Week V • Tuesday
New Zealand
Week V • Tuesday
Voices from the Landscape
Among Māori, tangi (lament) is communal: the people gather on the marae to speak truth about the dead, to cry, to sing, to hear disputes, to heal. Tears are not weakness but wisdom—the cleansing rain through which reconciliation grows.
These Maori rituals (Powhiri) bring indignity into the picture and ‘impart confidence, pride, identity and empowerment. Powhiri is a basic model for the process of rapprochement, exchange and compromise and, last but not least, forgiveness and integration, for reconciliation in the best sense.’
[Andrea Blatter and Tanja Schubert-McArthur in Reconciliation, Representation and Indignity, Peter Adds etc. ed., University Winter GmbH Heidelberg, 2016]
Pip Colgan, a Pakeha Tertiary from Auckland speaks of her discovery of the past of her country, through Mothers’ Groups for their pre-school children where the true history of the country was told in stark termsstrong Maori educator, and protests against the Springbok Tour of 1981. She attended the Public Apology of 1998. There was a presentation about the looting, sexual assault and rape which was meted out to Maori. She tells how during the presentation where rape would have been described, instead a ritual dance was enacted.
All of this led to questioning of her ancestors’ behaviour and waking up to what happened in the past. Over the decades the greater use of Maori language, the teaching of the country’s history to include the suppression of Maori rights, extended land-voting rights and Maori health programmes have all contributed to the process of reparation and reconciliation. Nevertheless, the election of a right-wing Coalition is leading to some ‘turning of the clock back’, and counter-demonstrations.
wonderings
- I wonder where I have met Jesus in my own grief or disillusionment.
- I wonder how our community might become a field hospital for others who mourn.
- I wonder what “refounding” could look like in our Church today.
Reflection
When Mary and Martha weep, they reveal the fracture in the family—anger, blame, confusion. Jesus does not correct them; he weeps with them. Later, the parallel fractures in the community becomes clear as the ‘crowd’ follows Mary and blames Jesus.
In a culture trained to hide its wounds, lament becomes resistance. It exposes the reality beneath denial. For Maori the marae is important: the open space or courtyard where people gather in front of a main building. And so are the Hikoi protest marches. Research into the true history of their country is vital, ‘Scholarship is at the heart of healing by uncovering the injuries and injustices.’ Waitangi Tribunal hearings are on the marae of the injured party, and the Tribunal has the power to take into account oral history, myths and powerful dramas in reaching its recommendations [ibid 9ff]. The stench of death in the tomb of Lazarus brings to mind the solemn Powhiri performed on the repatriation of toi moko—tattooed preserved heads of ancestors—returned from museums round the world.
Empire could not repent because it could not cry. The church cannot reconcile until it learns to lament—with those whose lands were taken, whose languages were silenced, whose stories still ache to be heard.
The story of the family of Lazarus with its fractured relationships begins in Luke’s Gospel with the conflict between Martha and Mary and continues in our narrative with confused comings and goings to Jesus. It ends with the family reuniting around the person of Jesus, recognised by Mary as the Messiah. Their reconciliation is a challenge to the crowd that follows, some of whom are bent on recrimination.
Pat Mossop TSSF Europe
in conversation with
Pip Colgan Pakeha Tertiary
prayer
God of the Marae and the Hidden Wound,
teach us to lament with honesty
and to welcome with grace.
May our tears become cleansing waters,
our truth-telling become pathways of healing,
and our communities become
places where histories are faced,
dignity is restored, and peace is woven anew.
Give us courage to walk
the long road of reconciliation,
with humility, tenderness,
and steadfast hope.He hōnore he korōria ki te Atua :
Honour and glory to God
He maungārongo ki te whenua :
Peace on earth
He whakaro pai ki ngā tangata katoa :
Goodwill to all humankind
Ahakoa ko wai, ahakoa nō whea :
No matter who, no matter from where.
bible reading
John 11:17–37
From Chaos to Compassion
When Jesus arrives at Bethany, he walks into a scene of chaos. The home of Mary and Martha has become a landscape of loss. The air is thick with lamentation, ritual mourning, and the numbing silence that follows death. Lazarus is gone; their world has come apart.
