This week's Theme: Near Your Altar
Day 1: Sparrow, Swallow - And Mockingbird
Mockingbirds, in many ways, reach a long way back into my childhood. I can remember the clear sound of my mother’s voice as she belted out the notes to one of her favorite songs:
Tra-la-la, tweedlee, dee-dee, it gives me a thrill To wake up in the morning, to the mockingbird's trill Tra-la-la, tweedlee, dee-dee There's peace and goodwill You're welcome as the flowers, on Mockingbird Hill [i]
I often think of that song as I sit in the morning stillness listening to the songs of the birds outside my window. I sometimes wonder what the human translation would be for their hymn of praise. No matter. I fill them in with my imagination— short, simple phrases to match their repetitious melody: “Praise Jesus, praise Jesus, praise Jesus.”
My only exception is the northern mockingbird. I haven’t yet quite figured out the lyrics to his short bursts, but they are obviously an abbreviated version of the distinctive song of his tropical cousins.
Last year, the delightful music of these Caribbean songbirds was one of the simple joys I shared with my sister over my few weeks’ visit. We listened, enchanted, as they serenaded us, “Monkeeric, Monkeeric, Mango a’ ripe, Mango a’ripe!”
My sister and I were quite flabbergasted when the Air Conditioner Service Technician said he was not familiar with that particular interpretation of the score… We forgave him— he was originally from another village. But everyone in our part of the island knew that mockingbirds heralded “mango-season” with this quite singular “hymn of grateful praise.” (In actuality, the song is their mating call, and just happens to coincide with mango season!)
I’ve been thinking a lot about mockingbirds lately. But these days the trill of ‘peace and goodwill’ are drowned in more raucous and sinister notes, and a much grimmer association with mockingbirds comes more quickly to my mind. These days it is the words from Harper Lee’s classic novel that I more often contemplate:
Atticus said to Jem one day, "I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard… but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird."
... 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 do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird” (Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1960).
These lines are the crux of Lee's story, serving as both a guiding principle for, and an indictment against a society that chooses to vilify any segment of its population with blatant disregard for truth, logic, reason, and justice. Her profound wisdom, and themes of selfless courage juxtaposed against putrid hate, blind prejudice and savage cruelty have stayed with me since the moment her story gripped my preteen heart a million years ago.
But they were not unfamiliar themes. I had seen in Scripture the call to love and minister to mockingbirds of every species— the poor and the foreigner, the widow and the fatherless (Deuteronomy 24:14, 17,19). I had seen them in a Savior who fed, and touched, and called, and defended the Tom Robinsons of the world — the outcasts, outsiders, untouchables, rejects, exiles, scapegoats.
"Even the sparrow has found a home," the sons of Korah wrote, "and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young— a place near Your altar, Lord Almighty, my King and my God" (Psalm 84:3).
The economics of God's kingdom are vastly different from those of earth. Humility, and the spirit that recognizes its own poverty are more valued than pride and self-exaltation (Luke 18:9-14). And even as the ruling classes of Jesus day heaped their disdain on tax collectors and sinners— even as the slurs and epithets rolled like boulders from their curled, scornful lips, Jesus issued this dire warning against their presumed security and superiority:
“Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you” (Matthew 21:31).
Across the world, as hostility, incivility, hatred, and animosity continue to rise, we are called to recognize and decry them as vigorously as the other ills we abhor. We are called to step out of silent consent and tacit permission.
The words of Scripture remind us, ...Hatred, discord... dissensions, factions... and the like.... will not inherit the kingdom of God (Galatians 5:20-21). They are every bit as vile as the top sins we place on the skewed human hierarchy of evils. For many, it may be easy to see that murder is sin. Perhaps not so easy to see that it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.
[i] Calle Jularbo and George Vaughn Horton
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