Isaiah 2:1-5
What I'm holding is not exactly a sword beaten into a plowshare, but it sort of follows those
lines. It’s a bell, a little jingle bell
made of brass. It used to be tied with a
red and green string. Very festive! Once upon a time, however, it was something
else. Metal, after all, is a great
thing. It can be recycled over and over,
sometimes for centuries. The silver in a
filling in your tooth may once have been part of a coin – a Roman denarius or a
Dutch ducatoon. This brass was part of a
shell casing that was fired in Cambodia during the murderous reign of the Khmer
Rouge. Now it’s a bell.
There
are a couple of ways of looking at that.
On the one hand, it might seem a little creepy. Here is something that, if it did not harm
someone, was manufactured so that it could have done that. Maybe it did.
I don’t know. On the other hand,
here it is, and it isn’t hurting anyone anymore; it couldn’t, in this form. In fact, if you just saw it somewhere used as
a decoration, it might catch your eye in a pleasant way. A baby might get a big smile from playing
with it, or it might be a good addition to a cat’s collar.
Is it good or is it
bad? That all depends upon how it is
used. Human abilities and human
technology of all sorts can be turned to good or turned to evil ends. The same skill that makes a sword can make a
plow. The same long pole can be fitted
with a spear point or a pruning hook.
Back in March the people of Boston learned, as we all did, that
something as innocent as a pressure cooker could be turned into a bomb. On a larger scale, uranium can be put into
reactors or missiles.
It’s the human heart
that guides the mind that guides the hand where the difference begins. It is in the human heart where God acts and
where we respond that the ways even of nations are determined.
It’s an old-fashioned
way of thinking, according to historians, to put a heavy emphasis on the
private decisions of individuals, but there’s no doubt in my mind that part of
God’s plan for the redemption of the world from its slavery to what Paul called
“the law of sin and of death” [Romans
8:2] was that the minds of world leaders, no less than others’, would be
transformed and turned away from quick resort to force. The prophet Isaiah foresaw a time when
“Many peoples shall come and say, “Come,
let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house
of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his
paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from
Jerusalem. He shall judge between
the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords
into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up
sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” [Isaiah
2:3-5]
And it does make a difference whether certain people
are reluctant or eager to seek peace.
Michael Dobbs, who has written extensively on the history of the Cold
War, says that during the Cuban Missile Crisis
“The uniformed
military, including Taylor and Gen. Curtis LeMay, the legendary Air Force
chief, were unanimously in favor of air strikes followed up by an
invasion. What they did not know at the time was that the Soviet forces
on Cuba were equipped with 98 tactical nuclear weapons that could have been
used to wipe out an American invading force or the United States naval base at
Guantánamo. The use of these weapons on Cuba could quickly have escalated
to an all-out nuclear war.”[1]
It was a hard call at the time, but when he chose
blockade over invasion, he probably preserved civilization as we know it.
We,
as God’s people, as followers of the one we call the Prince of Peace, can and
should hold in constant prayer the people who have the capacity, by their
decisions, to decide between swords and plowshares. In a democracy, when we choose our leaders,
the people whom we entrust with powers of life and death, one of the questions
that we should consider is whether they are people who at least hold a peaceful
world as an ideal.
We
are also here to hold them, as far as we are able, accountable for the
decisions that they make, and to remind them that there are real, live people
who experience the consequences of their policies. Later in the service we’re going to sing “I
Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”, which is based on a poem by Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow. I say, “based on” because
some of his original poem, called “Christmas Bells” is left out when it is
sung. In 1861, Longfellow’s wife had
died of burns sustained when her dress caught fire and then, two years later
his son enlisted in the Army without his father’s permission and was sent off
to the front lines of the Civil War, where he was wounded on a battlefield in
Virginia. We sing,
“I heard the bells on
Christmas Day
Their old, familiar
carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth,
good-will to men!”
We
don’t sing the most agonized stanzas:
“Then from each black,
accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in
the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth,
good-will to men!
It was as if an
earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a
continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth,
good-will to men!”
Even the most justifiable of wars, the fight to end
slavery, or a later war to end the genocidal tyranny that gripped Europe and
Asia, takes its toll on those who fight and those who are left behind. People who deal with large questions
sometimes (not always, but sometimes) forget that. Maybe part of our calling is to remind them.
Isaiah’s
great vision of how the nations will one day follow the paths of peace
concludes with a word, not to the great empires of the day nor even to the king
of Israel (who, incidentally, seems to have been Isaiah’s cousin, so he could
easily have addressed him directly). No,
he speaks to the people as a whole.
“O
house of Jacob, come, let us walk
in the light of the Lord!” [Isaiah
2:5]
If we do not ourselves live as people of peace, if
we ourselves don’t choose the plow over the sword, we have no right to fault
others for doing what we do. That’s why
the church looks at questions like whether any funds that we hold end up
invested in arms manufacturers, and why we get behind campaigns to ask parents
not to buy children war toys for Christmas.
(Picture, if you will, a G.I. Joe holding a rocket launcher in the
manger of a nativity scene. If there’s a
discrepancy, that says something right there.)
It’s why we take seriously the deep, spiritual wounds that warfare
inflicts even on those who come through combat physically unscathed, who
sometimes have to hear a message from the bell towers, over and over:
“Then rang the bells
more loud and deep:
God is not dead, nor
doth He sleep.
The wrong shall fail,
The right prevail
With peace on earth,
good-will to men!”
And so,
“O
house of Jacob, come, let us walk
in the light of the Lord!” [Isaiah
2:5]
[1] In
the New York Times “Times Topics”
(Cuban Missile Crisis) http://www.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/cuban_missile_crisis/index.html
