Readings: Isaiah 58:7-10; 1 Corinthians 2:1-5; Matthew 5:13-16
The image of America as “a city on a hill”
enjoys bi-partisan approval in our public discourse.
Ronald Regan, in his final address to the nation in 1989,
said, “I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life.”
Barack Obama, speaking on 2006 while still a Senator,
said of the Pilgrim settlers of New England,
“they dreamed of building a City upon a Hill.
And the world watched, waiting to see
if this improbable idea called America would succeed.”
The image of the city on the hill is evoked to speak of
what is sometimes called “American exceptionalism”—
the idea that our nation’s unique experiment in democracy
bestows on it an almost messianic mission
to be a beacon of freedom,
bringing light to those in darkness.
The source of this image
is a sermon preached in 1630 by the Puritan John Winthrop
to the pilgrims departing England for the New World.
He told them, “wee must Consider that wee shall be
as a Citty upon a Hill,
the eies of all people are upon us.”
It is worth noting that Winthrop’s sermon
and its image of a city on a hill
lay forgotten for centuries,
being revived only in the mid-twentieth century,
during the Cold War,
to underscore the unique value of American democracy
in the struggle against totalitarianism.
But, of course, John Winthrop, in 1630,
had no idea about the Cold War.
Indeed, in 1630 he had no idea
about the United States of America,
which would not exist for another 150 years.
So what was he speaking about?
In speaking of a city on the hill,
he is referring not to a nation
that would one day emerge on this continent,
but to the words Jesus address to his followers
in today’s Gospel,
which our translation renders as,
“A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden.”
Winthrop invokes these words
to remind the small group of Christians
setting out to establish a colony
based on Christian principles of justice, mercy, and love
that the world would be watching them
to see if they could in fact live by those principles.
For Winthrop, what would make this little community
become a shining city on a hill
is the justice and mercy that they show to their neighbors
and the love that binds them together as Christ’s body.
He quotes in his sermon the very same passage from Isaiah
that we have read this morning:
“Share your bread with the hungry,
shelter the oppressed and the homeless;
clothe the naked when you see them,
and do not turn your back on your own.
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn….
and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.”
Though they certainly failed at times to reach this ideal,
particularly in regard to their native neighbors,
this was the standard by which they wished to be judged.
As our national politics grow ever more fractious and more brutal,
and we are tempted to anger or hatred or despair or apathy,
it is good to recall the true meaning of the phrase “a city on the hill.”
The city on the hill is no earthly nation, but is the body of Christ:
it is those disciples who have been knit together by the Spirit’s grace
into a living organism animated by justice, mercy, and love;
it is God’s pilgrim city journeying through time to our eternal rest.
As much as we may rightly love our earthly homeland,
as much as we might value its democratic institutions,
we should never confuse the United States of America
with the true city on the hill.
As much as we may love our country,
it is, like all nations, at its best
a place of temporary and relative justice.
And, perhaps paradoxically, we serve our country best
if we do not confuse our love for it
with our loyalty to our true homeland,
God’s heavenly city.
Only if our hope is rooted in something
that transcends the empires and nations
built on the shifting sands of this world
can we find the justice, mercy, and love that we need
in order to care for the public things of our earthly life
without succumbing to bitterness in our losses
of vindictiveness in our victories.
Only if we obey Paul’s injunction to fix our hearts
on Jesus Christ and him crucified
will we be able to free ourselves from the partisan hatreds
that perpetually tear this world apart;
only if we commit ourselves to Jesus’s way of the cross
will we be able to show the watching world
the power and wisdom of self-sacrificing love.
If we who claim the name Christian remove from our midst
oppression, false accusation and malicious speech;
if we bestow our bread on the hungry
and satisfy the afflicted;
then light shall rise for us in the darkness
and we can be,
in fear and trembling at our weakness
but in hope and confidence in God’s power,
light for which the world in darkness waits.
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Video of this homily.
