Campus CrossWalk Magazine: 2006 Spring Issue -- A City on a Hill

A Model

One of the great movie lines of all time is from the 1939 film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Freshman senator Jefferson Smith (played by James Stewart) tells his hardball senatorial secretary; “Always try to see life around you as if you’d just come out of a tunnel."

The preacher in me loves that line. A great sermon should leave the saints with a sense of emerging from a tunnel and into the light. Such a sermon was preached in 1630 by John Winthrop. It was a fine testimony to Christian unity!

Its title: "A Model of Christian Charity."

Its text: “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.” (Matthew 5:14).

Its essential message: Let us lose our spiritual shackles and together escape the coming judgment on England. Let us head for the New World to build a shining “city on a hill” for all the world to see and follow. Winthrop wanted to forge a model community that could serve as a light at the end of the wicked tunnel in which he thought world was stuck.

A Covenant

John Winthrop (1587-1649) was married at age seventeen. He and his wife Mary worked hard, had six children and after ten years together, she suddenly died. John remarried, but lost his second wife on their first anniversary. His third wife, Margaret, was famous for her great beauty, grace and faith. His love letters testify to a warm covenant of love that intertwined a mutual faith with passionate companionship.

At forty-two, Winthrop worried about the spiritual welfare of his children and his country. From Puritan stock, he saw his life with God in a “covenant” framework. He felt his homeland had broken their covenant with God and it was time

to start over. And starting over was a skill he had already learned. Like many Puritans, he saw America as an opportunity for new beginnings, or for emerging from their tunnel.

So, on April 7, 1630, he delivered his legacy sermon on board a ship full of eager adventurous Puritans prepared to sail from Old England to New England (or from darkness to light, as they saw it). Here was a well-off English landlord and prominent Puritan minister selling his possessions to set sail for America where he would serve as Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The vision in his heart was that of a child of God fleeing a corrupt and repressive realm to cross the Red Sea and climb that proverbial hill, spoken of by Jesus, where God’s light could shine forth to call the world into a covenant of joy and justice.

The Sermon

Winthrop’s audience included many who were previously unacquainted. They were about to launch into a life wherein their very survival would swing on the strength of their bond of unity under God. So Winthrop laid out the cause and commission of God’s covenant and warned them of the wrath of God should they breach that covenant. He then issued his clarion call to Christian unity:

: Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck… 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.

Have you ever heard unity depicted with such eloquence? He continues:

: We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, "may the Lord make it like that of New England." For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.

John Winthrop understood Jesus’ conviction that the unity of God’s people is a powerful witness to the world. His city on a hill was no utopia--just a light. Christian unity was no more feasible then than it is today. Nevertheless, Winthrop issued the call, paid the price and set his sail.

Sinful disunity is a dark tunnel, but the light of the gospel illumines the way out.

Go for it!

Joel Mark Solliday, B.A., M.Div., is the editor of Campus CrossWalk and the pulpit minister of the Northern Light Church of Christ in Minnesota. A Pepperdine graduate, he later worked in their Campus Life Office. He served as a Missionary in Residence at ACU. He earned his M.Div. at Fuller Theological Seminary. His wife Katie is a fine school teacher and a great listener.