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City on a Hill
Sermons don’t often become famous. There are a few in my professional company that are at least somewhat familiar, but even then, we must account for: a) most of my colleagues are preachers and b) I am a worship nerd.
And while the title of the sermon I have in mind today – “A Modell of Christian Charitie” – may not be familiar, the phrase it coined likely is. In the sermon, which is of disputed authorship, the preacher speaks of the colony they are preparing to found. Bound for Massachusetts, excited for unique opportunities to be community focused, it’s with optimism and confidence they declare that it can be a “city on a hill”.
The sermon, and this phrase in particular, have been utilized and wielded in various ways, faithfully and otherwise. And to avoid any ambiguity, any notion of exceptionalism – as “city on a hill” is perhaps indelibly linked with “American Exceptionalism” – is the latter. Which, interestingly, is the very point of the sermon.
Rather than a message of exceptionalism, it’s a plea to live uniquely in covenant with God. To take advantage of the opportunity to be a community that seeks to live faithfully. Remember the title; their goal is to be a model of Christian Charity, which is the call to practice the truest of loves for God and one another. To live otherwise would be to break the covenant, to not live up to what they understood as a unique opportunity. And to that, the preacher, cautions (and your preacher cautions: 1630, non-inclusive, patriarchal language incoming):
“Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with.”
Sounds awesome, right? “We shall see much more of [God’s] wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than we formerly have been acquainted with.” But that’s the end of the paragraph, not the beginning. It’s an invitation, a hope, one that takes work to obtain. To be a particular gender or ethnicity or nationality, none of these move us to a city on a hill. Not even declaring the Christian faith. And to be a city on a hill is not a self-serving exceptionalism, but itself an invitation to the abundance of living with God’s wisdom, power, goodness, and truth.
Living out that kind of faith takes work. It takes sacrifice. It takes seeing those around us not as burdens or enemies, but siblings, making their needs our own, with whom we “mourn together, labor and suffer together”, so that we might also rejoice together.
-Ben
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