Till Kingdom Come
The Pilgrims were part of a greater movement — stretching back to Wycliffe and Tyndale — to place the Scriptures into the hands of the common man. Yet what they tried to do with those Scriptures is virtually unknown, even though their moving story is told year after year in America. Vivid images remain with us: fleeing persecution in England, leaving Holland, crossing the perilous sea, settling in Plymouth, suffering heroically through their first winter, receiving gracious help from the Indians.
For most of us, their story ends a few months later with the first Thanksgiving. They went on with a life we know very little about, and eventually this great and free nation was born. It is not too clear in the textbooks anymore, but somehow the two — their life and our nation — are connected. These brave but simple and humble men and women had more in their hearts than the great idea we associate with them: religious freedom.
That was part of it, but they came for more than a safe haven for their children from the worldly temptations of Holland. They actually came to recreate on the shores of America the life of the first church — what the world saw in Jerusalem in the first century. We tend to see “the Pilgrims” in a certain way that makes it hard for us to understand what their life together meant to them .
They shared all things in common, not just as a business arrangement with their financial backers, but as an expression of their fervent faith. They were out to bring the “Kingdom of God” to earth. At the least, they sought to be “stepping stones” for those who might come after them, “one small candle” that “may light a thousand.” 1 But they wanted to be stepping-stones to somewhere, a light on the path there.
In their own estimation, they failed . They didn’t become what they wanted to, but settled for something far less. This was their sorrow, their heartache, and their profound disappointment. They dreamed much more greatly than we have understood, even though the whole story is written in Bradford’s own journal, Of Plymouth Plantation. In their own words, the Pilgrim story raises profound questions about the dream, the cost, and even the possibility of bringing the Kingdom of God to earth.
That such a goal filled the hearts of a group of English countrymen is perhaps the greatest wonder of the story, which begins, in this sense, long before any of them were born. It begins with the “morning star” of the Reformation, John Wycliffe, whose work was continued a century later by William Tyndale. Tyndale’s translation remains the foundation of English translations of the Bible to this day. In them burned a fire to purify the church and to give the common man the word of God. For many centuries it had lain hidden in the hands of the clergy and in the dead languages of scholars. They thought that perhaps if the common people had the Bible, the first, pure love of the primitive church might blossom on the earth again.
What will the plowboy do with the Word of God?
In the most famous incident of his life, Tyndale insists on the necessity of the common man knowing the Scriptures and no longer being held in ignorance. When confronted by a clergyman as to what was wrong with their ignorance, since they have the Church to teach them, Tyndale cuts to the heart of the matter. What about the times when the pope is at variance with God’s laws? The priest responds that it would be better to do without God’s laws than the pope’s. In the answer that shaped his life, and secured its violent end, Tyndale vowed, “ I defy the Pope and all his laws. If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that drives the plow to know more of the Scripture than you do.”
Some seventy years after his death, that plowboy — that everyman — joined a group of Separatists in Scrooby, England. They were the most radical of the Puritans who believed in complete separation from the established church.
That twelve-year-old boy was William Bradford, whose devotion to the cause cost him the loss of his family, for they disowned him. But his decision meant much more than alienating his family. It placed him at odds with the governing authorities of the English church and state, at whose hands he and the others suffered persecution.
Bradford saw this treatment as nothing less than the opposition of Satan. As he would write in his journal, the evil one was “loath his kingdom should go down, the truth prevail and the churches of God revert to their ancient purity and recover their primitive order, liberty, and beauty.” 2
The desire to see the churches restored to how they were at first, back to their “primitive order,” was the powerful motivation that sustained the Pilgrims through all their difficulties. It is why they were given the despised name of “Separatists” and known as radicals and driven out of England. It set them on a course to the “wilderness” and “strange lands” and a life filled with “weal and woe.” 3 They knew blessings and the keenest of sufferings in a way those who safely adventure less in life will never know.
It was through Bradford’s eyes that history would see the Pilgrims, as his journal, Of Plymouth Plantation, forms our chief record of their remarkable life. His poetry and history reveal the deep stream from which this spiritual movement flowed, and the rocks over which it floundered, and upon which it died.
The depth of the bond these men and women had, and the cause to which they dedicated their life, can be glimpsed in this passage from Bradford’s journal, concerning their time in Leyden, Holland:
Being thus settled (after many difficulties) they enjoyed many years in a comfortable situation, enjoying much sweet and delightful society and spiritual comfort together in the ways of God, under the able ministry and prudent government of Mr. John Robinson and Mr. William Brewster... So as they grew in knowledge and other gifts and graces of the Spirit of God, and lived together in peace and love and holiness and many came unto them from different parts of England, so as they grew a great congregation. 4
