Tawa Union Church

“You see, it’s a liturgical world out there, and we’re all wired up as liturgical creatures who run on repetition and habit. And when you think about it, how could there be anything new if there was nothing old, or anything spontaneous if there was nothing planned?” (John Leach)

May we discover a deep, practical, generous, and compassionate trust in God as we worship this week.

Readings: Psalm 146 and Mark 12:38-44

With a close read, we notice how these beloved Biblical figures were failed by systems that should have sustained them. But for those who are failed by humans, God intervenes, offering them back the pleasure of life they
always deserved. The Divine is made manifest in full stomachs, security, and broken chains!

May we discover a deep, practical, generous, and compassionate trust in God as we worship this week.

Psalm 144 is a Passover psalm and no doubt that is why the lectionary uses it at Easter.

It celebrates the physical events from the Exodus out of Egypt and the desert wanderings in a poetic way – the Red Sea looked and ran away, the river Jordan stopped in its tracks, the mountains skipped like goats and the hills jumped like lambs (perhaps a reference to the quakes and storm on Mt Sinai as the law is given to Moses?).

‘Red Sea, Jordan river, mountains and hills, why did this happen?’ the Psalmist asks. And the unspoken answer is that the Lord is Lord of all the Earth and Earth trembles in God’s presence. The Psalmist continues.  ‘This is the God who changes rocks into pools of water and solid cliffs into flowing springs.’ This is the God, then, who not only rescued Israel from slavery, but also kept the people alive and sustained them on their journey, that eventually led them to the promised land.

For a people travelling on foot in the desert, the road is from one oasis or water hole to another. If that is not the road it is a dead end, literally. Water is life and its presence is what opens up a road way. To those who dwell in an arid land, to be in a place of abundant water is both gift and blessing.

Jewish and Christian scriptures talk about ‘living water’. Living water is water that has come from a spring or a river or a stream or falling rain – fresh water. It is not there because someone has carried it or stowed it. Living water is water that comes directly, as a gift from God.

I have heard it said that the history of the Tawa settlement parallels the history of Wellington and its transport systems. The first road, the railway first from Johnsonville, then following the Tawa rail tunnels coming directly into the suburb, the motorway north/ south and now the new motorway, all of these have had and will have an impact on this settlement.

But before them all, before Pakeha settlement, there were the old Maori tracks that came up the stream gullies from Whanganui a Tara (Port Nicholson/Wellington Harbour) – the Ngaio, Ngauranga and Korokoro gorges and made their way over the hills to drop down to the valley on the other side. Our valley, with its own stream running through it – the Tawa Stream fed by tributaries from what we call Takapu, Stebbings, Kenepuru, and from a number of other smaller streams running off Colonial Knob- some of them in culverts now, and hidden.

The flood plain of the Tawa stream created flat land all the way to Porirua Harbour. And that made it the obvious route for the Old Porirua Rd that the soldiers built soon after the European settlement of the area began. That was the road that connected the two harbours in the region, the road that was the beginning of a land-based connection between Wellington and further north.

In a fundamental way this stream gave life to our settlement and others. It gave access to Maori and European settlers. It was their trade route, their water supply, a food supply, their playground. A generous stream.

The plan was to do a Tawa banner – so we had to have the stream.

The phrase ‘its waters gave life’ comes from the end of the book of Revelation. The writer has picked up on an old passage from Ezekiel, of a stream flowing out from the temple, getting bigger and deeper as it goes. A stream that brings life, fruitfulness, healing and blessing to all that it touches directly or indirectly. In the book of Revelation, the stream flows from beneath the throne of God and the Lamb (Jesus Christ). The trees that grow alongside it produce leaves for the healing of the nations.

The Easter story is an exodus story. It is about God in Jesus making a way for us out of entrapment and into the freedom of God’s grace and love. Easter is about the healing of you and me, and our neighbours and the nations. Easter is the generosity of God, a stream that gives life.

In John’s gospel there’s a story about Jesus talking to a woman he met at a well. She had had a tough life, been in and out of a fair few relationships. She was a battler and a survivor. They were at the well in the heat of the day and they got talking about water. Jesus said, ‘This well water – everyone who drinks it is going to get thirsty again. But I can give water that will satisfy a person’s deepest thirst, for good. The water I give will become like a spring inside them, bubbling up to eternal life.’ So they’ll not only find that their thirst has been quenched, but the life giving water they have received wells up and spills out of them to refresh others. So they themselves will become life giving water for others.

When you stitch something like this banner, it is not quick, and you have a lot of time to think about things. Those of us who worked on it have been looking at these words for a while, and we have been thinking that ‘giving life’ is pretty much what we are called to do, as Christian people and as a church.

The ancestors of the Jewish people spent their lives learning and relearning to trust their story with God. Our own lives with God involve that same learning and relearning to trust. But being open to receiving new life from God and working away at giving life to others is at the heart of it.

Clare Lind

What river runs through your life?

Maybe you lived by it.  Maybe you holidayed beside it.

What did your river teach you?

This is the Tawa Union Church logo.  I am told it is a depiction of a braided river.  What does the logo represent for us?  What does it say about who we are and what we value?

