REFLECTION 5TH NOVEMBER 2023
By Rev Wayne Te Kaawa
Tēnā tātou, tuatahi me mihi au ki a koutou e Hato Anaru mō to koutou tono ki ahau kia hari tēnei karakia ratapu mō Parihaka.
Ehara tēnei he tauhou, tae au i konei i ngā tau ki muri ki te kōrero mō to koutou tupuna a John Macfarlane.
I am no stranger to St Andrews on the Terrace, I remember speaking here a few years ago on John Macfarlane. What excited me was standing here speaking and Lloyd Geering was present. Today I am super excited to be here today because one of my favourite composers is associtaed with St Andrews, that being the late Shirley Murray. I knew Shirley and John very well and her hymn, for everyone born is my favourite hymn and of course when you scroll through the hymns today most of them are compositions by Shirley. Its my tribute to one of this countrys most well known composers.
Thank you for your invitation to lead the service which includes kai hapa, holy communion. It is indeed an honour to be here today.
I have to say that I was quite moved by the poem by Apirana Taylor. We never knew about Parihaka, it was never taught at school, it was hushed up.
Last year I co-taught the annual Māori theology paper at Ohope marae and there was an interactive session on the Treaty of Waitangi and the Māori response. What stood out for me was one young Pākehā woman who broke down and cried and shouted ‘why wasnt I taught this in school’? There were a few people her age who echoed her statement. It was quite an emotional moment for many.
As a child educated in the 1970s I was also never taught about Parihaka. Being a marae kid, I certainly knew about it as people from Taranaki and Parihaka would come to our marae. We also had inter-marriages between our iwi and the various iwi in Taranaki. We were socialised and conscientised to Parihaka, Maungapōhatu and any other similar instances in our countrys history. Land was the issue and in many ways still is today.
Discussions in our house-hold would include the Treaty of Waitangi and the New Zealand Land Wars and the role our iwi played in this. My iwi were loyalists, we fought on the side of the Crown and called ourselves ‘Queenites’ as we had signed a Covenant Treaty with Queen Victoria and that was unbreakable. Regardless, after fighting faithfully on the side of the Crown, when it was done and dusted, the Crown turned its guns on us. It doesnt matter what side you fought on, you were still affected by the outcome and lost land either by the barrell of a gun or by the stroke of a pen.
Today things have changed and Parihaka, the Treaty, the New Zealand Land Wars are in the School curriculum. The generation of today and tomorrow will learn of this history, their history, the history of this country, the good the bad and the ugly.
The theme for today is Parihaka. There has been a move to change 5th of November from celebrating Guy Fawkes to comemmorating Parihaka. When I first heard of this, like many I jumped on the bandwagon but learning about the move to have the 5th of November designated Parihaka Day, I am a bit reticent about it. As I found out the call to have today named Parihaka Day did not originate from Parihaka. It originated from Christchurch from the Society of Friends otherwise known as The Quakers. They begun this campaign with good intentions but as I understand they didnt gain the consent of the community of Parihaka first. However, they meet with the community of Parihaka and gained their support forming Nga Manu Korihi Network. The Network has grown beyond Christchurch and there are a number of Networks throughout the country.
Due to that back-story I am not one-hundred percent sold on 5th November being named Parihaka Day.
While the people gather today and this week in Parihaka and in Dunedin, remembering the events of 5th November 1881 which looms large on the horizon, friends of mine from Parihaka tell me on this day remember what Parihaka stood for and make it toxic.
What did Parihaka as a community stand for?
Matthew 5:1-12
Looking at the reading from Matthew I want to highight Matthew 5: 9:
Ka koa te hunga hohou rongo; ka huaina hoki rātou he tamariki nā te Atua.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
As I understand, Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi were reading this scripture and studying it and this particular verse stood out for them.
This was in the midst of the New Zealand Land Wars. In a time of war, you do unto others what they do to you and with interest. They throw a stone at you, you throw a spear back at them, they shoot at you, you drop a bomb on them.
What if we responded to violence with peace they asked themselves. Peace doesnt mean laying down and being a doormat to be walked all over. But what if this peace becomes active peace, what say we resist all forms and methods of violence and dehumanisation with active peaceful resistance? The idea of passive resistance was partially born from the words of Jesus. As Jesus sat on a mountain the prophets of Parihaka sat at the foot of their mountain being inspired by the words of a prophet from two-thousand years ago in another country.
