As a part of the larger “occupy”movement, people are being asked to put their money where their mouth is… literally… and close their accounts with the the big guys on Wall Street and to move that money to local banks and community credit unions.  A link to the pledge can be found here: http://www.rebuildthedream.com/move-your-money/

I like this idea.  I appreciate local businesses. I like the accountability that comes when you are in personal contact with the people who take care of your money. I like that it is more than just feet on the ground complaining about things they don’t like, but people willing to make changes in their personal lives based upon the message they are preaching.

I don’t like what doing this would do to my personal credit rating.
When the pledge first crossed my desk, I immediately went and started searching for information on the statewide United Methodist supported credit union.  I looked at loan rates and credit card rates and started doing the math to see what kind of a personal financial impact it would have if I closed my accounts with the “big banks” and moved my debt and my checking account somewhere more local.

My Bank of America credit line has been around for over 11 years.  As a freshamn in college, I caved to the credit card pressure… but it was a “Working Assets” card – and they donated 1% every year to non-profits that you get to choose.  At the time, I justified my decision, thinking it was the “conscientious choice”… if I was going to have a credit card, that’s the one I wanted.  But they were bought out by the big guys and I’ve been with BoA ever since.  Because I have been with them for a while, and pay my bills faithfully, it is also my largest line of credit.

The only line of credit I have with Citigroup is fairly new… and I opened the card to transfer some balances with no interest so that I could work on paying off debt from college/seminary/long-distance-relationship-plane-tickets…

To close the first account and to open a new one would drastically reduce both my average age of open credit lines and my open card utilization percentage… thereby significantly affecting my credit score (especially since I have that newer line of credit from only a year ago).

To transfer balances would involve fees and especially with the Citigroup account, I still have another year of no interest and would rather spend that time paying off that little amount, rather than incurring another fee and having to pay interest.

Argh…

Sometimes, doing something that is seems right, hurts. Taking a stand involves personal cost. Finding the courage to literally put our money where our mouth is… priceless.

(sorry, I couldn’t resist).

But we should spend time wrestling with financial questions.

Where is my money invested?
Who benefits from my money/debt?
What kind of transformative change does the power of a single dollar have?

Does my bank align with my values?

What kind of damage does debt do to my spiritual life?

What does your spending say about your spiritual life?
All sorts of thoughts are rolling around in my head, all as a result of a little tweet.

We want to reflect the light of God by:

As we continue to imagine the possibilites, we are revamping our administrative and committee structures, we are throwing out new ideas, we are leaving behind things that bog us down, and I am so re-invigorated for what ministry can look like here in Marengo.  It is so much fun to be a part of this church and to keep dreaming about where we might end up!

And seven or eight dresses into the experience, I found the one. It was simple and elegant, understated and yet gorgeous. It was MY dress. And after sashaying around the room and standing in front of the mirror, and picking out bridesmaids dresses that matched, I looked at the price tag: twelve-hundred dollars. I had done it. I had fallen in love with something that was far too expensive.

Unfortunately for the bridal shop, but lucky for me, I am a skilled online shopper. I found the exact same dress for about half the price a few months later. And the dress did make the day. It was and still is – MY dress. And it helps me tell the world who I am. One look in my direction, and people not only knew I was the bride, but also that I wasn’t showy, or stuck-up or traditional.

I love this dress… I really do… but the simple fact is, I can’t wear it to any other wedding.

Will you pray with me:

We could spend hours talking about the first half of this parable… about how the king threw a wedding feast for his beloved son and how the guests one by one declined the honor, made excuses, and in some cases slaughtered his servants when they showed up with the invitation.

As we have discovered in the past few weeks, there are a number of people in this world who think there are more important things to do than respond to the call of God. There are some who are so caught up in being religious, they forget about who they are accountable to. And as the gospel makes clear, they do so at their own peril.

But for today, I’m more interested in the second half of this story.