I once got talking to a retired engineer, at the mouth of the Waitaki river.  There are fishing camps north and south of the river mouth and he lived in one of them.  He had come down, as I had, to look at the river.  He told me that there is very little river sand in the river.  Because of that boats on the river need special anchors that will grab the gravel sufficiently to hold them.  He recommended a couple of spikes attached to a couple of car suspension springs welded to a short length of railway iron.

He said that only around a third of the water from the river flows above the surface of the shingle that forms its bed.  The rest flows through the shingle which acts like a giant filter.

All large rivers have plumes where they enter the sea.  Often they are obvious after a storm; the water from the swollen river is a very different colour to that of the surrounding sea.  The fresh water plume from the Waitaki extends a long way out to sea.  In the days of sailing ships, ships were able to replenish their drinking water without having to come in to land.

My mother’s old neighbour is a geography teacher at the Girl’s College.  Each year she takes the girls on a field trip along the length of the river.  I asked her where the river begins.  She laughed.  ‘It is usually traced from the beginning of its longest tributary,’ she said.  ‘We say it begins at the Temple Basin at the head of Lake Ohau.’  She gets the girls to observe and measure the river stones along the course of the river.  ‘It is a bit hit and miss, because the three hydro dams on the Waitaki hamper the movement of the stones down the river.

The Waitaki has one of the biggest catchment areas of any river in New Zealand.  Snow melt from the Temple Valley, Mount Cook, Mt Tasman and from further north in the Southern Alps, feeds the glacial lakes of Ohau, Pukaki and Tekapo.  Their rivers flow into the hydro lake of Benmore.  When it leaves Benmore it is finally called the Waitaki, and it passes through two more hydro lakes on its 110 km journey to the sea.  It is a braided river.  It frequently divides and merges along its course.  While its main channel is always deep, some of its strands are stream-like and easily waded.  With all this movement you might think that the overall course of the river would be full of twists and bends.  It is not.  If you look at this aerial photo you can see that the course of the river from when it leaves Benmore is surprisingly straight.

Its straight course is very different from the course of the river that was part of my growing up, the Taieri River.  The Taieri is a river full of sinuous bends.  In fact, its whole course is one great bend.  Its mouth is not all that far from its source as the crow flies.  In rivers that snake like the Taieri, sometimes the beginning of one of its bends is quite close to the end of the bend.  When the river floods it may change its course and carve a short cut through the land separating the beginning and the end of the bend.  When the flood recedes the bend is now cut off from the river.  It has become what is called an oxbow lake.  Given that it no longer has an inlet or an outlet it may eventually dry out.  In the upper reaches of the Taieri River there is a scroll plain where this has happened over and over.

We are commissioning people to be our leaders this morning.  How does all this talk about rivers connect with our life together at Tawa Union Church?  What questions does it raise for us?

I want to draw your attention to three areas that might bear our consideration.  You may have others.

1)The first is to do with habitat.  Braided rivers are full of shingle islands.  These islands lying within the riverbed between the strands of the river teem with insects.  This makes the islands an attractive habitat for our native wading and water birds –  oyster catchers, banded dotterels, wrybills and the rare black stilts.

 And the river isn’t just home to the waders.  I knew someone years ago who did some bird counting for DOC along the Waitaki.  He came back with an incredible photo of a New Zealand falcon.  He had unwittingly got too close to its nest and it buzzed him.  He said he could feel the wind from wings on the top of his head.  He held his ground and when the falcon came again he took the photo.  Its wings were fully spread as it pulled itself up from its dive, just avoiding him.

These precious habitats need to be considered when it comes to management of the water ways.  Changes in water flow can lead to increases in weeds.  It may also mean that predators like wild cats and rats and ferrets can reach nests and young birds more readily.

What are we doing to identify and nurture the precious life that exists along and between the strands of our TUC water way? 

2) A place of constant movement and change   Instability and change are inevitable features of braided river systems.  These river systems are in constant movement.  Small shingle bars appear and disappear as river channels shift and water flows vary.  Birds that nest in these areas have adapted to these changes.  For instance, many of these birds do not build elaborate nests, so they can rebuild them quickly if destroyed by flood.

How lightly are we holding things?

Are we living expecting things will change?  Because on a braided river they certainly will. 

3) Connecting, disconnecting and reconnecting

Along a braided river the different water courses within the river bed are always moving in and out of each other.  But the overall course of the river is remarkably straight; it is clearly heading in the same direction.  At TUC we are very proud of our different strands – different services, different programmes for different tastes and needs.  We are good at recognising difference and making space for it.   But how good are we at connecting and reconnecting and at moving together across the strands?  Are we only this wonderful community because we don’t see much of one another?  If that were so it would be a poor sort of Christian unity, and it would only pay lip service to our diversity as well, because we would never be getting close enough to really get to know our differences.

Our Tawa Union Church logo has a pleasing balance to it, with the curves on either side of the main stream suggesting alternate strands.

Does our logo look closer to a river with ox bow lakes or a braided river/ Or, more importantly, are we acting like a braided river or are we simply making ox bows and a scroll plain?

When did you last have a meaningful interaction with someone outside of the group you usually relate to in TUC?  What are you going to do about that?

Clare Lind