T Junctions

T Junctions

In recent times we have seen a number of demonstrations in squares. Curiously their names all start with T. We had the protest in Tainanmen Square in Beijing in 1992 with the drama of one civilian holding up the progress of a tank by simply standing in front of it. We had the crowds in Tahrir Square in Cairo last year calling for the Arab spring to touch Egypt. And now we have the demonstration in Taksim Square in Istanbul protesting about the plans to build a shopping complex in a green park. There is also Trafalgar Square in London, a scene of many protests, and maybe Times square in New York.

But what catches the imagination is this German pianist, David Martello, who wheels a grand piano half way across Europe and plays for 14 hours at a stretch in the midst of the demonstrators in Taksim Square. The crowds cheered him on. He brought a new dimension, a note of lightness and celebration, into what otherwise would have been a “heavy” confrontation between the police and the people. It was an action that recalls the nuns in Manila who pushed roses down the barrels of the guns of Marcos.

And talking about T squares reminds me of T junctions. When you come to one you have to make a decision. You can go either way. Jesus says, yes, I am the Messiah but don’t tell anyone. They won’t understand and they’ll just mess things up. They won’t have a clue what I am really doing until they understand this “reign” I am announcing costs them something. They think I am going to “restore the kingdom of Israel” as in King David’s day but I am not going to do that. My purpose is much deeper. It is to announce a new world which will happen when people change their way of thinking (the real meaning of the word ‘repent’).

Things will not change in my life – or in anyone else’s – unless I make them change. Things don’t just happen. They have to be made to happen. Jesus pushed for a change in people’s attitudes until the effort crushed him. And he said “if anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me.”  He was crushed but it did not end there. He overcame everything they threw at him: a mock trial, torture, death, the lot. He asks us to be with him in this journey. Maybe we don’t have to wheel a piano across half a continent but in one way or another we have to decide at the T junction.

23 June 2013   12 Sunday Year C    

Zech 12: 10-11            Gal 3:26-29                 Luke 9:18-24