This week, Dennis Allan talks through the ways Jesus’ “city on a hill” language has been co-opted by American political leaders, both Democrats and Republicans, to ascribe to America a divinely mandated role in the world similar to Old Testament Israel. But, Jesus wasn’t talking about Israel, and he certainly wasn’t talking about any modern nation-state, including America. He was talking to His closest followers, the disciples, about their individual and communal lives. He was talking about how they were to live out their faith in a way that every person could see. He was inviting them to live distinctive, counter-cultural, revolutionary lives rooted in the Kingdom’s subversive ethics outlined in the Sermon on the Mount. We must never ascribe to America (or its political leaders) divine mandate Jesus never gave to it. Instead, it’s the church who is now supposed to be like a “city on a hill” for all the world to see because Jesus is the hope of the world, not America.