May 23, 2004

Jeremy Younger

Our Gospel reading today speaks of the overflowing, extravagant generosity of God - that scandalous love of God that turns the common view of forgiveness on its head.

So often we are led to believe that forgiveness is about being sorry, and, if we're sorry enough, then God will accept us back into the fold, into the family. This is blasphemy. Forgiveness isn't about sins being taken away but about generosity being received and celebrated. It's about God, loving - not about us, grovelling.

Are we ready enough - big enough - to risk receiving the free overflowing love of God simply by being the people we are? Why does the church work so hard to deny or cover up the generous love of God? Why does it so easily retreat behind a wall of morality rather than reach out with the open hand and heart of love?

Why is Archbishop Vercoe and Christians like him unable to get this simple Gospel message into their heads and celebrate the fact that God's love - the love that sets us free - also sets free the person sitting next to us here today - and the gay couple setting up home in Ponsonby - and the transsexual prostitute in K' road, and the woman who anointed the feet of Jesus in our Gospel reading?

I'm reminded of the definition of piety that I once heard - that the pious person is the one who looks at you forgivingly when you haven't done anything wrong. That's what I feel when Archbishop Vercoe talks in one breath about loving gay people and in the next talks about a world without gays.

But it's too easy just to see him as a sad, bigoted churchman and to throw abuse at him. I know I feel like doing that as much as the next person. I'm worried about statements like those he made, not just because they present a naïve, ignorant travesty of the Gospel but because they are dangerous.

As a psychotherapist, I know of the danger that public statements of this type play in the inner worlds of those struggling to own their personhood and their sexual identity. I know what it's like to be called out in the middle of the night to a vulnerable young gay man who has tried to kill himself because of his struggle to live in the world also inhabited by Archbishop Vercoe and his ilk.

But I believe we have to look deeper than just scapegoating Archbishop Vercoe. This is not simply about a new Archbishop who by happenstance and longevity has been thrust into the leadership of the Anglican Church. Archbishop Vercoe is not a bad man. The sad thing is that it is to be expected that a 75 year old Maori Bishop would believe and promote the ideas he does in the name of Christ and his church.

What I want to look at this morning is why this is so, why we would expect him to speak and believe and act as he does, and why it's no surprise. This I believe goes far deeper than a particular person - a particular Maori Bishop - it goes to the very bedrock - the very core - of our country, Aotearoa, New Zealand, and to the core of the Gospel - the Gospel lived out in this place.

It is about colonisation and our part as the church in that process. To quote Psalm 2 as a founding text of this land: "Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shall break them with a rod of iron: thou shalt dash them to pieces like a potter's vessel."

And so the coloniser's came armed with the word of God to give them authority.

The history of colonisation in many places in the world teaches us that the statutes and laws and mores that have over time been used by the colonisers to control, oppress and dis-empower the colonised, remain on the table after the colonised come to power and are then used by them to control, oppress and dis-empower others. This we see in Zimbabwe, in the Congo, in Nigeria. And I believe we are seeing it in the life of our own church.

So Archbishop Vercoe is given leadership and power in our church - Archbishop Vercoe, this genuinely courageous and godly man who has fought for justice, equality and dignity for Maori over many decades - and the first thing he does is to oppress others.

What a judgement this is I believe, not just on him, but also on the colonising Christian theology that my Pakeha forebears brought to this country - the theology that came with the colonisers - which was negative, moralising, condemnatory, un-relational and deeply flawed.

When you look at this Mickey Mouse theology, masquerading as biblical truth but really having much more to do with plain, pious, prejudice, we have to try to understand and share our part in that, as the children of the colonisers - where it's appropriate we have to acknowledge that we are implicated.

The colonising imperative of course was empire - the army conquered and subjugated and the church converted and educated. The great tragedy is that the moment of colonisation - the middle of the nineteenth century - became the moment of arrested development, where theology got stuck and thinking became petrified. And that, as shown by Archbishop Vercoe, is now our sad inheritance - a threadbare Victorian theology dressed up as the pseudo-moral highground.

The one shining exception, the great contradiction to this sad state, which proves that all is not lost and other ways are possible, is that of South Africa and the Anglican Church there, which, through the amazing, prophetic and brave ministry of Archbishop Tutu has enabled the church to celebrate lesbian and gay people and in so many other ways to embrace the constant, liberating, dynamic life of God.

Thank God for a church like St Matthew-in-the-City which has a long and honourable history of speaking out about these gospel imperatives, but how sad that Aotearoa, New Zealand has no one to lead the church of the stature of Archbishop Tutu. Let us work and pray for new leaders in the church who refuse to settle for the stagnant thinking of the past. Western theology has moved on - much careful, exciting, creative thinking now informs our understanding of so many issues including the family, the role of women and sexuality - yours and mine.

Isn't it sad that Archbishop Vercoe, even though he talks of a 'new' morality, appears to be unmoved and uninformed by all that is new? He seems content to stay stuck in a sad, discredited, naive understanding of a Gospel, which only speaks of judgement and exclusion, when he could take the opportunities afforded him by the privilege of his new office to shout passionately from the rooftops, and live out in practice, a Gospel of love, acceptance and celebration - the Gospel that, thank God, I believe you here at St Matthew's have a passion for, and struggle to live out day by day.