Mockingbirds, Matilda and Mediators

Reading ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ again… Atticus, an Alabama lawyer in the 1930s, tells his children ‘Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.’ Mockingbirds cause no trouble. All they do is ‘sing their hearts out for us’.

A black man is charged with the rape of a white girl. In the prejudice, violence and hypocrisy of the white townsfolk, Atticus stands alone in court defending the ‘mockingbird’.

Last week learning about ‘The Matilda effect’… In 1870 American suffragist and abolitionist Matilda Gage wrote an essay ‘Woman as Inventor’, highlighting how women’s scientific and inventive contributions were frequently ignored or credited to men.

In 1993 science historian Margaret W. Rossiter, documented numerous historical cases of women scientists whose achievements were under-recognised and overlooked in favour of male colleagues. Rossiter called it ‘The Matilda effect’, after Matilda Gage. In the last thirty years many studies have recognised the forgotten women of science.

This morning reading the story of Job… a good man who’s lost his family, his possessions and his health. His friends say that he’s brought it on himself. Feeling alone, clinging on to his innocence and integrity he says:

‘If only there were someone to mediate between us,
    someone to bring us together,
someone to remove God’s rod from me,
    so that his terror would frighten me no more.
Then I would speak up without fear of him,
    but as it now stands with me, I cannot.’

Musing… As a child I was taught about Jesus as the mediator – the one who stands before God on my behalf. I’ve studied the theology of Jesus, ‘the one God and one mediator between God and men’. I remember that he ‘left us an example that we should follow in his steps’.

Reflecting… Atticus, Matilda and Job, standing against the prejudice and established thinking, I’m wondering what innocent mockingbirds I should defend, what forgotten heroes I should name, what suffering innocents I should stand by. Today.

(Bible References: Job 9:33-35, 1 Timothy 2:5. 1 Peter 2:21)