Sermon Library
“The Spirit of To Kill a Mockingbird”
Rev. Dr. Gregg R. Anderson
October 04, 2009
Service Theme: Pentecost XVIII – 2009
Source: Micah 6: 6 – 8
Pentecost XVIII – 2009 October 4, 2009
The Spirit of To Kill a Mockingbird
Micah 6: 6 – 8
Who Are They Calling Colored?
“It seems strange to me to be called colored. When the white man gets cold he turns blue; when he is warmed by the sun he turns tan, when he is scared he turns yellow, when he is envious he turns green; when he gets mad he turns red. But for me I am always black and yet they call me colored.”
I am not sure when this statement may have been made, but it seems it must have been seventy years ago when African-Americans were called colored. They were called colored only in comparable reference to white people or perhaps it could be said, in preference to white people or Euro-Americans. It was a politically incorrect statement long before we knew it was a politically incorrect statement. Seventy years ago and all the centuries before this white people really thought black people were the colored people. Today, we know better or perhaps I should say most of us know better. There are still some people who do not.
Background
The classic book and movie To Kill a Mockingbird is about prejudice and human inequality many years after the Civil War. In 1944, at the age of 18, Harper Lee, the author, enrolled in Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama. From 1945 to 1949 she studied law at the University of Alabama. She transferred to Oxford University in England as an exchange student for a year, but six months before completing her studies, Lee decided to go to New York to be a writer.
While pursuing the career that would ultimately produce To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee worked briefly in the early 1950s as a reservations clerk for Eastern Airlines and British Overseas Airways Corporation or BOAC in New York City. In 1957, she submitted a manuscript to the J. B. Lippincott Company, who felt that her attempt at a novel was actually more of a series of strung-together short stories. The publisher recommended a rewrite, so Lee spent the next two-and-a-half years working on the manuscript. Her efforts paid off, and To Kill a Mockingbird, her first and only novel, was published in 1960. Many aspects of the book are autobiographical. Nelle Harper Lee was literally known as the “Queen of the Tomboys.” She gave all three of her mother’s names to various characters in the novel. Boo Radley was based on an actual neighbor. Finally, Lee has stated that Atticus Finch was based largely on her own father.
She wrote about a subject which was still significant in 1960, but set the story in the 1930’s when the subject was even more intense. It was the onset of the American depression and everyone was competing for any job that could possibly be available. White people were competing with other white people for any job there was at the time and the white people were certainly not about to allow any black people to enter this exclusive competition. The status of African-Americans was improved after the civil war. The status of African-Americans declined during the depression when there was intense competition for employment.. This, of course, can be a debatable observation.
An historian and professor, Lisa Lindquist Dorr has examined two hundred and eighty-eight cases of black-on-white rape that occurred in Virginia between 1900 and 1960. Seventeen of the accused were killed through “extra legal violence” – that is to say, lynched. Fifty were executed. Forty-eight were given the maximum sentence. Fifty-two were sentenced to prison terms of five to fifty years on charges ranging from rape to murder to robbery, assault and battery, or “annoying a white woman.” Thirty-five were acquitted or had their charges dismissed. All of these sentences during all these years, fifty years, in one state, Virginia and none of the so called criminals were white. All were black (or should I say at the time, colored.)
The Mockingbird
To Kill a Mockingbird is clearly and essentially about black and white prejudice. It is about a time in which limited, fallible and ignorant thinking was allowed, somehow, to exist. The book and the movie is not about the subtle nuances of the law, but about the nuances of being black and being white in the 1930’s. It is about the battle for human dignity and human justice.
Our primary hero, Atticus Finch, clearly states when he cautions about the use of a gun, air-rifles in fact to his son Jem and daughter Jean nicknamed Scout, “I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, writes Scout his tomboy daughter and I asked Miss Maudie about it. “Your father’s right,” she said. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
Tom Robinson was the innocent African-American who only wanted to help a white woman named Mayella because she needed help. But Mayella made a pass at him and to cover up her own guilt of doing this and the shame of an abusive father, she fingered Tom Robinson with rape. Even though Atticus Finch could practically prove that Tom could not have raped Mayella because he only had one good arm, in the end it was her white word against Tom’s black word. The all white jury found Tom Robinson guilty and was subsequently killed. Tom was the mockingbird. All he did was try to help someone.
Doing the Right Thing
To Kill A Mockingbird is a story about doing the right thing. Atticus says to his daughter, “Scout, when summer comes, you’ll have to keep your head . . . it’s not fair for you and Jem, I know that, but sometimes we have to make the best of things, and the way we conduct ourselves when the chips are down – well, all I can say is, when you and Jem are grown, maybe you’ll look back at this with some compassion and some feeling that I didn’t let you down. This case, Tom Robinson’s case goes to the essence of a man’s conscience . . . I couldn’t go to church and worship God if I didn’t try to help that man.” Scout answers, “Atticus, you must be wrong . . .” “How’s that,” asks Atticus. “Well most folks seem to think they’re right and you’re wrong . . . “Atticus responds, “They’re entitled to think whatever they want, but I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is the person’s conscience.”
