June 18, 2006

Clay Nelson

Three Tikanga Sunday

I was hoping to give you a break from me this week after suggesting last week that the doctrine of the Trinity had outlived its usefulness and was in truth destructive to both the church and our individual journeys in faith. But I was unable to convince Sir Paul Reeves to get up early enough to preach at 8:00am. He doesn't want you take that personally, it's just one of his prerogatives of being retired, that is not having to get up so early on a Sunday. In hopes of changing his mind, I told him that if his present schedule was his idea of retirement, he might as well come at eight. He was flunking retirement anyway. I got a laugh, but as you can see, no joy. So my payback for last Sunday is addressing Three Tikanga Sunday from the perspective of being an American ex-patriot Pakeha, who after only ten months here isn't even certain he is pronouncing it correctly.

When I first heard the phrase Three Tikanga I wondered if it was Maori for the Trinity. But as all of you know and I have come to learn it is the name given to how the Anglican Church in Aotearoa New Zealand and Polynesia has been organised since 1992. Each of the three Tikanga represents a different strand of Anglicanism, Maori, Pakeha and Pasifika. Each strand has it's own bishop or bishops, and as of a month ago the office of Archbishop is now filled by three bishops, one from each Tikanga. It is a revolutionary approach to multiculturalism and yet it is very Anglican in its respect for local cultural values. At the same time it reflects Maori cultural values and spirituality.

Tikanga can't be captured by a single English word. The root, Tika, means things that are true. For Maori, Tikanga embodies history and future, right and wrong, caution and expediency, courtesy and reprimand, survival. In its most basic form, Tikanga is a set of guidelines to follow. It is the blueprint of how to operate to ensure the survival of Mokopuna, the generations to come.

The foundations of Tikanga rest at the dawn of time, when events were happening, the worlds were being made, domains being decided. All Tikanga stems from this time. I nga wa o mua translates literally as from the times of front but this phrase means the past. Therefore the past is always in front of us, there for guidance, and the future is behind us, as very few can see the future and what it has in store for us. And since peoples have different pasts the one thing that we should realize is that each iwi or tribe, each hapu or village, each whanau or family has different Tikanga, which is tika for them. A Maori does not judge a Tikanga different from theirs as being wrong, for what others see in their past has developed their Tikanga. A very useful concept for those of us trying to form an inclusive community in a multicultural environment.

Maori today look at their past and it now includes other cultures with different values. Their ancestors before the arrival of the Pakeha would not recognize the Tikanga of those who came after them. But the Tikanga of Maori today includes the Tikanga of their ancestors. It is that immovable peg in the ground. It is the foundation that cuts through everything else. In a fast changing world it is always there to guide them. They look for it in the Tika, the things that are true, and they find it in their ancient past and within their own Wairua, their own spirit, for their Wairua is as old as the worlds themselves.

While the individual concepts embraced by Tikanga are not new to me, collected together it is eye opening. The wisdom behind Tikanga is self-evident. It is a world view that enhances life in the moment. I find it both spiritual and pragmatic; flexible yet solidly reassuring. Ultimately it is inclusive not only of Maori of different iwi, but of all who now share this archipelago with them and of all yet to come.

After expressing my beliefs last week about the inadequacies of the Trinity's concept of God, a concept that has been the foundation of Christianity for 18 centuries, I am delighted to discover Tikanga. I think it has something to offer people such as myself, people John Shelby Spong, a controversial American bishop who was my mentor as a young priest, calls Christians in exile. To be taken into exile is to leave where you have been comfortable. Where you understood how things work. Where you knew the rules. To be exiled means never returning to that for which you long and where the future is uncertain.

We are exiled because our Tikanga includes Copernicus and Galileo, Newton and Darwin, Freud and Einstein, Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking, vaccines and antibiotics, electron microscopes and the Hubble telescope. They have made the God we once worshipped and counted on redundant and homeless. We don't pray for him to cure us from illness anymore, we go to the doctor. If we still pray to him in times of drought we no longer wear raincoats or take umbrellas when we do. If we are attacked we do not expect God to protect us and conquer our enemy's God unless we are George Bush. We no longer understand AIDS as God's judgment on gays and lesbians unless we are Bishop Tamaki. When famine strikes we do not look for manna from heaven, we contribute to the Red Cross. We now know that we are not in that God's image but that God is in ours and that that God is no longer of much help and like the gods of Olympus is, if not already dead, dying. Relying on this terminal triune God makes as much sense in our post-modern world view as going to the doctor and expecting him to use leeches to drain the humors from our body.

Those of us in exile wonder if we can be Christian and know there is no personal God? Some very learned people have said no and left the priesthood and the church. Others of us still experience the holy we just aren't sure what to call it, and remain, holding fast to Jesus as our peg in the ground. He is for us Tika, things that are true. Even in all his humanity, or maybe because of it, he remains our Lord, our past who is in front of us leading us into the uncertain future. Not because he was a wise teacher, though we learn from him, but because his life and death revealed holiness. He keeps us looking for a new understanding of God that does not require us to check our minds at the door when we gather as a worshipping community. We look back on our ancient past and see that our Tupuna, our Hebrew ancestors called God ruach, the wind, nephesh, breath and simply a rock, the rock of our salvation. Our Tupuna guide us in our seeking to understand God not as a being. They give us insights as to what to call our new understanding of God. Whatever words we find while wandering in exile they will still be words limited by our humanity, but until they are no longer adequate for the generations that follow us, they will help us deal with the here and now. While God is beyond our definition, God is not beyond our experience. In that I find hope and strength to go on. Maori spirituality tells me I must go on, I am part of my great, great grandchildren's Tikanga. They are counting on me to do so.