Reflection by The Rev'd Dr Deborah Broome

Te Pouhere Sunday

Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every people anyone who fears him and practices righteousness is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”                                              

This Sunday is Te Pouhere Sunday, the day designated by General Synod to celebrate our life as a Three Tikanga Church. We’re invited to consider different aspects of what Te Pouhere (our Constitution) means for how we are church in this province of Aotearoa New Zealand and Polynesia.

In the early chapters of the Acts of the Apostles (Luke’s sequel to his Gospel) we track how the church arose out of the immediate post-Easter community of Jesus’ disciples. In Acts 10:34-43 we see Peter coming to grips with the new reality of God’s grace, and the way this included not just Jews but also Gentiles, those who hadn’t initially been part of the relationship between God and God’s people. Up till then, Peter’s existence had been shaped by the classification of permitted and forbidden foods, the categories of clean and unclean – the cherished ways of living that defined who he was. And then he had a vision from God that overturned all that.  He found himself taking up God’s invitation to eat with, teach, reach out to Gentiles, and found the Holy Spirit poured out upon them. These Gentiles were baptised and welcomed into the Easter journey of new life.

We see the boundaries of the new community being pushed back as Peter comes to realise that the family given to us by God’s grace extends beyond people who look, think, and live as we do. Peter gains a new understanding of being church, as an invitation to embrace diversity in all its forms. How is this diversity shown in our daily and weekly life as church in this diocese?

The woven flax cross designed by the artist, Ross Hemara, is used as the logo of our church here in Aotearoa New Zealand and Polynesia. It reminds us of the weaving that is common to all our cultures. As Archbishop Sir David Moxon has noted, the design presents the flax strands moving outwards, symbolising the life patterns of the gospel being formed in a new creation.  As we move further into our Three Tikanga life, what are we learning from this new way of being church?

Creator: formatoriginal | Credit: formatoriginal/Vecteezy