You see, when the king’s guests don’t show up, he doesn’t cancel the party. No, he just invites more guests. He has his servants go out and pull people in off the street. Homeless folks, addicts, fishermen, swindlers and thieves, families with children, small town merchants, teachers, retirees… the good and the bad, the simple, the unworthy, the unprepared, the underqualified. You and me.

Never in our lives would any of us ever dream of being invited to a king’s wedding feast. Through the miracles of television, some here got up very early in the morning to watch the latest royal wedding festivities, but our television screens are the closest we are ever going to get to that kind of celebration.

And for most of the people gathered around Jesus as he told this parable, that would have been true as well. They just didn’t bump elbows with those kind of people.

This unexpected invitation, this outpouring of love and acceptance, this grand gesture is one more reminder that God’s ways are not our ways… It is a reminder that the Kingdom of Heaven is opened up to all who will receive the call – the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the good and the bad… as long as we accept that invitation and drop what we are doing to respond.

Here WE are. In one way or another, you have responded to the call of God upon your life… to the invitation from the great King to participate in the holy celebration.

In the church, we often like to talk about how faith saves us. How belief in Jesus Christ and his righteousness leads us into the Kingdom of God. Jesus died for my sins, I accept what he has done for me, bing-bang-boom, one way ticket to heaven.

But you know what… this parable throws a wrench in that simple formula. You see, while everyone was invited… while the invitation and the gospels tell that each one of us is now entitled to heaven through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross… not everyone at the party is allowed to stay.

“When the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?” and the man was speechless. Then the King said to the attendants, “bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Sheesh – all because he wore the wrong thing?

If you are anything like me, you are utterly grateful for the grace of God in Jesus Christ that invited you to the Kingdom party. And you were more than happy to drop what you were doing in order to accept that grace and be found worthy of the feast.

We understand that our being a part of the Kingdom of God has very little to do with our actions, but everything to do with the righteousness of Christ, freely given to us through repentance and communion and baptism and faith and prayer. We know we don’t deserve to be here, we know we don’t deserve the grace that has been given to us, and we know that “deserving it” isn’t the point…. Christ is. Christ died for us while we were yet sinners, that proves God’s love for us…

But (there is always a but, isn’t there), But, if you are anything like me, in the middle of the party, you start to worry about that guy who wasn’t wearing the right clothes… and maybe you look down at your own clothes.

At weddings today, the bride’s dress is gorgeous, the bridesmaids look lovely and the groom and his men are dressed to the nines. But who really cares what anyone else is wearing. As I have officiated weddings lately, I’ve seen people in suits, people in polos and khakis, jeans and t-shirts, cotton summer dresses, flip flops and sunglasses. And in my experience, no one has been thrown out of any of these weddings I have been to for what they were or were not wearing.

But there it is. At the end of this beautiful parable that has us feeling all warm and fuzzy because we didn’t deserve the invitation, we have a conversation about proper wedding attire.

As scholar Alyce McKenzie reminds us,

Though his actions are harsh, they are not completely unjustified, when understood in the first century context. It was the custom in Ancient Near Eastern weddings, that the guests would wear a garment that symbolized their respect for the host and the occasion. Often the host would provide a rack of such garments at the entryway for guests who had [not] brought theirs. Not to be wearing a wedding garment, when one could have chosen one on the way in, is a sign of disrespect for both host and occasion.

Ahh…. A missing detail from the parable.

When we, the unworthy, accept the invitation and show up for the wedding, we are supposed to “put on” this special garment as we come in the door. AND – it is something that the Lord our King will provide for us, if we only chose to accept it.

I am reminded that there are many places in the New Testament “putting on clothing” was used as a symbol for new life in Christ.

From Galatians 3:

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

From Colossians 3:

Since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self… Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience… And over all these virtues put on love.

From Ephesians 4:

You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self… to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

In his sermon, “On the Wedding Garment,” John Wesley describes this special clothing as our personal holiness. He claims that while the cross of Christ and his righteousness bestowed upon us entitles us for the Kingdom of God… only personal holiness with qualify us to continue there. The first makes us children of God and heirs of the kingdom… but the second makes us worthy of have the inheritance of the saints.