When you read through the beattitudes you could apply the whole text to Te Whiti and Tohu. As a community they were poor, their main resource, land was stripped from them. They mourned for what and who they lost. They were persecuted in more ways than one, they wanted righteousness and mercy. But they were denied all of this and the only way they found was to become activity peaceful in resisting the horrors of war.
Isaiah 2:1-4
But how do you peacefully resist violence? They found a peaceful method in the later part of verse 4 from Isaiah chapter 2:
Ka patupatua e rātou ā rātou hoari hei hea parau, ā rātou tao hei mea tapahi manga.
They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks.
I’m impressed that they chose this as their method of passive and peaceful resistance. Where the surveyors laid their survey pegs they ploughed the land so when the surveyors returned they had no idea of where the survey pegs were.
The response to peaceful methods was State violence. Send in heavily armed troops, 1600 of them. Children meet them with bread and water, but they were simply ridden over by horses. Unspeakable things were done to the women that I will not mention here. The community was dismantled, and the men arrested and imprisoned without trial to hard labour. Not all the men returned home, the bones of Pitiroi and Waiata and others still lay in unmarked graves in Dunedin waiting for justice.
It is the story of Pitiroi and others that saddens me the most. They were given paupers burials, dropped into a hole and a concrete slab covered them and then their graves were sold off. You have another person laying on top of them. In life Pitiroi and others buried in the cemeteries of Dunedin were denied their human rights. In death they are still denied their human rights. That is what justice looks like to me in this country, the denial of human rights in life and death.
Are we in a Time of War:
This is history from 1881 and here we are gathered today in 2023 in a church in Wellington. Have things changed much today?
My father like many of your fathers and grandfathers served in the world wars overseas and saw the horrors of war first hand. I would ask my father about his experiences in war, but I was always meet with silence.
He did say one thing to me that many fathers who have served in theatres of war say to their sons: ‘in a time of peace, sons will bury their fathers, in a time of war, fathers will bury their sons’.
I found out the depths of that statement when a close family member went to the Ukraine to help out and his team was bombed. Bombs and missiles don’t distinguish between soldiers and humanitarian workers. Two members of his team were killed instantly, and he was badly wounded and should have bled out but thankfully another team member dragged him to safety, and he survived….just. I almost had to bury my son. I have to say that I have never prayed so much where your very breath becomes prayer……. morning…… noon…… and night. I ask myself that question quite regularly now, are we in a time of war? If so, what is my response?
My response in that moment was one of prayer.
If you follow the news, you will hear stories of war every day. The current war in Israel, I find difficult as I have students and friends who are Jewish and have family in the war zone. I want to be loyal to them, support them and be there for them.
I also have friends who are Muslim who lost friends and family on March 15 at the El Noor and Linwood Mosques. I still remember sitting with them when they received the phone call to say their loved ones were among the dead. ‘Give us the terrorist and we will kill him with our bare hands…..brothers, that is why we left the old country to get away from that behaviour, let us not bring those ways here’ their wives said to their husbands.
For three hours I sat there mediating between the Muslim community in Dunedin, the Police, local and central government politicians and helping agencies. The most difficult meeting I have ever had to facilitate.
There is another war in our back yard that we hear little off, West Papua. Hundreds of thousands of indigenous West Papuans have been brutally killed. I gave my commitment to the leaders of the Church in West Papua that every time I speak publicly on war and peace, I will always fly the flag of West Papua and I do that now.
My response to the horrors of the Ukraine, Israel and West Papua is governed by the words of Jesus which says to us that we must be peace makers.
Isaiah says to us that we must turn our swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks. Jesus says to us, blessed are the peace makers, we therefore must love our enemies.
Tohu Kakahi and Te Whiti o Rongomai say to us, that we must actively resist all forms of injustice through peaceful methods by being active peace makers.
What does passive resistance look like?
The model that Te Whiti and Tohu had was a biblical response, that started with two biblical passages. Whatever my response maybe, it must be informed by the bible.
Blessed are the peacemakers are not just words that Jesus thought up in the moment, they were words that he lived……words that he died for……..and words that he rose again for.
Whatever my response, I must be prepared to live that response in every aspect of my life. When it gets difficult, am I prepared to suffer for it and even put my life on the line for what I believe?
If it comes to that and give my life for what I believe, is my will and faith strong enough to rise from the grave for what I believe?
There is only one answer to this…….only in Jesus Christ is this possible,
I know that death is not the end, it was not the end for Jesus.
He rose from death.
I know that in Christ I will rise from death to life again.
Whatever my response maybe,
It must be in Christ for in Jesus Christ all things are possible.
Audio of selected readings and reflections
Audio of the complete service
THANK YOU