Atticus loses the case, but wins the affections of his children and, of course, the black community. It is his children who will become the change. The other hero is Arthur “Boo” Radley who was the mysterious monster who lives in the haunted house down the street and also happens to leave presents for Scout and Jem. He is the misunderstood outcast in the community who comes to the rescue of Scout and Jem when attacked by Mayella’s drunk father. It is non-other than the Good Samaritan story. Do remember that the Good Samaritan was also the outcast of his time, but is the one who comes to the rescue.
The Words of Micah
Hear these words from the prophet Micah. “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6: 6, 8)
Forrest Church’s Platinum Rule
Forrest Church was a great Unitarian minister of the Church of All Souls in New York City. I have read his sermons often over the years. Forrest Church was the son of U.S. Senator Frank Church and grandson of former Governor Chase Clark. Three years ago in recognition of Martin Luther King Day, Dr. Church presented a sermon entitled The Platinum Rule. He opened with this statement. “Harper Lee’s beloved To Kill a Mockingbird was recently voted by America’s librarians as the best novel of the twentieth century. The racially charged story of an innocent man’s trial and unjust conviction for rape, no novel since Uncle Tom’s Cabin has left such a strong imprint on the nation’s moral imagination. I turn to it this morning in the spirit of America’s newest holiday. As much as any American, before or since, Martin Luther King, Jr. embodies the moral imagination. Answering a nation’s fear with dauntless courage and dauntless faith, King dreamed the true American dream: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. This dream goes beyond the Golden Rule: to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Grounded in nature and nature’s God, with liberty and equality enshrined by our founders as bequests from the creator, the true American Dream may better be defined as “the platinum rule”: to do unto others as God would do unto you. Daunting, yes, but not unimaginable. As John F. Kennedy said 44 years ago this week in another stirring inaugural: “Here on earth God’s work has truly become our own.”
John F. Kennedy was, consciously or unconsciously, quoting the prophet Micah. Tom Robinson, John Kennedy, Martin Luther King and I might add Jesus, were unjustly murdered; murdered for their faith and belief. Today we have the first Bi-racial American President. I would like to think it is because of the life of Jesus, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and the story To Kill a Mockingbird which has helped to make it possible for anyone to become President of these United States today.
When I looked up the sermon on the Platinum Rule by Forrest Church this week, I was shocked to have learned that Forrest Church just died from a three year battle with esophageal cancer. He was just 61 years old and leaves a wife and four children. New York Times reporter Cara Buckley said that Mr. Church’s gift was with words and his ability to connect with others and his seemingly endless capacity for empathy and compassion. Mr. Church embodied the very best of religion. Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw said, “Forrest Church made all of our lives so much richer with his friendship, his faith and his optimism. He was a leading citizen in the world of all of God’s children. Here is the conclusion of Dr. Church’s sermon on Martin Luther King and To Kill a Mockingbird which was entitled The Platinum Rule.
“We are far better off today than the folks in Maycomb, Alabama were 70 years ago, but simply to follow the letter of new laws alone is insufficient for the realization of King’s dream. Which is why we recall it today. His dream, not unlike Atticus Finch’s dream, is predicated on the idealistic yet saving proposition that all are created equal, children of one God. Put the Biblical injunction to “Love your Neighbor as yourself” together with the true American Dream—"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"—and you come up with the Platinum Rule. Again, not simply “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” but “Do unto others as God does unto you.” Proffer them the same inalienable rights, the same equal standing, the same liberty that God has bestowed as your birthright. As expressed in the civil rights movement—and reprised in the campaigns for equal rights for absolutely everyone—when followed to its logical conclusion, such is the moral consequence of the founders’ vision and the moral mandate of Dr. King’s witness and sacrifice.
And how does To Kill a Mockingbird end? After Jem’s near-death drama, Scout sits late into the evening with her father in his den. “Atticus, I wasn’t scared,” she assures him. Atticus Finch simply lifts his eyebrows. When she goes on to claim that “Nothin’s real scary except in books,” he opens his mouth to reply and then closes it again. She may have persuaded herself that what she has said was a very grown-up thing to say, but Atticus knows better. Courage is not vanquishing fear. Courage is walking through fear. And moral courage—the greatest courage of all—is walking through fear to practice the Platinum Rule. A big assignment, yes, but ours nonetheless. “For here on earth God’s work has truly become our own.”
A Motto and A Hope
Forrest Church had a motto or mantra which was “Want what you have; do what you can; and be who you are.” Forrest Church wrote twenty five books. His last one was entitled Love and Death: My Journey through the Valley of the Shadow. In his last book he wrote, “Religion is our human response to the dual reality of being alive and knowing we must die. The purpose of life is to live in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for. The only thing that can never be taken from us, even by death, is the love we give away before we go.” Forrest Church’s memorial service was held yesterday. He did his part.
Atticus says to his children, “I want you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You do not always win, but sometimes you do.”
Amen.
Gregg Anderson
Aspen Chapel
0077 Meadowood Drive
Aspen, Colorado 81611