If we think about all of those New Testament scriptures – they have one thing in common – we are called to put on a different life in Christ Jesus. We are called to actually BE different. As Wesley describes it, “holiness is having ‘the mind that was in Christ,’ and the ‘walking as Christ walked.’”

The righteousness of Christ saves us… but as the parable reminds us, we have to show up… we have to honor the King through our actions… we have to participate in the Kingdom… we have to put on the life that he has prepared for us.

May the power of the Holy Spirit fill us all with knowledge and guidance and strength as we seek to not only be children of God, but to be found worthy through his grace.

I wrote that post and then I drank a cup of coffee and headed outside.  It was 70 degrees by 9:00am – which is awesome for October 4th.  I had spent most of the previous day weeding, cleaning out my garden, preping a flower bedand taking stuff to the community waste pile.  Today’s  task was to plant.

And plant I did!  I first cultivated and then broke up the dirt in a 4×12′ bed and planted 100 tulip bulbs (yellows, whites and purples), 100 crocus bulbs, 50 wolf’s bane and 50 white squill.  The last three are all early spring flowers and I’m just dreaming about the little white, yellow and purple flowers dotting above the snow!   I also carefully marked out space in that bed to add some other perennials in the spring.  I need to split my sedum plants, and I want to add some delphinium and salvia.  I’m hoping that this will be an easy to care for and maintain sort of area!

In the other large flower bed I have, I spent the afternoon planting 100 more tulip bulbs (oranges and purples here), 50 allium (metallic pink), and again, the spread of the early flowering bulbs.  I also dug up and replanted my irises that are in this area to help them be more evenly spread over the whole area.

I think the best part of my day came when this wonderful woman across the street asked me how it was going.  All the bulbs were in and she THANKED me…  She gets to look out her window at them in the spring, too, and she THANKED me for all the hard work I did.  I guess I hadn’t quite thought of it like that, but what I’m doing right there brings joy to other people, also.

I finished up the evening by taking some of the green tomatoes I pulled off the plants yesterday and making fried green tomatoes.  YUM.  I ate them with maple chipotle glazed chicken tenders and some pasta salad.  So delicious.

My shoulders ache… my left hand has two majorly huge blisters that are severly hampering my ability hold things… and the fruit of my labor is still five to six months away… but it was the perfect way to spend two gorgeous autumn days.

But about three fourths of the way through our conversation, he stopped me and said:  A few times now you have used phrases like “in a rut,” “tired,” and “wears me out.”  What is going on with that?

There is a lot going on in my extended family right now that also adds stress and conflict and emotional burdens to my life right now.  So much so that as I sat in a funeral for a friend’s grandparents this past weekend, the tears just would not stop.  I’m mourning the loss of what was and it feels like we can never go back… the relationships are so damaged that I really cannot see a way forward. Carrying that pain is exhausting, but letting it go means that I have given up.

That conflict seems to also affect other relationships that are experiencing conflict… ones that would not have been so burdensome otherwise.  When I see firsthand what happens when problems are not addressed, and then watch other people in my life make similar choices to sweep things under the rug, I cringe, imagining the worst of what might happen.

I am so grateful for my brothers who are right there beside me walking this hard road and I can already see the ways that my family has been brought closer together as we protect and love and support one another… and as we commit ourselves to talking about what is going on in our lives, instead of pretending.

Exercise?  What’s that?
The hard part about really loving your work is that it takes over your life if you let it.  And I have.  It has been so flexible lately that I don’t have a routine for my home life. And so I’m doing good things and come home tired and instead of taking care of myself (especially my body), I sit in front of the television and let my brain turn into a pile of goo.  Exercise gives endorphins and makes you feel good and I just have not been keeping up with it lately.  But my mom and I are going to start holding one another accountable and that should help. =)

Our lives need balance and they need support.  When one area of our relationships or work or health is not functioning fully, the whole system can fall apart.  So take a good hard look… what is tiring you out?  And what can you do to take that seriously?

