Today’s gospel reading opens with a parable about a faith the size of a small seed transplanting a mulberry tree into the sea and it is important to understand that the parable is not about reversing the laws of nature.  We know that even though massive logging machinery can’t pull up fully grown trees there is nothing that can make the trees grow in the sea.  Certainly, we have witnessed massive storms wash trees down rivers, sweep away bridges and flow out to sea.  But they are more likely to end up bleached and beached on the shoreline than growing in the water.

Replanting trees in the sea would need the combined wizardry of Peter Jackson, James Cameron and Weta Workshop.  Furthermore, like all of us those wizards of cinematic magic had small beginnings. My neighbour in Hamilton grew up in Pukerua Bay. She remembered, a young Peter Jackson, playing on the beach with a paper mâché severed head and a movie camera.   

The reality is with rising sea levels and climate change many low-lying Pacific Islands are losing important arable land because sea water is seeping in and killing food crops.

What this parable does call us to understand is that even a small amount of faith will find some way of solving, even such terrifying life-threatening problems as global warming and rising sea level and the collapse of democracy.

History tells us that humanity is a fantastically resilient species.  We are a species that has migrated right across the globe and survived huge disasters and plagues that threatened to eradicate entire populations.

For instance, in the years 1348 to 1350 it is estimated the Black Death killed 30 to 60% of Europe’s population and reduced the world’s population from an estimated 450 million to between 350 and 375 million.[1]

Total deaths in the First World War are estimated at over sixty-five million [2] and in Mathew 24 verse 6 Jesus says that ‘you will hear of wars and rumours of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place but the end is not yet’. 

Furthermore, our reading from lamentations deals with the utter devastation of Jerusalem after the Babylonian invasion so it appears that humanity has survived its own destructiveness for a very long time.  Now the news shows Jerusalem destroying Palestine. Furthermore, the evening news not only shows our self-destruction through violence and economic disasters but regularly shows the loss of life in earthquakes and other natural disasters around the globe.

Not only does history and contemporary news testify to human resilience but it is also witness to the truth contained in Jesus’ statement that ‘All this is but the beginning of the birth-pangs.’(Matthew 24:8)  

With Luke’s benefit of hindsight, he portrays the disciples looking for a faith in the face of impending disaster at the loss of their leader.  They are trying to imagine the faith needed to face the awesome challenge of spreading the Jesus message out into the world.  That faith is indeed what we all need to face the everyday calamities that confront our day to day lives. 

However, the parable of the mustard seed calls us to an even greater faith, a faith that claims that things do not always have to be the same.  This parable of the mustard seed is about encouraging seemingly impossible visions; it is a call to think outside the square.   

We so easily and so often accept longstanding injustice and hardship as the natural way of the world.  But the parable of the mustard seed reminds us that things do not always have to be the way they are.  Change is always possible even when faced with what appears to be overwhelming odds.^[3]

The Lamentation’s text gives us a very distressing view of the world of its author, but we must also remember that everything we know about Jesus and his effect on the world we know, grew out of that world of the author of Lamentations.  The Exodus Saga is certainly one of the foundation stories of Hebrew culture.  But the destruction of Jerusalem, the Exile and the rebuilding of the city under Nehemiah and the spiritual renewal under Ezra, are seen as a reflection of the Exodus journey.  Along with all the other sacred stories these accounts formed the tradition that nurtured Jesus to adulthood and formed the unique human being.  Jesus was the man with special spiritual insight that has given countless human beings over two millennia an image of a divine presence beyond themselves.

In the Roman world of his time, which indeed was part of an even wider world than the first century perceived, Jesus was a very tiny faith seed indeed.  Jesus was an insignificant Jew, an executed troublemaker from a subject people of the greatest civilisation the world had ever known.  To describe him as a single mustard seed in that great Greco-Roman culture of his time would probably be grossly exaggerating his importance among the great personalities of his age.

But it was Jesus’ faith that was significant, that tiny seed of faith he encouraged his apostles to hold.Through those apostles we are encouraged to also reach out and grasp such faith for ourselves.  A faith in God certainly, and we could equally claim, as good Trinitarian Christians, a faith that Jesus is the Christ, a human image of the divine being.

However, this mustard seed size Jesus faith can in fact be simplified and purified beyond the ecclesiastic language of the Christian community. 

Jesus had a faith that ‘things do not have to be the way they are, an assertion that even against what appears to be overwhelming odds, change is possible’[4].  

That is the faith that took Jesus to the cross and that is the faith that changed the course of human history. 

Through faith Jesus plucked the very complex and evolved tree of Hebrew spiritual culture from the Jerusalem temple.  Using skilled rabbinic exegesis and the expounding of scripture Jesus carefully pruned and shaped that tree to his unique design and purpose.  Then through his apostles, he cast that metaphorical faith tree into the eternal sea of time that flowed through his world into ours. 

It was indeed, mission impossible, the temple Judaism of his day was very much a hothouse plant unsuited for the competition of conflicting creeds that flowed like swirling currents through the Roman world.  Such a spiritual tree is certainly not the sort of plant that logic could understand would survive the cold chilled waters of the European dark ages that followed the collapse of Roman Civilisation. 

