It was almost time to sail. Brisk March wind whistled about the Holyrood Church of Southampton, England, announcing the first day of Spring 1630. Three hundred would-be settlers shivered with cold and excitement. Their new governor, John Winthrop, encouraged the colonists about the pioneering life before them with a sermon he titled, “A Model of Christian Charity.”
They would leave England in two and a half weeks aboard the ship Arbella to start the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Most of those gathered in that drafty sanctuary would never return to the old world, choosing instead to spend the rest of their lives in the new.
These Puritans formed the vanguard of the “Great Migration” escaping England’s religious turmoil. So, he concluded his message by reminding them they would be visible to the entire world as an example of Christian community. He warned them:
“…as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us…if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world.”
Winthrop’s admonition rode on Jesus’s original “Sermon on the Mount” promise. Those who humbled themselves before their Creator, Jesus said, were now citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. Their patience gave them the Earth as an inheritance. Their pure hearts granted them fellowship with God. As his peacemakers, they would be called the sons of God. Then, they would be like a city on a hill that could not be hidden. But, as always, he honored their free will. They could crouch down and hide safely in the world’s ways, or stand vulnerably in God’s ways. It was their choice.
One hundred and forty-six years later radical men and women chose God’s way when they proclaimed the existence of obvious truth in America’s “Declaration of Independence.” It was neither a secret, nor a mystery, nor a fable. It was solid, undeniable reality. They said:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
They affirmed in a single sentence that the Creator exists, that he created all men, and that he granted every human on the planet equal, undeniable, and irrevocable rights. They reasoned that if God imparted them, no man could take them away.
But what rights? The authors implied many existed, but highlighted three: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Such notions shocked the political and cultural thinking of that time. Everyone knew life was hierarchical, subject to the whims of human kings. Monarchs regulated liberty’s extent. Rulers defined happiness. Who would dare say otherwise?
Well… Jesus did, actually. He promised abundant life to those who surrendered to him. Then he pledged that if we loved one another the same way he loved us—sacrificially, exuberantly, and out loud—then all people would know we follow him. Not some, not a few, and not a privileged inner circle. Everybody would see Christ’s people like a bright city set on a high hill above a dark and stormy world.