1. Intro: talk about giving and receiving

• Apply that to our faith and we remember that we did not create these lives… God did. And we do not own these lives… God does. We owe everything to God. Everything that we are and everything that we have has been given to us, and like these tenant farmers, we are utterly dependent upon our Lord.
• But inherent in that relationship is a question: Are we going to joyfully return the fruits of our labor back to the Lord? are we going to work each and every single day for his glory?
• Or are we going to hoard our gifts and talents, our labor, our fruits, and only work for ourselves?
•  In exchange for all that we have received… what are we willing to give back?

•  Mercy is NOT getting what you deserve… being spared from judgment. At its roots, the word we translate into “mercy” is about compassion and pity. God sees our desperate need to cling to sin, God sees our utter inability to help ourselves and he shows pity upon us, he shows mercy upon us.
• This may not seem on the surface like a parable about mercy… but if we remember that these tenants received three chances, we recognize the patience and the kindness of this landowner.
• I have recently begun watching the new Doctor Who series. For those of you not familiar with the show, a time lord known only by the doctor travels through time and space in a blue box, or phone booth. As he travels, he helps peoples who are being invaded or oppressed or unable to defende themselves from hostile species. The tenth doctor, played by David Tennant, was known for showing mercy… by giving these monsters and enemies one chance to reform their ways.

“Would you declare war on us, Doctor? “I’m so old now, I used to have so much mercy. You get one warning. That was it.”

• One warning seems fair. Picture a landowner finding out that three of his men were killed trying to bring back the grain. Let me take that back. One warning seems more than fair enough. One warning is plenty of mercy shown. I would have carted those tenants off to the local authorities and thrown them in jail, or kicked them off the land.
• But our landowner sends back another group to receive the grain. And when everyone he has sent has been killed, he sends his son. His one and only son. Rather than bring armies down on top of these wicked tenants, he sends his son. His heir. This parable shows a lot more mercy than any of us would have.
• These wicked tenants had three chances to give back to the Lord what they owed him… how many chances have you been given?

• If mercy is about NOT getting what you deserve, we have to remember that grace is getting what you DON’T deserve. Grace is always a gift. It is a surprise. But the word we translate into grace also has roots in the idea of favor, of being loved and appreciated. In spite of our many failings, God abundantly bestows grace and life and love upon us. We may not deserve it, but because of the goodness of God, we have been blessed.
• You and I are sinners. Throughout our lives, in little and big ways, we have turned our backs upon God. We are only human, after all, and there are so many things in this world that tempt us.
• This parable has reminded us of the many times that we have not gotten what we deserve as a result of those failings… the many chances that we have had to reform our ways, but the end of this parable brings the reminder of judgment.
• As the people and the religious leaders hear the story, they know what the outcome should be. When asked what the owner should do, they quickly respond: He’ll kill them – those tenants are a rotten bunch. Good riddance! (the Message).
• And Jesus seems to lean this way as well. He quotes scripture, reminding them that the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. He tells them that the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces. He says that if we refuse to produce fruit and give God his glory that the kingdom will be taken away from us. The hammer of justice is about to fall… that seems to be the message here.
• Yes, there will be judgment.
• Because when the Son of our Master comes to collect what we have promised to give… in our sinfulness, we refuse. In our pride, we take instead of receiving. In our anger, we kill him. And out of God’s justice, the kingdom is taken away.
• If the story ended there, we might consider it a fair ending. We get what we deserve. Probably less than what we deserved.
• But the story doesn’t end there… this parable continues to be told throughout the gospel, because you see, we know what happens when the Son of God is killed. It isn’t the end. It isn’t over.
• We stand today on the other side of the Resurrection.
•  We know that our act of hatred was responded to with an act of absolute love.
• We know that in being rejected, Jesus Christ gave all the rejected a place to belong.
• We know that in giving up his life, Jesus Christ gave life to us all.
• And we see in this parable the greatest irony of all: we may have killed the Son hoping to take away his inheritance and keep it all for ourselves… but in his resurrection, he made us all brothers and sisters, children of God, and heirs of the Kingdom of God.
• You see, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus… the sending of the Son to the greedy tenants in the vineyard… was not a test, not a trap, not a plan to bring judgment, not a warning… it was grace. It was a gift. It was an act of love. Jesus sat down with his disciples on the night in which they betrayed him and he took bread, broke the bread and gave it to them saying: this is my body, broken for you. And he passed around the cup reminding them: this is my blood shed for you.

