Java google checkstyle Maven

I'm trying to configure my Maven project to use google java check style with the following configuration:

google_checks.xml: https://github.com/checkstyle/checkstyle/blob/master/src/main/resources/google_checks.xml

pom.xml

<build>
  <plugins>
    <plugin>
      <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
      <artifactId>maven-checkstyle-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>2.17</version>
      <executions>
        <execution>
          <id>checkstyle</id>
          <phase>validate</phase>
          <goals>
            <goal>check</goal>
          </goals>
        </execution>
      </executions>
      <configuration>
        <configLocation>google_checks.xml</configLocation>
        <encoding>UTF-8</encoding>
        <consoleOutput>true</consoleOutput>
        <failsOnError>true</failsOnError>
      </configuration>
    </plugin>
  </plugins>
</build>

<reporting>
  <plugins>
    <plugin>
      <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
      <artifactId>maven-jxr-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>2.5</version>
    </plugin>
    <plugin>
      <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
      <artifactId>maven-checkstyle-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>2.17</version>
      <configuration>
        <configLocation>google_checks.xml</configLocation>
        <failOnViolation>false</failOnViolation>
        <enableFilesSummary>false</enableFilesSummary>
      </configuration>
    </plugin>
  </plugins>
</reporting>

It seems to run mvn checkstyle:check fine at first. But after a few runs I start getting the following error:

[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-checkstyle-plugin:2.17:check 
(default-cli) on project PROJECT: Failed during checkstyle configuration: cannot initialize 
module TreeWalker - Token "METHOD_REF" was not found in Acceptable tokens list in check 
com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.checks.whitespace.SeparatorWrapCheck -> [Help 1]

What does that mean? Why does it only happen some times and how do I get rid of it?