They’re White, Ain’t They?

Text: Ephesians 2:11-20

In July of 2011 sales of Harper Lee’s book, To Kill a Mockingbird, soared in the United Kingdom. The increase was 125%. What precipitated such an amazing event? Did Brits suddenly and dramatically become interested in life in the American South during the depression? Was there a surge of concern for racial equality? Was domestic violence and rape the topic of conversation at every UK supper table?

Actually, what happened was Soccer star – or, as they would say in the rest of the world – famous footballer David Beckham and his wife Victoria gave birth to a baby girl. And they named her “Harper” – because it is an old English name, and because Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is one of Victoria Beckham’s favorite books.

In 2006 Britain’s librarians declared To Kill A Mockingbird higher on the list of “Must Read” books than the bible.

In 1962, just two years after publication of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, the story was made into an Oscar-winning film. Gregory Peck played the role of Atticus Finch, a widowed lawyer raising two small children. Harper Lee and Gregory Peck became close friends. Though limited now because of health issues, Lee always maintained close ties with the Peck family.

Victoria and David Beckham are not the only people to name a child after Harper Lee. Gregory Peck’s grandson, Harper Peck Voll, is also named after the author. Harper Lee said she believes the movie rendering of her novel is “one of the best translations of a book-to-film ever made.”[1] The book To Kill a Mockingbird was voted the “best novel of the 20^th Century”.

What gives this book – Harper Lee’s first and only novel – such staying power?

Let me suggest several things.

First, it a classic story of good against evil.

Atticus Finch is an attorney in Maycomb, Alabama in the 1930’s. He was called upon to represent Tom Robinson – a black man accused of raping a white girl. Atticus explains to his six-year old daughter, Scout, that there are people in town who believe he should not do much to defend Tom. When she asks: “Then why are you doing it?” Finch explains that in every lawyer’s life there comes a case that affects him or her personally. This case is his “one case”. Falsely accusing a man – black or white – is an evil that must be confronted no matter the cost.

A second reason the story sticks is because, even though evil seems to win the day, that does not dissuade the hero from fighting the fight.

Last week Adam Hall preached a message that steamed up out of his dislike for the movie It’s A Wonderful Life. Adam pointed out that in that film the bad guy actually wins, at least from the world’s perspective. He gets all the money.

There is a similar theme running through To Kill A Mockingbird. But it plays out in a grittier, more down to earth way. When Scout asks Atticus: “Are we going to win?” he responds with an honest “No”. Scout begins to ask: “Then why [do it]. But Atticus cuts her off, knowing her thoughts before she can complete the question. And he says this to his daughter: “Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.”[2]

While the story is fiction, there is an interesting fact influencing the telling of the tale. Harper Lee’s father was an attorney in Monrovia, Alabama. He was called upon to represent two black men – a father and a son – who were accused of murder. His defense did not prevail and the two men were hanged.

Fighting battles that seem to be unwinnable is a wearying enterprise. The temptation is to give up before we begin, to resign ourselves to what everyone around us tells us is “the inevitable”.

I don’t think it was people of color who made this book and the movie the popular classics they have become. The antagonist in this story is racism – and more specifically, the attitude of superiority on the part of white people. The canvass upon which this story is painted is one of privilege – a group of people regardless of their socio-economic status who have come to see themselves as deserving of certain prerogatives. Strangely enough, those who hold this view – the antagonists – are, I believe, the ones who keep buying the book and seeing the movie.

Why is that?

In 1966 the Richmond, Virginia area school board attempted to ban To Kill a Mockingbird, calling it “immoral literature”. Harper Lee wrote a letter to the board that was a bit caustic in its tone. But one of the things she states in her letter is that the story is “Christian in its ethic.” The mystery here is not that there were some school districts who banned the book. The mystery is that there were not more attempts in white America made to rid the classrooms of this tale.

Alright – that’s the book and the movie. Let’s turn our attention to the text from Ephesians.

We are not absolutely certain exactly who wrote the Epistle to the Ephesians. Whether it was Paul, or one – or several – of his disciples, the passage under consideration today is consistent with the message of Jesus. It is correct, I think, to assume it was written for a Gentile audience. However, I wonder if we might consider it from the perspective of how a First Century religious Jewish person might hear it. And for the purposes of this message, we can push this a bit further: I wonder how it would come across to the person or people who were privileged – how would the “insiders” – in any age – respond to this message?

Do we still have “insiders” and “outsiders” when it comes to race in this country? Or in this city? Or in this church? This is the question Harper Lee takes aim at in To Kill A Mockingbird. It’s the issue the author of Ephesians addresses. It’s at the very heart of the message of Jesus.

An innocent man has shed his blood and died. But the gospel message is that not only do the innocent die; so too do the guilty. The wages of racism is death. Just like our own nation’s most violent war, fought between brothers and sisters who shared a homeland, the most bitter and vicious religious battles are often fought internally. From the first utterances of the message of Jesus – a message of radical inclusion – there has been resistance. The strongest expressions of that resistance come from those claiming to be followers of Christ.

