Junipers and (Re)generation

Last week I joined volunteers to pick Juniper Berries in the Autumn sunshine in Upper Teesdale, High Force, an annual event organised by Natural England. According to the field officer the Upper Teesdale National Nature Reserve has one of the largest and oldest Juniper woodlands in Britain (100 hectares), with some 15-20,000 trees; some are well over 300 years old. The Juniper is one of only 3 native British conifers (Scots Pine and Yew are the others); seeds grow on the female trees; the seeds take 2 years to ripen. Not all the seed from old trees are viable so wardens have to check a sample of the berries on each bush/tree before deciding whether to instruct the volunteers to harvest the berries from that particular tree. Over the years there has been much planting of young Juniper saplings grown on from the berries picked in the autumn months (they are planted in rabbit free guards). But what I didn’t realise and was quite surprised to find out was how small the juniper berries were – no bigger than peppercorns!

When I returned home I mused over a sermon I preached earlier in the year about Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed (Lectionary gospel reading June 14th) - like all parables its teaches the concept or “the big idea,” a broad brush approach, comparing the kingdom of God to a mustard seed: it’s such a small thing in itself, but like the swine flu virus, too small to see, it can have an enormous effect with global consequences.

But on re-reading the parable a couple of days ago I wasn’t so much struck about the smallness of the mustard seed and its familiar gospel implications, but the verse “Yet when planted it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants with such big branches that birds that can perch in its shade” (Mark 4: 32 TNIV).

I began to think whether this sentence was perhaps a standard Rabbinical way used by Mark to refer perhaps to the Gentile nations and peoples – people like the wise men - who stand outside the covenant of God and his chosen people. I might just be an optimistic post modern universalist – but I suspect there may be some interesting ideas at work in this sentence which I hadn’t appreciated before – is Mark suggesting that as God’s covenant people grow, like the bush, it will provide shelter for all the nations of the earth, just as birds will find shelter in the branches of the mustard bush? Is God’s kingdom then a broad inclusive place of many boughs and mansions, where all people can find a home and a welcome, where the birds of the air can nest and make a home, or is it a kingdom conceived as a place from which a small band of chosen people could rule the world? I suspect the former.

Taking the seed and tree analogy further St Paul in his letter to the Romans, and that difficult of all chapters – chapter 11 - moves this tree image in a different direction when he writes about the wild Gentiles being ‘grafted’ on to the tree of God’s family, as it were – could it be grafted on in place of an original branch which no longer bears fruit?

Are we too idealistic to suppose that for Jesus, a redeemed and faithful Israel working for the transformation of the world into God’s kingdom, is the place where the whole world can be and feel at home. The birds of the air don’t become the bush when they build their nest in it, but they do become a part of its life, and here in the shade of the tree there is not only room for, but a celebration of a diversity of bird types?

For those who work like me outside the church in the regeneration business, working for the transformation of the world into God’s kingdom, often with other people of different faiths or similar planning and community ideals I am increasingly aware of the possibility of God being at work in people outside the church, that are building his kingdom. Indeed it is true that some of my colleagues enjoy spiritual experiences outside the church or a faith setting.

My view would be that Jesus would appear to expect and particularly to value such people as these. More than once Jesus comments on how the faith he finds in Gentiles and Samaritans put the faith he finds in Israel to shame. In my re-reading of this parable Jesus appears to be saying there is a broad welcome to those who will live by the values of the kingdom. There are sheep of his who are not of his fold; there are many mansions in the heavenly home to which he goes; there is room in his view of God’s love for the birds of the air to nest in its branches.

Ray Anglesea