whiskers and a cope will always get you the best seats.

But the last word in this Bloke’s Review has nothing to do with liturgy or music. It‘s about a

relationship that was centre-stage in the Abbey well before Kate radiated up the aisle.

I’m talking of the friendship… no, the bond that clearly exists between Will and Harry – two princes who may look like chalk and cheese, and yet are brothers who chose to stand shoulder to shoulder in the eyes of God and two billion others.

I especially warmed to Harry’s boyish grin after he glanced back at Kate coming up the aisle. “Right, here she is now,” he reportedly whispered to William.

With the same smirk of mateship you see between lads at a country dance.

The people's princes. I bet they even lend each other their chainsaws.

Canon Brian Thomas is the editor of Anglican Taonga.

1. A phylactery is a small prayer box that Orthodox Jews wear on their foreheads.

ANGLICAN TAONGA

EASTERTIDE 2011

F R O M T H E FA R S I D E

Imogen de la Bere is given a revelation of grace...

Jesus weeps for Christchurch the heart of the lilies. His hands, crumpled in the agony of death, still reach out to us in love.

You can download a high-resolution image of it here: http://www.ulmeis.com/

wasn’t going to write a diary this time. How can I not write about the devastation of my beloved city?

And yet what can I say, so far away, uselessly scanning the internet every day for new images of disaster? We are suspended – unable to help in the reconstruction, unable to move on, as the world has moved on, to more televisual dramas of the Japanese tsunami and the Arab Spring – impotent.

So it was a moment of grace when the image of Jesus wept for Christchurch.

Let me explain.

Some years ago the figure of Jesus was stolen from the Calvary outside our parish church in St Albans. We decided to replace it by something different – a painted crucifix that would reflect the Arts and Craft and Gothic style of the church’s interior decoration. It also makes reference to the great Franciscan painted crucifixes which are objects of devotion all over Northern Italy.

Once our crucifix was completed, the people fell in love with it, and rapidly decided they could not possibly put so fine and delicate a creation outside.

I have seen grown men standing in front of this painted Jesus with tears in their eyes. Young, wiry and very dead, He

I

JeremyAndImogen/pix/Tiggy_Crucifix_ Photographed.jpg.reduced.jpg

Eventually, after months of struggle with reprographics and faculties, and heated discussion about the sort of nails (you try searching Dog Nails, as demanded by the artist, on the internet) and where they should be placed, a high-quality copy was printed onto metal and installed outside, while the original was hung over a side altar. At last the Archdeacon came to dedicate them both, and to preach.

Sorrow and love are inextricably linked in the figure of the Crucified, he said. Christ weeps for the sin and sorrow of the world.

He weeps for Libya, for Japan. He weeps for Christchurch, said the Archdeacon, ignorant of any connection.

And later, as the crucifix was blessed, a drop of holy water fell onto His painted cheek, and formed a single tear.

Jesus indeed wept for Christchurch. hangs surrounded by lilies and bunches of grapes, the purple of his robe echoing the colour of the grapes, the thin straggle of blood from his pierced side, the colour in

Imogen de La Bere is a Kiwi writer living in London. delberi@googlemail.com

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