Moana has a heart for the sea. She feels the call of the distant horizon much to the consternation of her father. This is the plot of the Disney movie now on DVD and Netflix called Moana.

Her father sings a song about the benefits of staying on the island: “Moana, it’s time you knew
The village of Motonui
is all you need
The dancers are practicing
They dance to an ancient song
[Villagers:]
Who needs a new song?
This old one’s all we need
[Chief Tui:]
This tradition is our mission
And, Moana, there’s so much to do”

Tradition is the mission. The chief doesn’t want anyone to venture beyond the protective barrier reef, but the island is in trouble. Their fish nets are empty and the crops are failing. Moana sings her own song, “I can lead with pride, I can make us strong
I’ll be satisfied if I play along
But the voice inside sings a different song
What is wrong with me?”

Moana knows she’s not like everyone else. She’s called by the horizon. Called by the sea. She has the heart of a wanderer and wayfarer. She doubts herself but knows she must follow her call to save her island. Yet doubt and communal reinforcement keep her from her call.

Today, Jesus teaches us things hidden from the foundation of the world in a series of parables. A mustard seed that starts small and grows into a big tree that birds nest in. A woman who mixes in a full measure of yeast. A treasure in a field, a pearl of great value, a net with fish of every kind. What are we to make of these? We have heard these things so often, we know what they mean. Tradition is our mission.

The church is small but will house you. With unleavened bread you get these small pita things, but when you add yeast we get big fluffy loaves. More bread! That’s that traditional interpretation that many preachers might be telling their congregations this very day. Yet the meaning is hidden in plain sight.

Jesus is teaching in first century Palestine, out in the country to a people who know farming. Tell me, what farmer or gardener wants birds around? They eat seeds and damage crops. Mustard is considered a weed in that time and place, sort of like we think of the dandelion. Once a mustard seed is in your garden, it would grow quickly, block out sunlight from your other plants and invite unwanted birds. The garden would be ruined. Leavened bread is considered unclean. It’s prohibited in the Torah as you’re cheapening the bread. It’s all fluff and doesn’t sustain you. Notice how tradition can obscure the original meaning. The first hearers of these parables would have been astonished. This is a scandal! Jesus is using metaphors that aren’t about small things turning out great, he’s using a metaphor that’s about contaminating and corrupting.

The kingdom of God spreads like that. Once a little gets in, it can’t be stopped. The church has used these parables triumphantly, to show how we will eventually win and be everywhere. But these parables aren’t about the church, they are about the kingdom of God. The kingdom that overturns our categories of clean and unclean. Knocks out our traditional understanding of acceptable and good. The parables speak of the final victory of the kingdom despite all appearances.  These parables are like Jesus saying, “The kingdom is like a mosquito in your tent.” No one wants a mosquito in a tent, but it gets the point across, doesn’t it. “The beloved community of God is like a dead fly in your soup.”

Another way to describe this, I think of the Columbine shootings of 1999. Two teens killed 13 people at a high school in Colorado, the biggest mass shooting at the time. I was a junior in high school that year, and I watched everything I could about the developments there. The airwaves were full of reports of the tragedy. As the week went on, the facts turned into more opinion pieces. Preachers went on air and condemned the two shooters as cowards and demonic and sinners. Talking heads decried the parents of these two. How could they not know? What kind of parents were they? This seems to happen every time there’s a tragedy. Sympathy for the victims and utter condemnation for the shooter and their family. Tradition is the mission.

As I watched and listened, no explanation seemed to make sense. Then I heard Jesus. I finally heard a word of love and compassion. It came from an unlikely source. A source that was considered a corrupting influence on all those who heard his music. When asked what he would say to the two shooters, shock-rocker Marylin Manson answered, “Nothing. I would just listen. And that’s what nobody has done.”

I was shocked. Here was Jesus. Here was the Beloved Community of God. An answer that felt right and sure and true. It came from the most unlikely of sources and it stopped me in my tracks. Now, I don’t know if listening would have made any difference. We will never know, as the event has already happened. Yet the first person to act like Christ, to follow Jesus’ teachings to ”love your enemies and pray for those who harm you” wasn’t a pastor or a professing Christian.