Yet here we are, perhaps the struggling remnant of the Christian faith drowning in the smothering secular sea. 

Or are we in fact the ripened fruit of two thousand years of growth of the Jesus tree about to plant ourselves in a new age of spiritual awareness?

There is plenty that we can lament about as we look back at the glory of our Christian past.  We can look at the church of today and quite freely say:

How lonely sits the church that once was filled with People!  How like a widow she has become’ (Lamentations 1:1). 

Many of us can remember the vibrant past life of the congregations that we have worshiped in.  We have also lived though, the hope of new beginnings that did not happen.  But the fact that we are meeting here this morning is a sign that we still have mustard seed potential.  We are people who dare to dream of a revitalised congregation and the rebirth of the Christian faith in a new world.

Surely all logic must tell us that we are hopeless dreamers, sinners pouring precious oil on the feet of a condemned Jesus. (John 12:1-8).  The world’s logic must cry out that surely these building could be sold and the money given to the poor or the homeless or both.  Parts of the church have demanded that remnant parishes that are only staying open through income from invested property money must be closed, and their money given to vibrant growing parishes with sound mission plans.

But across that sea of clambering, covetous, voices come the clear voice of the Jesus of Luke’s Gospel ‘if you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree ‘be uprooted and planted in the sea’ and it would obey you’ (Luke 17:6).  If you continue to have faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this wonderful, revitalised church building ‘be uprooted and planted in the sea of tomorrow’s spirituality, and it would obey you. 

We can hear that call through the Gospel pages not just because it is a message about our church buildings, but also because it is a message about the ripple of Christianity passing into the future in our part of the world.  Furthermore, we can still acknowledge that whatever we achieve in our apostolic quest to be involved in community facing mission St Martins may not be grand enough to be described as a tree grown in the ocean of secularism and disbelief.

But the effort we make may well be the mustard seed of faith that calls others to uproot the Kauri Tree of truly indigenous, inclusive, multi-cultural belief and plant it in a future rising tide of Aotearoa Christianity.

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death

[2] http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/resources/casdeath_pop.html

[3] http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/LkPentecost20.htm

[4] ibid.

‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes even life itself, cannot be my disciple’.  (Luke 14: 25 NRSV)

That is undoubtedly a challenging reading for Father’s Day.

The Good News Bible softens the verse somewhat by translation it. ‘Whoever comes to me cannot be my disciple unless he loves me more than he loves his father and his mother, his wife and his children, his brothers and his sisters, and himself as well’.  (Luke 14:25 GNB) 

Where the New Revised Standard Version translates as much as possible word for word, the Good News Bible translates a phrase, sentence or paragraph at a time and in this case you may have noticed it changed the order.  That method of translation is interpretive and, in this case, I think the translators have allowed their 20^th century western world view and sensibilities to take away some of shock of Luke’s recording of Jesus’ original rhetoric. 

This is the opening statement designed to shock the listeners into paying attention. It then leads into the short parables that follow. 

Writing of this passage in his online commentary Bill Loader makes the point that ‘To read Jesus as enjoining literal hatred of one’s family is to miss the point and mishear the rhetoric. Such shocking rhetoric reflects a view that families can constrict growth, become oppressive demons, and bring death rather than life’[1].

Furthermore, in his conclusion, Loader dispels any idea that Jesus’ call to discipleship is an ancient form of ‘doing your own thing’ or finding true happiness in spontaneous self-fulfilment adrift of all others’ claims and free of care.  

Jesus’ call to discipleship is a call to be on the journey that will lead to Jerusalem and the cross.  In this section of the Gospel Jesus is making it clear that his call is not to some self focussed, feel good philosophy but Jesus’ call is an invitation to engagement in radically inclusive love.  Jesus’ call to discipleship involves living immersed in the life of the God of love, and living in solidarity with all who share that love. 

The risk is that people will not always agree with making that choice because it is likely to conflict with their world view, ideologies and for some their cunning schemes. 

The gospels give us the call of the fishermen as an example of discipleship interfering with the expectations of a family business.

Both Tom Scott and Sir Edmond Hillary are heroes of mine and the opening episodes of Scott’s television series on Hillary’s life gives us one of many contemporary examples. 

Scott portrays Sir Edmond holding his father in great respect and his father determined to give his son the best of opportunity to do well in life.  There is evidence of a solid, if somewhat strict, Christian upbringing and commitment to peace.  However, Hillary senior’s vision was limited to his bee keeping enterprise and looked towards his son’s being settled with families and working in the family business in the best ‘Country Callender’ tradition. 

He wanted the best for his family but the vision of both his son, and his grandson in turn, standing on the world’s highest mountain would never have featured in his wildest dreams.  Neither would he have imagined the tremendous good that the work his son began with the Sherpa people would result from the values he installed in his son.

The film showed tense standoffs between a young Edmond and his father who felt his son was wasting too much time gallivanting around.  Yet in that family tension the biting icy winds of the Southern Alps brought the call to Sir Edmond Hillary that changed lives and immortalised him on our five-dollar bill. 

