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“Swords Into Plowshares”

Sermon by Dr. Greg Knox Jones
on Isaiah 2:2-4
given December 2, 2007

Last Tuesday, leaders from 49 countries gathered in Annapolis to talk about peace in the Middle East. Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority leader, Mahmoud Abbas, committed to working on a peace treaty they hope to conclude by the end of next year. The key to creating a treaty that both parties can sign will depend on whether Israel and the Palestinians can forge an agreement that will give Palestinians a homeland and will give Israelis security. This is a challenge so daunting that many believe it to be impossible.

Bitter disputes have kept Israelis and Palestinians at each other’s throats for six decades, and attempts at reaching a lasting agreement have been like trying to hold onto buckets full of sand as it pours through your fingers. Tensions mount, hostilities escalate and killing spirals out of control. Is there any reason to hope that this time will prove any different? There are certainly some indicators pointing against any optimistic predictions of success.

For one, both Olmert and Abbas are considered weak leaders; neither wields great political strength among his own people. For another, this week’s meeting prompted both Palestinians and Israelis to take to the streets in protest. The militant factions of Hamas and Hezbollah will incite their followers to undermine any agreement with Israel, and Israeli settlers will oppose all efforts to give land to Palestinians. From some vantage points, these negotiations appear doomed from the start.

And yet, not all signs are pointing to guaranteed failure. The war in Iraq has made Iran the dominant power in the Middle East, and fear of Iran has prompted other Middle Eastern countries to see the benefit of peace between Palestinians and Israelis. Both Saudi Arabia and Syria showed up at the Annapolis conference, which was a promising sign. In addition, the ascendancy of Hamas “has driven Fatah into a tighter working relationship with Israel…and the fear of Fatah collapsing has brought Israel back to the negotiating table.”1 Middle East expert, Tom Friedman identifies signs of moderates beginning to push back against the extremists, and if the moderates can produce some momentum, they might be able to achieve some measure of peace.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, and the Old Testament lectionary reading is one of the powerful passages of Scripture in which the prophet Isaiah reveals God’s vision of a world at peace. Isaiah says that the word of the Lord will emanate from the heart of the Middle East, Jerusalem, the Holy city that is today claimed by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. Isaiah says that God “shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

This is God’s intent for the world and it is also the longing of the human heart. It is the vision of a world where people turn their instruments of war into agricultural tools. It is the dream of a time when we stop killing each other.

It is essential to recognize that Isaiah’s vision is not one in which God acts unilaterally to bring peace to the world. Instead, it is one in which the people take action. First, the people say, “Let us go up to the mountain of the Lord so that God may teach us God’s ways and we may walk in God’s paths.” And then, after learning what God wants, the people – not God – turn their weapons into shovels and rakes and hoes. Also, notice that Isaiah’s vision is not simply to cease fighting. The people neither bury nor destroy their weapons. Rather, they turn them into tools that benefit humankind. They become tools that help them to plant and produce food that will nourish and sustain life.

In 1968, when Bobby Kennedy was running for president, he frequently said, “Some see things as they are and say, ‘Why?’ I dream of things as they have never been and ask, ‘Why not?’ His words described two different ways of looking at our world. One way is to see all the violence, hatred, racism and greed, and ask why the world is filled with so much darkness. The opposite way of looking at the world is to hope for a reality that is not yet realized. It is to dream of a better world. It is to envision new, life-enhancing possibilities and then to work hand-in-hand with God and fellow believers, to turn those hopes into real peace.

Benedictine Priest, David Steindl-Rast, says that hope is being open to surprise as we stand between the already and the not-yet. It is a passion for the possible that holds the present open for a fresh future. In life, whenever we experience sickness, loss or suffering, “it is our hope for wellness, vitality and a better life that urges us to move forward into an unknown future with treatments, protocols and requests for help. Hope sets our heart and our sight on goals and stokes our desire to attain them. Hope does not require us to be optimists instead of pessimists. It simply requires that even in our most cynical moments we do not shut the door on new possibilities.”2

I refuse to slam the door shut on the possibility of making this planet a more peaceful place. And events of the past few weeks both buoy my hope and remind me of the responsibility of all people of faith in working for peace.

On October 13th, 138 Muslim scholars and clerics sent an open letter “to leaders of Christian churches everywhere.” The letter is entitled, “A Common Word Between Us and You,”3 and “those who signed it include top leaders from around the globe who represent every major school of Islamic thought.”4

The fact that this letter was even written is remarkable, and what the letter declares breaks open new possibilities for cooperation and understanding, and gives us reasons to hope. In their letter, the Muslim leaders begin by stating: “Muslims and Christians together make up well over half of the world’s population. Without peace and justice between these two religious communities, there can be no meaningful peace in the world. The future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians.” Then, they go on to state that the basis for peace and understanding already exists in the foundational principles of both Christianity and Islam. Both faiths state the absolute necessity of loving God and loving our neighbor. This is the critical common ground we share.