H. Richard Niebuhr has written that in the various Christian Churches and denominations, “the races confess the same creeds, engage in the same forms of worship, nurture the same hopes, but do so in divided churches, where white and black find it easier to confess than to practice their common [relationship] to God.”[3]

Our own community’s greatest challenge when it comes to racism has nothing to do with what our fellow citizens in the South might be thinking or doing. Ferguson, Missouri and the shooting of Michael Brown do not present us with our greatest challenge. Neither does Sanford, Florida and the shooting of Treyvon Martin. Our greatest challenge when it comes to racism is right here. It reared its head in our own Burlington schools within the past two years.

With 30% of the Burlington School Population made up of students of color, we are not as “white” as we used to be. In a June, 2012 article, Seven Days published portions of a report that looked at numbers and statistics. Students of color comprised, at that time, **27% of the student body, but only 13% of the students taking and passing Algebra I. 37% of the students receiving in-school suspensions were students of color. Black students made up 13 % of the school population but accounted for 27% of out-of-school suspensions throughout the Burlington School District.[4]

Charges of discrimination and racism were leveled – and denied. The situation cost our Superintendent of Schools her job. Tell me this isn’t a volatile issue in our own city and I’ll you you are not facing the facts.

Tell me there is no “wall that we have used to keep each other at a distance”[5], and I will tell you you have become blind to the obvious.

I would question the wisdom of England’s librarians regarding placing To Kill A Mockingbird higher than the bible on the list of “must read” books. And I suspect Harper Lee would question it as well. Isn’t the book parroting the essential Christian message that there are, no more, “insiders” and “outsiders” in the plans and purposes of the Author of Life and Creator of the Universe?

This passage from the Book of Ephesians speaks to us of a gift being offered to us. In the quirky manner of biblical chronology, this passage is both reminiscent of and prognostic toward our most cherished text: John 3:16. God’s love is a global-encompassing reality. The walls are down. The walls we have constructed to privilege some and prejudice others, to feed some while others go hungry, to bless some relationships and refuse to bless others … We don’t have to live that way. In the church we must believe that life behind those kinds of walls is not the gospel way.

For Atticus Finch the “good news” is the law – a law which says all are created equal. Let’s listen to his closing argument as he embarks on his doomed crusade to convince a prejudiced jury of a black man’s innocence.

Video

‘In this country our courts are the great levelers,” says Atticus. What I want us to hear is the difference for Atticus Finch between the “ideal” of equal justice and the “reality” of it. What is the dream for some, the hope for some, the impossible for still others is for Atticus the “living, working reality.” That the project was “licked a hundred years ago,” or a thousand years or tens of thousands of years ago is not an excuse not to try. What some refer to as “the Christian ideal” is, and must forever be, our “living, working reality.”

This, for me is the gospel. It may be that in the market place and in the halls of government and our educational and judicial systems there is resignation to the subjugation of the weak by the strong. It is as inevitable, they say, as the rising tides. That is no excuse for we who follow Jesus and profess him as “lord” to give ground or give up on the truth of Christ’s message and vision. I recently heard someone say “Vision without execution is hallucination.”

There may be some of you sitting in the pews here this morning, wanting to be Christians but in too many ways dismissing the gospel as inevitably doomed to fail. I want to challenge you. I want to encourage you. I want to inspire you.

Atticus Finch is less a fictional character and more a Christ figure, and I would maintain that this is, in large part, why the story remains so popular. It’s because in spite of the world’s inevitable malaise the people want for a better day. In spite of the hatreds that manifest themselves across racial lines even the haters know at some level that there is another way. Even when the world seems to turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to his message, still they want to see the gift of Jesus played out. People want to see the walls come down. They want to witness a community somewhere that is not defined by land or wealth or power or privilege; but rather is gathered in love for each other, with hope in a truth larger than themselves, a call to change the world.

The church of Jesus Christ is the place where such an ideal becomes a living, working reality.

My daughter-in-law, Beth, was in the grocery store with her son, Trey. A complete stranger came up to her and in the hearing of my grandson, said to Beth: “He’s cute now; but don’t put a hoodie on him.” As the woman walked away, Trey turned to his mother and said: “Mommy, what’s wrong with my sweatshirt?”

I want the world to know that, whatever the case may be in the halls of our schools or on the streets of our city, in the sanctuary of our church we are not prejudiced against “hoodies”.

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Lee

[2] Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird. Published by Warner Books, Inc., 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10103. © 1960. Page 80

[3] H. Richard Niebuhr,The Social Sources of Denominationalism. Published by Peter Smith, Goucester, MA. © 1929./ Page 11.

[4] http://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/color-bind/Content?oid=2184235

 

[5] Ephesians 2:14 – Eugene Peterson’s The Message.

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