February 6, 2011

Clay Nelson

Epiphany 5     Waitangi Day     Matthew 5:13-20 


Today we celebrate a rare conjunction of the stars. It hasn’t happened in a very long time, if ever, and won’t again for many more years. The length of the season of Epiphany varies each year as to whether Easter comes early or later. This year Easter comes about as late as it can so we have a long season of Epiphany. From 1875 to 2124, a span of 250 years Easter will have come this late only twice. In recent years we have already been in the season of Lent by this time on the calendar. That means it has been awhile since we heard today’s Gospel that continues what I explained last week is Matthew’s mythical “Sermon on the Mount.” The conjunction is that this year it also falls on Waitangi Day. The day we celebrate Aotearoa New Zealand’s sense of identity. From the perspective of being an American ex-pat I view it as the equivalent of the Fourth of July.

I haven’t looked up how often this conjunction has happened, but since we follow Matthew’s Gospel only every three years, the odds against this portion of the Sermon on the Mount and Waitangi Day being juxtaposed are pretty slim especially since Waitangi Day has only been celebrated in any form since 1934 thanks to Governor-General Lord Bledisloe. Yes, the same Bledisloe who donated the famous cup for what is now the Tri-nations Rugby match in 1930 and in the same year donated the chalice to St Matthew’s we are using this morning.

The reason I dwell on this rarity is because of the opening lines in the Gospel: “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?”

Now I would wager you are really confused. What does that have to do with Waitangi Day? 

In ancient times, as well as today, salt was considered the spice of life, unless you have high blood pressure. We would die with out it. Potato mash would be less than tasty with out it. It preserves meat. But it has had one other important purpose.

As everyone who listened to Jesus would know salt was used in making covenants. Because salt was a preservative and did not change it was an important ingredient in making treaties. It was a symbol that the agreement would last forever and never change. It was a salt covenant. However, if the treaty was violated the offender could find his fields sowed with salt cursing the land by making it infertile.

To those who listen to me in far away places on the internet, Waitangi Day is about the signing of a treaty between Europeans – the Pakeha – and the Maori who preceded them to this country. Our national identity is rooted in this salt covenant. 

I am not aware of another country that considers a treaty to be part of the documents viewed to be its constitution. That European colonialists in 1840 would at least in a treaty honour the people of the land as equal was a remarkable event – even if it was a means for the crown to claim sovereignty over their land. That eventually over 500 Maori leaders or rangatira would welcome them and sign the treaty freely and not under any duress other than hoping the Crown would protect them from the abuses of other Europeans and keep the French out is astounding. The Treaty of Waitangi was one of a number of factors that attracted me to immigrate here. Showing such respect to indigenous peoples was not a part of my own country’s history. However, at the time I was naïve as to the implications of such an unusual founding document, while I shouldn’t have been. After well over 200 years since the US Constitution was signed, people are still arguing as to what was meant by those who wrote it. This treaty is all the more confusing because there is a Maori version that was supposedly a translation written by English missionary Henry Williams that the rangatira who could not read signed and an English version written primarily by British Consul William Hobson that the Europeans signed.

As each chief signed the treaty Hobson said to him "He iwi tahi tātou", meaning, "We are now one people." Giving him the benefit of the doubt he may truly have seen Maori and Pakeha as now bonded as tightly as sodium is to chlorine to make salt.

Jesus often made statements that bring us up short. One he makes in today’s passage is scientifically untrue. He suggests salt can lose its saltiness. It can’t. It can be corrupted by other elements that destroy it flavour-enhancing qualities, making it useless. Perhaps that is what he meant. On the other hand, he would have known correctly that just as it gives life it can also destroy it. The salty Dead Sea was in his backyard after all.

The salt covenant we honour today has had a chequered history bringing both life and death. Through its 171 year history it has mostly been ignored, and for many years judged null by the courts or used to do the very thing it sought to prevent, appropriate Maori land and taonga. The corruption of the salt began almost before the ink was dry. And its violations were certainly at the root of the New Zealand Wars that eventually dispossessed large numbers of Maori in the Waikato and Taranaki. 

The Treaty is part of our national myth and recorded in textbooks as a sign of English colonial benevolence and positive race relations compared to other English colonies. Sadly, the reality has not always lived up to this “City on a hill” letting its light shine hype.

Thanks to Waitangi Day there have been efforts to make the hype true; to undo the life destroying aspects of racial injustice and exploitation – salt thoroughly corrupted. Two years after he gave us the chalice Bledisloe purchased and gave the Treaty house and grounds at Waitangi to the state. Celebration of the gift on February 6, 1934 is viewed as the first Waitangi celebration, a day of thanksgiving for his gift. On that day Bledisloe prayed in essence that we might become the salt of the earth, that 'the sacred compact made in these waters may be faithfully and honourably kept for all time to come' and “that the two races might unite as one nation through Christianity.”

Apparently Bledisloe understood Christianity much like Matthew. The sermon is addressed to the community and is about the community being transformed. It is not enough that individual Christians are salt of the earth and let their light shine. The entire community must live like a city on a hill. Like Matthew, Bledisloe was calling the nation as a whole to live up to its calling of being one people.

While its first years were little more than celebrating a historical footnote, on the observance of the Treaty’s centennial in 1940 the government began to emphasize it more. It would take another 20 years before it became a national day of thanksgiving and another 15 before it became a national holiday. 

The gifts Bledisloe gave were much more than the grounds at Waitangi or a couple of silver cups signifying communal unity in sport and faith, he gave the nation a place and time to point to what we can be, no matter how far we still have to go to get there. Waitangi Day often has been a time to protest injustice and call us to be life giving instead of destructive. It became the touchstone for calling for land reform that resulted in the Waitangi Tribunal to rectify past injustices. It has become a time to honour tangata whenua – the people of the land – and those who have followed them now from many countries and dream of being one people.

It has made some New Zealanders uncomfortable from time to time, including prime ministers from across the political spectrum, but in this immigrant’s opinion better the discomfort of truth and reconciliation than the discomfort of continued injustice. I came here to live in a city on a hill with the light of justice shining brightly.

But it will take many more Waitangi Days until we get there. The New Zealand Election Study of 2008 found of the 2,700 voting age New Zealanders surveyed, 37% wanted the Treaty removed from New Zealand law, 20% were neutral and 37% wanted the Treaty kept in law. 40% agreed Māori deserved compensation, 16% were neutral and 41% disagreed. Sadly the salt is not yet tasty. The light is not yet bright.

The next time this Gospel is heard on Waitangi Day may we be that city on a hill able to say truthfully, “We are one people” – "He iwi tahi tātou."