"A City Upon a Hill"

Sermon preached by John C. Hall on November 2, 2008

Text — Matthew 23:1-12

The phrase “a city on a hill” has an interesting history, and it’s a good one for Founders Sunday because it relates to our congregation’s history, and our nation’s history.

But let’s start with the “city on a hill” in the Bible. The original city on a hill is Jerusalem.  It was the center of David’s kingdom.  The New Jerusalem is the symbol of God’s kingdom.

Jesus said in the sermon on the Mount — “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.” Notice that Jesus himself was on a hill when he said that.

A  “city” — in the Bible  — symbolizes a state of mind, a spiritual condition. It’s a mentality.  Look at a city and you see, exposed, what the inner life of that society is like.

The other major Biblical city, Babylon, isn’t a city on a hill. It’s a city in a desert. For the Jews, it represents alienation from God, judgment, captivity, and exile from our higher nature.

Now fast forward 17 centuries.  The phrase “city on a hill” pops up in 1630 on a ship, the Arabella, crossing the Atlantic to New England.  On the ship a Puritan preacher, John Winthrop, preached a sermon to the passengers. The sermon was titled “A Model of Christian Charity.” For Winthrop and his congregation, New England was supposed to be the model for the true Christian way of life — for the world. And this idea that we are special, the chosen, the example for the world, left a deep imprint on the psyche of our nation down to the present.

Fast forward from 1630 to 1980.  Ronald Reagan, or one of his speech writers, took the phrase “city on a hill” and added the word “shining” — a shining city on a hill. 28 years after that, last Sunday, the Hartford Courant endorsed Barack Obama using these words. “America is starved for a leader who can … once again make the nation a beacon for the world … a city on a hill — with the eyes of all people upon us.”

I need to state for the record, and the IRS, that I am not trying to sneak in my own endorsement of Obama by mentioning this. The Courant quoted a Congregational minister, who quoted the Bible, so this fair game for Sunday morning. Our tax-exempt status must be preserved.

This is a very exciting moment in American History. We don’t know what will happen on Tuesday, but who thought, even two years ago, that a dark-skinned man named Barack Obama could even get close to being president?

But getting back to our topic, what did Jesus mean when he said those words — a city on a hill? He wasn’t just talking about being at the center of attention and looking good. Think of our gospel lesson for today. Here he’s saying, watch out!  There’s a difference between what people say and what they do.

We all find it easy — and a lot of fun — to point out the wrong, self-serving, and stupid things other people do, especially when the targets of our satire hold public office. But listen again to what Jesus said about the scribes and Pharisees who function symbols of hypocrisy. 

He says, “Do what they teach you, but don’t do as they do. They don’t practice what they teach, (or preach).  They load heavy burdens on other people’s backs and won’t lift a finger to help them.”

The world has a lot of moralistic talkers — politicians, prosecutors, pundits, preachers, professors, plumbers, pontificators. And the public. Everyone loves to talk about what other people or other nations should do. We need to focus more of what we do, individually, as a church, and as a nation. What kind of city on hill do we want to be part of? Whoever is elected on Tuesday, after Tuesday the real work will begin.

John Winthrop’s sermon, the one in which he used the phrase “a city upon a hill” wasn’t a sermon of self-congratulation. It was a sermon to persuade people to care more about each other. That’s so basic, isn’t it? But it’s a challenge to get ourselves to do it. Let’s face it.  It’ difficult for us to enlarge the circle of people we care about.

In the political speeches, you here the phrase “what this election is really about.” What I think it’s about, at the unspoken level, is whether the American people care about each other, and care enough about future generations who will be stuck with the credit card bill for our deficit spending … — do we care about those things enough to sacrifice anything?

Here’s something that blows my mind, it’s so ironic and telling in terms of how the world has changed. John Winthrop, in 1630, was a Calvinist theocrat. He envisioned a Church not just in charge of the state, but a church that was the state.  Religiously and politically, he was miles to the right of anyone on the public stage today.

And yet, if a presidential candidate quoted from that sermon, beyond the phrase “a city on a hill” and actually repeated Wintrop’s moral teaching — that it’s God’s will for us care about each other by sharing our material blessings with those who are most needy —  that candidate would be ridiculed as a socialist.

How did we get to a point where politicians are required to be “religious” and yet mentioning caring for the poor is political suicide? Have you noticed, in this campaign, that the talk is all about helping the middle class?  No one talks about helping the poor. I don’t blame the candidates, really. The American people — a significant portion of the American people — won’t allow it.

Politicians can’t say this, (other than Ralph Nader, and you know what happened to him). But preachers can say it and still hang on to our jobs.

Our system, our economic and political system, has evolved — at least in recent decades — to deliver maximum advantages and benefits to the people who already have the most benefits and advantages. This is why the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer. The game is rigged.

And if we’re waking up to that imbalance — and I’m not sure we are, but I hope we are — it’s mainly because the imbalance is starting to hurt even the people at the top. Wealth hasn’t trickled down. But pain is trickling upward. This is what motivates the economic bailout. We’re seeing corporate welfare like never before. Privatize the profit, but socialize the risk.

Will the next President be able to address that? Will we, as the American public, do enough to create the political space to allow the next president to address it?

The church’s purpose, and foundation, still, is to be a kind of “city on a hill.” The nature of that city is somewhat specific.  It’s a state of mind, a mentality, that notices the people who carry the heaviest burdens — you don’t have to look far to see them. And then, unlike the scribes and Pharisees, it’s to have a mind to do more than lift a finger to help them. And I’m not talking just about getting the government to help them. That’s important too.  Jesus tells us to help them.

This isn’t easy work. It’s not always convenient. It takes energy. It can be messy and frustrating. But there is real spiritual life and joy to be found in a community that embraces that work.