One of the days we were there, we went to Arnold’s Park – this lovely little amusement park right on the shores of the lake. As we walked into the main area of the park, we climbed through a tilted house. I remember being inside buildings like this as a child, but something about walking crooked with the ceilings shrinking above you feels very odd and disconcerting as an adult!

And then, the first thing we found inside of the park was the house of mirrors.

My niece grabbed my hand and dragged me to the entrance. As we stood in front of the skinny mirrors and the fat mirrors and the wavy mirrors, she giggled and pointed as the images of each of us transformed into creatures we didn’t recognize. I had mile long legs one minute and a neck as tall as a giraffe the next. We laughed as we told stories about what it would be like to live lives with really tall tummies and itty bitty heads.

However, as an adult I have to admit, these mirrors are a lot less amusing. The distortion of these mirrors brings into greater focus small and insignificant parts of ourselves. They either expand them out of proportion or they reduce them to nothing. Our noses grow fat and wide. Our stomachs suddenly look thin. Or vice versa.

And in doing so – the truth of our bodies comes out. Our thighs might be a little larger than we would like. Our shoulders might be narrower than we assumed. That little gap between your teeth has a spotlight shown on it.

This morning, we are going to explore how Jesus helps us to see the truth in our distorted views of reality.

Charles Campbell is a preaching professor at Duke University and he tells this story about how Jesus would like to shake up our perceptions. Campbell was watching and interview on television with Dr. Phil, the famous tv psychologist. Dr. Phil was asked, “If you could interview anyone in the world, past or present, who would it be?” And immediately, he responded: “Jesus Christ. I would really like to interview Jesus Christ. I would like to have a conversation with him about the meaning of life.”

Well, Campbell was watching this on television and tells of the inner dialogue he was having at the moment. He wanted to shout out at the television and to Dr. Phil: “Oh no, you wouldn’t! You would not want to sit down with Jesus, treat him like an interviewee, and ask him about the meaning of life. You would be crazy to do that. He would turn you upside down and inside out. He would confound all your questions and probably end up telling you to sell everything you own, give the money to the poor, and come, follow me. No, Dr. Phil, you do not really want to interview Jesus, and I do not want to either. It would not go well.”

Jesus sounds like a nice and simple guy… a gentle soul… a friend to walk beside you and share your thoughts with… but in reality, Jesus turns our worlds upside down and inside out. He does the unexpected, he shows up in places we try to stay away from, he loves the unloveable, he calls the unworthy, and he brings us life through his death. And sometimes in doing so, he reveals the most difficult truths about our hearts.

His ways are not our ways – and as we walk with him, we have to be willing to let our distorted views of the world fall by the wayside so that we can see the reality of God’s love.

The main distortion that we encounter when we meet Christ is the false belief that we are good enough, that we have the answers, and that we fully understand God. This is the mirror that makes us look tall and big and fat and grand. It puffs us up, it fills us out, and we start to believe we are more important and more knowledgeable than we really are.

You see, this false understanding of faith, of religion, and of themselves is what got the priests and elders into so much trouble in our gospel reading this morning.

To put this story into context, Jesus had just come into Jerusalem the day before. The long list of things he accomplished that day included: riding into the city on a donkey and in righteous anger overturning the tables of the money changers in the temple. He was literally turning things upside down!

And so when he comes back to the temple the next morning, the religious leaders are in a grumpy mood. They want to know who this guy thinks he is and so they approach him and say very bluntly: Show us your credentials – Who authorized you to teach here?