In their letter, they point out that the Qur’an says: “So invoke the Name of thy Lord and devote thyself to Him with a complete devotion.” And regarding the love of neighbor, they quote the prophet Muhammad who said, “None of you has faith until you love for your neighbor what you love for yourself.”
Then, they quote Jesus when he said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength…and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

The Muslim letter “adopts the traditional and mainstream Islamic position of respecting the Christian Scriptures and calls on Christians to be more, not less, faithful to them.”5 This traditional respect for our faith has been the missing voice of late, as radical Islamists have blared their message of hate for non-Muslims. Since 9/11, the world has bemoaned the absence of moderate Muslim voices, but now this powerful declaration presents us with new possibilities for peaceful coexistence in our world.

Two weeks ago, a Christian response to the Muslim letter was drafted by scholars at Yale Divinity School, and many leaders of the Christian community in the United States have signed onto it.6 The Christian response declares: “We extend our own Christian hand in return, so that together with all other human beings we may live in peace and justice as we seek to love God and our neighbors.” It also points out that while “tensions, conflicts, and even wars in which Christians and Muslims stand against each other are not primarily religious in character, they possess an undeniable religious dimension. If we can achieve religious peace between these two religious communities, peace in the world will clearly be easier to attain.”7

The Christian response affirms the importance of loving God and neighbor, and adds the words of Jesus to “Love our enemies” and notes the similarity of Jesus on the cross praying for his enemies, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” and Muhammad’s words after he was nearly stoned to death, when he said, “The most virtuous behavior is to engage those who sever relations, to give to those who withhold from you, and to forgive those who wrong you.” Forgiveness is an essential step on the road to peace.

The Christian response recognizes that given the deep fissures in the relations between Christians and Muslims today, the task before us is daunting…(but) The future of the world depends on our ability as Christians and Muslims to live together in peace.”

It is essential that we keep in mind that peacemaking is much more difficult than war-making. To spread peace, we must create conditions that prompt people to thirst for peace. When people are hungry, abused, discriminated against or bullied; when people are uneducated, unemployed or enslaved they would rather strike out against people than join hands with them and work for peace. To expand the Kingdom of God and to spread peace throughout our world, we need the will to feed the hungry; we need the wisdom to create jobs; we need the determination to educate the illiterate; we need courts of law dedicated to providing justice for all people. And, yet, we will make little or no progress without a genuine conversion of the human heart.

Critics of organized religion are fond of accusing people of faith for fomenting violence; and there are many examples where religion has been twisted so that people are encouraged to do kill in the name of God. But the world will not move toward peace without the power and wisdom and guidance of God. The God we know in Christ seeks to transform the human heart to seek kindness rather than abuse, justice rather than oppression, respect rather than discrimination and compassion rather than neglect.

Dear God, give us the hope that dares to dream of a world where we “beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks;” where we turn our missile silos into grain silos; where we exchange our guns and bullets for food and books, where we find security, not in tanks and bombs, but in jobs and health care.

There is more than enough evil in the world to prevent us from thinking that we can simply abolish armies. But the question is whether we will simply rely on military might to try to coerce people into living in peace or whether we will change the underlying problems that lead to violence and terrorism and war.

It baffles me that some proponents of wielding a big stick scoff at peacemaking as the easy way out. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is much easier to talk tough and send the young men and women of our armed forces off to war than to do the demanding work of diplomacy where hawks are bound to criticize you for being a coward. It is much more difficult to do the give and take of creating a just and peaceful solution than to send someone else’s kids into battle.

Injustice ought to make us angry. War ought to make us extremely angry. But injustice and war ought not prompt us simply to strike back in revenge. Hostility breeds more hostility. Killing breeds more killing.

And we must never forget that the world does not have to be in the mess that it is in. The world is in a mess because of choices people have made. People have made decisions to go to war, to discriminate against people of different races or religions, to demonize people of different nations, to engage in ethnic cleansing, and to claim that God sanctions killing people of other faiths.

However, if we can make decisions that have led to further hostilities and destruction, we can also make decisions that lessen tensions, promote cooperation, recognize common goals, and seek the well-being of others.

Turn swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks? Is this vision too wild and extravagant to take seriously? Maybe it is. But one of the extraordinary things about being a follower of Christ, is that we are called to do the impossible. Christ wants us to catch God’s vision of a world at peace and even though that might be a goal too distant to attain in our lifetimes, God wants us to be doing everything within our power to march toward that goal.

NOTES

1. Thomas L. Friedman, “Oasis or Mirage,” in The New York Times, November 28, 2007.
   
2. Gretta Vosper, a service of worship entitled “Gifts of the Season,” 2003.
   
3. “A Common Word Between Us and You” can be found at www.acommonword.com
   
4. “Loving God and Neighbor Together: A Christian Response to A Common Word Between Us and You, printed in The New York Times on November 18, 2007, and can be found at www.yale.edu/faith/abou-commonword.htm
   
5. “Introduction to A Common Word Between Us and You” at www.acommonword.com
   
6. “Loving God and Neighbor Together: A Christian Response to A Common Word Between Us and You, found at www.yale.edu/faith/abou-commonword.htm
   
7. Ibid.

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