The publication of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird prequel, Go Set A Watchman, unleashed a torrent of opinion pieces, critiques, applause, and befuddlement about the recasting of Atticus Finch from paragon of white virtue to an emblem of deep south racism. Mary Louise goes home as an adult and sees a different shade of Atticus than she had seen through the adoring eyes of Scout. In this sermon, we’ll explore the disturbing, empowering, and liberating ways our lives, our world, and the people in it, become more real when we are willing to “declare what we see” through unblinking adult eyes (even with the thickening vapor of half-truths and fake news). How do we reconcile the beautiful with the ugly, the vile with the just, the illusion of a leader with the reality, the fondness we have for friends and family when it is sullied by expressions of prejudice? And what will we do with the truths we see? “When I was a child, I reasoned like a child…but when I grew up, I put away childish things.”