The link with our reading is the family tension Scott brings out in his movie, the call he illustrates with stunning views from mountain peaks and the lives transformed by the journey chosen. 

This year’s top selling book A Different Kind of Power tells us of a young women who stepped away from the faith that nurtured her because of its attituded to homosexuality. She went on, among other things, to appoint a gay man as minister of finance.  

As people of faith, we are called to see the hand of Jeremiah’s master potter who moulds our lives.  Moulds the lives of families, communities and nations. Our faith inspires us to see in Tom Scots biographical story of Sir Edmond Hillary, Dame Jacinda’s memoir, our Gospel reading, and many other stories the Divin Spirit breathing though our world.

The beauty of the image of the potter’s wheel is that the clay is moulded and reshaped.  Life may take us in a wrong direction, but God can always reshape from miss-direction, build on our changes and call us to new beginnings.  Jeremiah presents a judgement image in terms of God using other nations to destroy a sinful Israel and Judah but he also includes hope:

‘And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it.’ (Jeremiah 18:9)   

But the gospel image of the discipleship journey is an evolving journey just as our world is an evolving world.  

Some years ago Bishop Spong wrote on his Facebook page

There never was a time when we were created perfect and fell into sin and needed to be rescued. We are evolving people; we are not fallen people. We are not a little lower than the angels. We’re a little higher than the apes. It’s a very different perspective.[2]

It’s a perspective not only of an evolving people but an evolving world.  Our world is continually in the potter’s hand.  Like our world pottery is an art that is not always totally in the potter’s control. 

Glaze is painted on to pots but changes in the kiln.  The potter has some idea of how the glaze might change but, like any artist, is open to serendipity and has the ability to make the most of surprises.  Even on the wheel the skilled potter can be inspired but an unexpected change in the shape of the clay can turn it into something new and different. 

In any sort of logic Jesus’ arrest and execution was a disaster and vindicated the attempt of Jesus’ family to restrain him.  In Mark 3: 21 we read ‘When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He is gone out of his mind.’) 

However, the Spirit of the Resurrection turned disaster into victory and changed the world. That leaves us to ask what sort of world we would have without a determined Jesus and disciples inspired by his teaching and his faithfulness. Change, even in the face of a brutal Roman Empire, structured to resist change.

What would New Zealand and Nepal be like if a young Hillary had not resisted his father and his school’s efforts to press him into a predetermined shape. Moulded like an industrialised pressed pot rather than shaped by the creative spinning wheel of the artist potter? 

Where would our Antarctic research be if Hillary knew you couldn’t reach the South Pole on a Ferguson tractor.  What would have happened to that amazing adventure if Hillary had accepted his limited role of laying down fuel dumps for the planned British triumph of a motorised crossing of Antarctica. 

That call to amazing adventure and defiance came, not so much from the icy polar winds, as the persistent nagging of Peter Mulgrew,

‘Lets, go to the pole Ed’

Antarctica finally took the life of Peter Mulgrew on the 28^th of November 1979 when Air New Zealand Flight 901 ploughed into Mount Erebus, killing all 257 on board.  But in the ongoing turning of the master potter’s wheel Peter’s widow became the second Lady Hillary giving a renewed enthusiasm for life to both her and her new husband and ongoing inspiration to countless people. 

The clay on the potter’s wheel is all one clay and its interconnectedness brings amazing coincidences and connections into our lives.  As someone whose reading as an adolescent was improved by Hillarys books I can’t look at five dollar note without a quickening of the pulse.  Although inflation and bank cards mean I am mostly deprived of that experience these days.

Nevertheless, all of our actions and reactions have effects beyond our understanding and are part of the shaping of the clay by the divine hand.

Even so our own persistence and perseverance is part of our moulding and the shaping of our world.  Fitting into the carefully cotton wool cocoon of those most dear to us may not always be our best way forward, even if breaking out may cause family strife.

In his memoirs, an ancestor of mine, Joseph Masters outlined his plans to move to the Wairarapa and leave his Perry son in law in charge of their carpentry business in Wellington.  He does not describe any great family disagreement but tersely writes ‘My daughter came to me and said, ‘The business does not suit my husband, we are coming to the Wairarapa with you.’ 

Undoubtedly my life and the lives of many others would have been different if one of my distant forefathers had not, as an infant, made the three-day crossing of the Rimutaka Ranges in a basket strapped to Masters’ bullock.  There is also evidence in that account of a strong willed great, great, great grandmother whose genes have both blessed and cursed many of us.

Jesus calls us to plan and be aware of the risks but, when a young woman is happy working in the Cabinet Office of the British Parliament and a gay friend phones her and suggests she should put her name forward for the parliamentary list at home, did either of them know where that would lead, whose lives it would save and where the story goes next.  

The call of Christ is not limited by our faith community but it holds risks, tensions and possibilities which shape our future and shape our world. 

Christ calls us to the discipleship journey of tension, calamities and triumphs that are all moulded by the hand of a loving God into an ever-evolving loving future.

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[1] http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/LkPentecost16.htm

[2] John Shelby Spong https://www.facebook.com/JohnShelbySpong/?fref=ts