Texts: Acts 10:44-48; 1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17
At our archdeaconry meeting on Wednesday we received a briefing from our Dean, the Very Reverend David Capel Rice, and from the Vicar of All Saints, the Reverend Tim Hurd, about the proceedings of the recent meeting of General Synod. General Synod, we might say, is the highest legal authority in the Anglican Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia. On it are represented all the various dioceses, by clergy and laity elected at our local diocesan synods. David and Tim are our clergy representatives from this diocese, and Richard Sutton and Tony Fitchett are our lay representatives. In addition, all the bishops are members of General Synod.
All sorts of things were dealt with at this meeting of General Synod, but the one I want to mention this morning relates to the leadership of our church. Should we have one archbishop, as we have had for most of our history, or should we have three in line with our three-tikanga constitution? At the heart of that issue once more is the vexed question of unity, and the differing views of how we can best embody the principle of unity.
After a debate lasting for about a day and a half the consensus settled around the idea of three archbishops, one from each tikanga, and so the next step was to decide who they should be. So the laity, clergy and bishops of each tikanga went off in their groups to choose who they wanted as one of the three archbishops. And that’s where it got interesting. How should that choice be made? Well, it seems that in accordance with Maori cultural practice, the senior Maori Bishop must be chosen, and similarly in Polynesian custom.
But, of course, that’s not the Pakeha way of doing things. In our culture we take it for granted that such a choice should be based on merit. Who is the best person – that is, who is best qualified – for the job? We might have some genuine differences among us on that issue but all of us would probably agree that that is the right approach to take. In the event, the Pakeha group chose the Bishop of Waikato, the Right Reverend David Moxon, to be one of the three new archbishops. He was not the senior Pakeha Bishop. He was chosen on merit. That’s the Pakeha way.
Now, when Trish and I were in Kawhia for 3 years, Bishop David was our bishop. He was wonderfully supportive to us, and we became very fond of him as a man as well as our bishop. We are delighted with his appointment, and are sure that he will perform this new ministry with great grace to the benefit of our church. But what interests me this morning in the light of our readings is the process at General Synod, which I have just described. In particular, there are two points I want to talk about.
Firstly, we have assumed that the process followed by Maori and Polynesian representatives on the one hand, and by our Pakeha representatives on the other, was quite different. They chose on seniority, we chose on merit. But – and with Anglicans there is a but to every simple proposition! – I began to wonder if this is so when we briefly discussed Bishop David’s qualities. Somebody summed him up in this way: “There is just something about the man – a sort of mana.” And, surely, isn’t that what the Maori and Polynesian reps would say of their respective choices?
The second point is this. What is the biblical basis of choosing a leader? Is it seniority or is it merit, or is it something else? A few examples come to mind. Samuel was given the task of finding a suitable king for Israel from among the sons of Jesse. David, upon whom the choice was to fall, was the youngest son, so obviously seniority didn’t count for anything. But what about merit? Was David the most skilled and talented of all the sons of Jesse? He might have been, but we cannot know, and Samuel certainly didn’t know. David was chosen because he was chosen by God.
How was Mathias chosen to be an Apostle, following the loss of Judas? By lot following prayer. Peter prayed: “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which of these two you have chosen…” Again, the issue is not one of capability, good skills and talents, but of character or heart. And when it was decided to choose some people to be deacons in the church, Peter said to the gathered assembly: “Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom.” Choose on merit, by all means, as long as it’s understood that merit is about who they are, and not about what they can do.
What all this is about is how easily all of us can assume that the way we do things is the Christian way, the way decreed by God, when in fact what we are guided by is our cultural norms. We choose an archbishop on merit, not because the Bible teaches we should, but because that is what we do in our culture. Whether we are choosing the next managing-director of Telecom, or an archbishop, we assume that the choice must be based on merit.
Which gets us to today’s readings, and we start, appropriately enough with St Peter. I have long argued that those who wish to deny the truth of the Easter story as we have it in Scripture need to come up with an alternative feasible explanation of what caused the disciples to be transformed from the defeated bunch of no-hopers they undoubtedly were on Good Friday into fearless evangelists a few weeks later. If it wasn’t the resurrection, what was it?
Equally, we must challenge those doubters to explain another extraordinary transformation. What was it that caused a particular group of faithful Jews to suddenly reject all ideas of separation from the Gentiles, and to form communities in which Jews and Gentiles mixed freely, were equally welcome, and had equal status? What could have caused such an extraordinary cultural shift virtually overnight?
The Biblical answer to that question is very clear. It was the coming of the Holy Spirit. We will be looking at that more fully in a couple of weeks’ time when we celebrate Pentecost, but today we have an instance of it. Peter and some Jewish Christians are at the house of Cornelius, a centurion. Peter has been teaching Cornelius and his household, explaining about Jesus’ death and resurrection. Luke’s account continues: “While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles.”
What was the only logical conclusion to draw? Peter drew it: “Can anyone keep these people from being baptised with water? They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.” And we know, of course, from other passages in the Book of Acts, and from St Paul’s writings in particular, how enormously difficult many faithful Jewish converts found this change. They believed that Gentiles could become members of the faith community if they accepted Jewish practices, including circumcision, the dietary laws and so, but not otherwise. In other words, the Jewish believers in Christ expected Gentile converts to become like them before they could be Christians. How else, they argued, can we all be one in Christ?
But that’s a very simplistic view of unity. Nobody argued that the Jewish Christians should reject their own cultural practices; the point was they were not to impose them on Gentile converts. And all too often in the past, including in this country, there has been a practice on the part of missionaries and evangelists to preach cultural conversion as part of the deal of becoming followers of Christ. What our strange constitution may be doing, and our three-in-one archbishops may be doing, is to remind us Pakeha that we are not being asked to stop being Pakeha in the way in which we practise our faith, but nor should we ask Maori or Polynesians to become Pakeha in order to be Christian.
Is it working – will it work? The jury, as we say, is still out on that. But we can be sure of one thing. It will not work unless we want it to, and unless we commit ourselves to making it work. It will not work unless our three new archbishops learn to work as a loving community of three, rather than as three competitive leaders constantly jockeying for position, as Jesus’ nearest and dearest disciples were just before his death. It will work only if all three of them heed the message of our two readings from the pen of St John this morning.
Brothers and sisters, and archbishops, let us love one another. Let us do it in our own way within our own cultural norms. But let us do it. Love is the ground on which we have been chosen. Love is the only merit.
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