In Dunedin we have an odd service. The week after Easter we have a “Resurrection Sunday” evening service in the town hall. The reason for this is that the Easter weekend is one of the last holidays before winter (Anzac day, which is the 25th of this month, is very autumnal if not frankly wintry) and many people leave Dunedin for the four or five days.

The service was invented sixty years after Lloyd Geering declared the resurrection was a myth and God was not needed. He has been praised to the skies by the elite ever since.

And he was tried for heresy when I was in primary school, was disciplined by the Presbyterian Church. The Kiwi Presbyterians do some good things. To quote him:

There’s no place for God guiding the whole shebang, but the story has its sense of transcendence. There’s no shortage of miracles. “The self-evolving universe … has brought forth a creature through whom it can now look at itself,” marvels Geering, “and ask questions about how it all began.”

He hasn’t abandoned the notion of purpose. “We human beings have become almost programmed, to use a computer metaphor, to find purpose … The more we live purposefully, the more satisfied we become,” he tells me. “Because we’re all part of the universe, cosmic evolution has become purposeful in us.”

But that was a lifetime ago. The ministers decided to have a combined service post Easter. We are Kiwis. We are pragmatic. We know people are at their holiday places over Easter. So hold it a week later.

In the morning the Church service looked like this.

But in the evening we sang so loudly and joyfully that the organ pipes in the town hall began to vibrate in sympathy. And the gospel was preached. For Christ is not a myth. God is not un-needed. And we are all aware of our need for mercy, for by our own acts we have damned ourselves.

Ironically, both of the buildings we used are town halls: the morning church meets in a hall made by a borough council before the local government in Dunedin were combined. We are kiwis: we are pragmatic. And the gospel remains unchanged.

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,

To those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood:

May grace and peace be multiplied to you.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.

(1 Peter 1:1-12 ESV)

Geering is wrong. His branch of Presbyterianism is virtually dead. There are three liberal congregations that survive: one in Dunedin (Knox: avoid it), one in Wellington, and one in Auckland. One. Most Presbyterians are now conservative, because if there is no need for God there is no need for church, and you can get all the social justice you want by joining either the Green or Labour parties.

Both the Labour and Green parties are fairly moribund, as well. Kiwis are pragmatic, and holiness spirals repel us.

But, to paraphrase the evangelist last night, Christ came to us. He did not wait for us to come to him. He saved us, despite us hating him. Religion is man seeking God: Christianity is God seeking man.

The liberals see this not. They see but power. They follow Gramsci and Marx, and exclude anything that fits not within that filter. The self-righteous see but their works, and see not that they need mercy, for their pride and greed damns them.

And they never play or sing the whole NZ national anthem.

If Christ has not risen, then we need to be pitied. But Christ rose again. And we need to state, clearly, that this is the means of salvation for the world. Let not the blind limit this, not the elite silence us, nor the offense of those who consider Christ but a prophet or a rabbi in error stop us.

Let us be bold. Let us be impolite. Let us proclaim Christ, who offends the elite, and is foolishness to academia. For he alone is able to give us mercy, and grant us absolution, and salvation.