Cities and Gardens – Thoughts from the Edge

What would it look like to rebuild cities and plant new gardens. The imagery is at work in the Isaiah text for the third Sunday in the Season of Advent. Jerusalem lay desolate and in ruins. How would it be made new again? Often we think of rebuilding and planting as it materially relates to cities and to gardens. But, what about the condition and shape of human lives in need of rebuilding and planting? How are people any less materially represented when stories about of neglect, abuse, tragedy, and disease?

This week’s edition of Thoughts from the Edge stem from Toni sharing her experiences working with orphaned girls and boys in Guatemala. Is it possible to think of the work with those brokenhearted, bound, and captive as the very work of Jesus? If so, then last week at Snow Hill, we heard the same words uttered by Jesus in Luke 4, quoting Isaiah 61, and also heard, “Today these words are being fulfilled in your hearing.”

What do you think? This may well be what gets at the heart of Scot McKnight’s book, The King Jesus Gospel and represents an understanding of N.T. Wright’s Simply Jesus wrapped in the package of a life that affirms what Scot McKnight has written, Junia Is Not Alone.