Why Are You Crying – Tribute for Jione Havea

“Why are you crying? I can’t do what he does to the Bible. He doesn’t read it the way we read it at home.”  

[Early 2000’s: Numerous students after classes] 

“What are you going to do about it?” 

[Jione: Every year, with increasing frequency, whenever a student had an epiphany.] 

I can’t read particular passages of scripture without hearing his voice in my head – Ruth, Genesis, The Lord’s Prayer… the Pacific Prophet’s voice, gentle, inquisitive and firm, posing seemingly innocent questions that cut through assumptions with the precision of a surgeon wielding a laser knife. Jione Havea’s particular approach to formation and re-formation was often provocative, confronting, and persistently prodding.  

I noticed a change over the years. In the early days his teaching was edgy – questions directed at deconstruction, his frustration sometimes audible beneath the brilliance. Then came marriage and fatherhood, and with them a homelife that blossomed him. As the Pacific Prophet — always on the move — home was not a place to stay, it had to be held in family. Monica and Diya would both become his sanctuary and his inspiration.  

He did not soften as much as deepen. His questions were still precise, still unsettling, but now they were offered as invitations, sprinkled with pastoral tenderness. Where once they felt like edges of cliffs, they began to reveal scaffolding — handholds you could choose, moments of grace extended mid‑fall. 

I think family also brought a sense of timeliness. Don’t waste time. If you are away from home, make it count! I have no idea how he wrote and edited such quantities of words. Maybe he had an army of scribes hidden away, where we could not see? He was everywhere – at home in India and Tonga, teaching in Aotearoa and the lands now called Australia, presenting in Thailand and Tahaa, committee work in London and South Africa.  

A recent encounter was on the island of Moorea, in the Tahiti group. Picture the scene: late-night tea with the elders at the Deacon-house, after a long day of Bible study with young people from across the Pacific. What followed was nearly an hour of patient questioning—about MA‑NA, VA, VA‑NUA, MO‑TU, MO‑ANA — testing etymologies, turning phrases in Tongan and Samoan, listening carefully for the weight each word carried. Laughter surfaced often. So did long pauses. Nothing felt hurried. Each evening question quietly became the next day’s teaching, as if the learning itself was a form of respect. 

I wonder – did he sleep at all those nights? Did his dreams work in intersectionality – where different disciplines are in conversation with each other? Next morning, the words he had been nuancing the night before were on the presentations and marked up with highlighting. He did not just translate the words, he translated the media for communication. He could deliver an hour lecture using material he had accessed merely hours before. In that lecture, he demonstrated why God gave us the gift of many languages, because one language will never be enough to talk about the most sacred things. 

Why are you crying?  Because we will miss him. 

What are you going to do about it?  Take off my shoes. 

Rev. Amelia Koh-Butler is a UCA Minister, currently serving as Mission Secretary (Education and Pacific Region) of the Council for World Mission (formerly London Missionary Society). Many of Jione’s works were published through the DARE programme of CWM, which he was instrumental in founding and developing. Rev. Koh-Butler was Director of the ELM Centre when Jione was the Old Testament Lecturer at UTC.