Oh, those poor leaders. They had no idea what they were about to get themselves into. Jesus may have looked like a country bumpkin rabbi just in from the hills, but they were dealing with the Son of God. And when you ask Jesus questions… you never get the answers you expect.

Instead of giving them an answer – Jesus himself asked them a question. Jesus shed light on the true nature of their question.

Authority.

Who has it? And where does it come from?

These religious leaders had been trained. They had studied long and hard. They spent their days in the temple. They have the full weight of their culture and the institution behind them. They firmly believe that they speak for God.

And if they speak for God, then this man, this ruffian, this Jesus of Nazareth clearly does not. They want to keep things in good order, according to the traditions and the way things have always been.

But Jesus is ready to turn the world upside down.

And so he asks them a question in return: Was the baptism of John from God or from man?

He trapped them.

If they said John’s baptism was from God – then they were legitimizing his movement and in doing so, legitimizing Jesus who stood right before them.

But if they said that it was only from man – then they might have had a riot of the people on their hands… all around them were faithful people who had traveled out to the Jordan river to repent of their sins.

The distortion of their mirrors fell away. They came face to face with the truth. This Jesus did not fit in a box. Their privilege and power were more important to them than the right answer and so they responded simply – we don’t know… hoping it is the end of the story and they can return quickly to the way things were.

But Jesus doesn’t stop talking.

But Jesus looks the priests and leaders straight in the eye and all false distortions fall away:

Photo by: Chris (http://vivid-blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/fun-house-mirrors.html)

Staring into the funhouse mirror, these leaders thought they were being faithful by saying the right words and going through the right motions. But they were so busy looking at the faults of others that they never took the time to see themselves as they truly were. They never took the time to actually live out God’s will. They never stepped away from the mirror to see their own sin and to repent.

As Christians today, that is often our greatest failing. We get so wrapped up in being a part of the church, in wearing the name of Christian, in spouting off moral precepts, that we forget to look at ourselves.

When we let Jesus show us who we truly are… a hard and difficult process… may we have the courage to look away from the mirror and into the eyes of our Savior. May we have the courage to follow him.

But while we are talking about distortions, I think it is also important to look at the flip side of the distortion… the one that makes you look smaller than you really are. That shrinks your head and whittles your body away to nothing and makes you small like a child.

In the story of those two sons, there was the one who said he would obey his father but never did.

And then there is the story of the one who said he wouldn’t.

I always wonder about what makes him say no.

Did he have other things to do? Kids to take to soccer practice, maybe?

Was he planning on other less than noble deeds like going out and getting drunk with his friends?

Did he doubt his ability to actually perform the work?

Was he just being stubborn?

Whatever was going through the first son’s mind… he refused to do the will of his father.

Just as there are many of us who have been in the church from the beginning of our lives, there are many here this morning who took a long time to get here. We had other things to keep us busy, distractions, feelings of unworthiness, and the pride of wanting to do things our own way.

But our false images of ourselves can fall away too. Like the tax collectors and the prostitutes, we can turn around, repent, and say yes… even if we have spent our whole lives up to this point saying no. We can see our true selves, and then lay our lives at the feet of Jesus and follow him.

When we really engage with Jesus, our carnival mirror distortions come into focus. And every single time we find out that he has very little care for what our lives have been in the past but really wants to know if we are going to let go of those funhouse mirrors, take off our false perceptions and see his reality instead. Jesus does not want our distorted image of ourselves… Jesus was us. He wants us to believe in him and to follow him.

As Paul wrote in Philippians, Jesus laid aside his glory to become one of us. He humbled himself even to the point of death on the cross so that each one of us could see the truth – that Jesus is Lord and that he is our reality.

Everything that we do, everything that we have, everything that we are comes from God. That is the truth we find when we look him face to face. He turns our lives upside down and yet does not leave us on unsteady ground.

No, he invites us to join in the heavenly parade of the crooks and the prostitutes, the gamblers and the addicts, the self-righteous and the stubborn… Jesus invites us to take our place among all of those who have said goodbye to their old ways and are now marching joyfully toward heaven.

Amen and Amen.