We get so used to things, we miss things hidden in plain sight. God’s kingdom breaking forth in the unexpected. We want angels descending from upon high or people being raptured up in some dramatic way. We want our good guys in white hats and the bad guys in black hats. Yet Jesus turns the tables on us and gives us the every day. Weeds. Baked goods we’d rather not eat. Dirt and digging in a field for buried treasure. Fish in the net. Angelic words from a shock rocker. Pearls of great value. And we know how pearls are made, right? Sand gets in an oyster and it coats it with snot and we wear them around our necks. It takes an irritant to produce beauty. And that’s what Moana is on her island, she is an irritant.

Moana discovers her sense of call. She sings;
See the line where the sky meets the sea? It calls me
And no one knows, how far it goes
If the wind in my sail on the sea stays behind me
One day I’ll know
How far I’ll go.

And she goes far. She meets a demi-god, a sparkly crab, and Mother Nature. She finds herself, and she finds her people. The true tradition of her people. They were adventurers. They were wanderers and wayfarers. On her island, there is a hidden cave filled with the boats of her people. She discovers that there is nothing wrong with her, but her people had forgotten who they are.

Like we the church have forgotten who we are. We are not the respectable, lovely influence on society we think we are. In the first and second centuries, Jesus’ followers were not a respectable bunch. Most people had probably never heard of Christians, but some knew the rumors: They worshipped a crucified criminal, ate flesh and blood, and obstinately refused to sacrifice to the gods. And they were notorious for hanging around prisons. They said Jesus is lord and savior and that means Rome and Cesar isn’t.

This is partly because many early Christians ended up in prison themselves. Jesus did. Peter did. Paul did. Ignatius of Antioch did. A bunch of criminals. They’ll corrupt the children. Many talk about how Christians are persecuted but they never seem to mention why they were persecuted.

They welcomed widows and orphans. They showed up in prisons, VOLUNTARILY. They fed the hungry, clothed the poor, visited the sick. Respectable people don’t do that. Respectable people try to keep up with the Joneses and acquire more wealth, property and influence. The early church didn’t play that game and was a threat to it. It’s why the early Church was faced with such persecution. Then the Roman empire legalized the once illegal religion and thus Christianity did not covert the empire, the empire converted Christianity.

We started to read the shocking teachings differently, watering them down, making them easier to swallow; less weird. We forgot who we are. Yet we are starting to remember. We are starting to awaken.

I hear this each time I watch Moana with Sam and Eve. I cry like a baby at that movie. Moana is singing and singing to Mother Nature who has taken the form of a lava monster because her heart was stolen. They have stolen the heart from inside you. But this does not define you
This is not who you are. You know who you are.”

I sing that to you church. I sing that to myself to remind myself who I am and what I’m about as a Christian. We’re not about converting people to come here on Sunday. We are about the restoration and healing of souls and bodies. We are about liberation of the oppressed. We are about bringing good news to the poor. We are about acting justly, loving kindness and walking humbly with our God. This is who we are. This is who we have always been. Tradition is our mission!

“Who am I?,” Moana sings. “
I am the girl who loves my island
I’m the girl who loves the sea
It calls me

And the call isn’t out there at all
It’s inside me
It’s like the tide, always falling and rising
I will carry you here in my heart
You’ll remind me”

Go out and contaminate a world of violence with peace.
Infect others with love in a world of hate.
Echo wisdom wherever you hear it, no matter the source for God is still speaking through unlikely rock stars, Disney movies, and the closet person sitting next to you in your pew.
Contract inclusion in a world of exclusion.
Spoil false identities with the truth that each and every person is a child of God.
Blight judgment into curiosity.
Poison egotism with service to the least of these.
This is our true tradition which is our mission, it’s inside us, always falling and rising like the tide, and with it; we’ll discover how far we’ll go.

Bibliography

Boring, M. Eugene. New Interpreter’s Bible. Vol. VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.

Moana, IMDb. November 23, 2016. Accessed July 31, 2017. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3521164/.

Sanneh, Lamin O. Disciples of all nations: pillars of world Christianity. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008.