This is not only the story of one grieving family—it is a reflection on grief itself. Every culture develops rituals to contain sorrow, but when loss overwhelms those structures, we experience what theologian Gerald Arbuckle calls “cultural disintegration”: the collapse of the patterns and certainties that helped us make sense of life. Mary and Martha stand precisely on that threshold. “Lord, if you had been here…” is not accusation as much as anguish. Their theology has cracked under pressure. Their familiar beliefs can no longer carry the weight of their experience.
And yet it is here, in their disorientation, that Jesus meets them. He does not defend himself, correct their thinking, or offer easy comfort. Instead, he listens, he weeps, he calls them back into relationship. Grief becomes the ground where faith is refounded—not as assent to propositions, but as trust in a Presence.
Arbuckle reminds us: “We are called to discern God’s presence not beyond culture, but within it—in the laughter, pain, and daily rituals of people’s lives.”
Jesus does exactly this. He does not stand outside the mourning culture; he enters it. In Pacific and Oceanic contexts, Arbuckle notes, communal lament is a sacred act—an inculturation of compassion, a way of tending the va, the relational space that holds a community together. When “Jesus wept,” he incarnated divine empathy within human ritual. He did not impose a theology of triumph but joined the rhythm of human sorrow. Divine love took on local flesh; the Gospel was inculturated in grief.
Too often, the Church’s response to loss has been to tidy it away—offering explanations, doctrines, or hurried optimism. But the Spirit, Arbuckle insists, “lives most fully in uncertainty.” Jesus models this. He does not offer certainty; he offers companionship and a summons: “I am the resurrection and the life… do you believe this?”
This is not an exam question. It is an invitation to re-enter life. Martha, the doer, becomes a theologian; Mary, the contemplative, becomes a prophet. Their grief becomes witness. The chaos becomes a re-founding of a new way of seeing and living.
Pope Francis has described the Church as a “field hospital”—a place that tends wounds rather than displays perfection. Bethany becomes that field hospital. Jesus ministers amid tears, disappointment, and disbelief, not with antiseptic theology but with touch and presence. The community around Mary and Martha is a microcosm of the wounded world: friends comforting, critics questioning, neighbours watching.
The raising of Lazarus is not only a miracle; it is the rebirth of community. Those who gathered for lament become witnesses to life. Grief becomes the doorway to transformation.
Read this way, the passage is a story of communal renewal. The tears of Jesus are the waters of new creation. The stone rolled away becomes a cultural and spiritual symbol—the barrier between despair and hope being moved aside.
Like Mary and Martha, the Church today stands amid many deaths: of institutions, patterns, and certainties we once relied on. But this need not be a story of collapse. It may be a refounding moment. God meets us in the chaos, not to restore what was, but to re-imagine what resurrection looks like in our culture, our mission, and our hearts.
reflective action
Create a small space of acknowledged grief—a personal “marae of the heart.”
Sit somewhere quiet and name, aloud or silently, one sorrow in your community or history that is too easily ignored.
If you can, pour a small bowl of water, touching it lightly with your fingers.
Let each touch be a gesture of tangi—a symbolic tear offered for what has been wounded, silenced, or forgotten.
Then, in the spirit of pōwhiri, welcome one hope into that space: someone you long to move toward with truth and tenderness.
Let this simple action remind you that lament and welcome belong together, and that reconciliation begins not with solutions, but with courage to face what hurts.
journalling prompt
What griefs in your community are waiting to be acknowledged before healing can begin? Why is there no tradition of Public Apology in our culture? Is there something in our culture which turns instead to the use of force to resolve issues?