But then our leader asked: what about conflict? Does God only act to bring blessing, or does God also shake things up?

May God grant us wisdom… And may the Holy Spirit keep moving among us.

AndAFool - Remember when Amos said “Let executions roll down like waters…”, or Jesus said “I have come to proclaim execution to the captives…”?

julieclawson – Today, on the Intl Day of Peace, the US blocked Palestinian statehood, executed 2 men, arrested Wall Street protestors and bombed Libya.

TerryRamoneSmit – “Only in the USA can you get away with being pro-war AND pro-death penalty and yet call yourself pro-life.” – @hughlh

lcleeland – I love this country, but not so much tonight. #troydavis

EugeneCho – I’m sorry for my vulgarity but if there’s ever an appropriate time to shout “F*ck” and turn tables, this would be the time. #troydavis

thinkprogress – “People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty.”– Ruth Bader Ginsburg

rabbijosh – “@thinkprogress: TroyDavis: Another man confessed. 7 eyewitnesses recanted. Police accused of coercing witnesses. No DNA. No murder weapon.”

matthewlkelley – in jesus, god shows that death does not have the last word. state sanction executions are the act of a kingdom whose reign will not last….

tamrenb – There is another Troy Davis in a cell somewhere in America. Pray for him.

megateer – Two men will have been executed tonight. One, very much guilty, another, guilt in much doubt. Even in stark contrast, #deathpenaltyiswrong .

timbrauhn – Restorative justice will someday reign in the America that I know and love. Compassion and truth will guide our path. RIP Troy Davis

nate_nims – Pray for Tory Davis, Georgia, the SCOTUS and true, restorative justice. #wearealltroydavis

godgrrl – #TroyDavis I could throw up. Ashamed.

laurenmroden – Praying for #troydavis, his fam & fam of Officer MacPhail. “To take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, not justice.” Desmond Tutu

NickKristof – When smart people debate whether or not a man should be executed, that’s a good reason not to execute him. #TroyDavis.

PastorBradS – MacPhail family, my heart aches for your lost, but the death of another human being won’t bring you peace. Only Christ can. #toomuchdoubt

amaeryllis – I really don’t understand the eagerness to execute. Justice is served at conviction, beyond that is just a test of our humanity.

tomtomorrow – rt @barryeisler Weird that the same people who don’t trust govt to administer health insurance do trust it to put people to death.

EdgeofSports – “@jeremyscahill: #TroyDavis RT @barryeisler See, there really are death panels in America. We’re watching one tonight in Georgia.”

AfroWonk – RT @KoriHaart: Dear Georgia, It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one. -Voltaire

revbrad – “We believe the death penalty denies the power of Christ to redeem, restore, and transform all human beings” -UM Discipline #TroyDavis

alphaleah – #TroyDavis #DeathPenalty : So the man has been lying on a gurney, ready to be wheeled into be killed, for TWO HOURS, while this goes on.
sallykohn  – Meanwhile, in Texas, Lawrence Russell Brewer executed at 7:21pm EST for dragging death of James Byrd

UnvirtuousAbbey – Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” #TroyDavis

JesusOfNaz316 – Grace > Justice System

Edpilkington – What’s clear is that we are still in the waiting game. I’m a wreck by now so how mist #TroyDavis be feeling?

8:10am – start thinking about getting out of bed

8:30am – phone conversation with Trustee chairperson about the new shingles for the parsonage roof

8:50am – arrive at church, small talk with folks gathering for the Tuesday morning small group.

9:05am – phone call with Memorial chair about some checks that came in

9:10am – check emails, put checks into envelopes to pay some church bills

9:30am – Tuesday morning small group: food, devotions, prayer, conversation

5:00pm – back home to make dinner: chicken, sauteed musrooms, wild rice

6:45pm – back to church for Lay Leadership meeting

7:10pm – start our meeting with devotions, discuss calling all who serve and changes in our organizational structure

8:10pm – head home. pajamas. computer.

9:30pm - movie with the husband

11:45pm – bed