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—or ‘study war no more,’ as many of us learned it.
These words from the prophet Isaiah are some of the most memorable images in all of scripture. The prophet imagines a time when Instruments of death and violence will be transformed into plowshares— the cutting blade on a plow, the part that goes into the ground and tears open a space for the seed to be planted. These instruments of war shall be turned into instruments of life and growth and newness. A symbol of a great reversal, a change in our hearts and choices that points us toward a different way.
And yet Isaiah’s words become even powerful when we remember that their inverse is also found in scripture.
I.
It’s tucked in the third chapter of the prophet Joel, in a passage we do not read much in church—in fact, it is not even included in the lectionary. It imagines a much different future:
Proclaim this among the nations:
Prepare war—(the Hebrew actually says “sanctify war”)
stir up the warriors.
Let all the soldiers draw near,
let them come up.
10 Beat your plowshares into swords,
and your pruning hooks into spears;
let the weakling say, “I am a warrior.”
Scholars argue over which image came first: was Joel distorting Isaiah, or was Isaiah subverting Joel? Or could it be that Joel’s image of beating plowshares into swords wasn’t unique to the prophet but was instead simply a popular image—after all, repurposing tools or anything you can find as a weapon is almost instinctual in moments of crisis. Fear makes us incredibly imaginative: everything becomes a potential weapon.
The uncomfortable truth is that both of these images are found in the pages of scripture. And unfortunately, the people of God have acted from both of them at different times. We have summoned the courage at times to beat our swords into plowshares; to turn the other cheek, to seek another way. But we know there have also been plenty of times when we’ve beaten our plowshares into swords.
In the parking lot of the church I came to you from in Macon, Georgia, there hangs an enormous bronze bell. It dates back to 1887, when the sanctuary was built and hung in the spire there at the top of Poplar St. in downtown Macon for roughly 70 years until the 1960s, when a structural engineer advised the church it might be best to bring it down. It still has its ringer, which the children of the church enjoy swinging after worship on Sunday and startling the dickens out of everyone as they make their way to their cars.
Old as it is, this is not the church’s first bell. The church was founded in 1826 and moved around a couple of times in its early years before landing in its current location. The previous bell was also made of bronze—900 pounds of it, in fact—and was situated inside the bell tower in the old church house down the street and around the corner from the current location. The church might still have that bell today, except that in 1863, the congregation voted to send that bell away to be melted down and molded not into a sword, but a cannon to support the Confederate war effort. When the drums of war begin to beat, everything begins to look like a weapon, even church bells.
II.
And of course, the congregation there in Macon wasn’t the only one to go to such lengths, on either side of the war—far from it. In fact, for a while after the congregation sent that bell away, their spire housed another bell sent to them from the First Baptist Church in Dalton, Georgia, which feared that Union troops knocking at their door might repurpose their bell in the same way.
We must admit that both these images—plowshares to swords and swords to plowshares—are biblical, and both have been acted upon and embodied in different ways by the people of God.
But it’s also true that while both may be biblical, only one image is gospel. And there’s a difference. There are plenty of things that are biblical but are in no way gospel—violence, war, even slavery, all manner of judgment and intolerance. Both of these images of refashioning plowshares and swords are indeed found in the pages of scripture, but only one of them, can we say, is gospel—God’s ultimate and final hope for the world, a vision that’s attested to time and time again in scripture, most completely in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The cross, you might say, is the ultimate sword, and yet through the power of God it was transformed into a kind of spiritual plowshare, clearing a way for the seeds of life to be planted and grow. In fact, one of the earliest Christian symbols—even before the cross—was the plow.
Joel’s call to arms may have been the word of God for that moment in time—though I have my doubts even about that. But only Isaiah’s vision of peaceful transformation can claim to be God’s word for eternity.
III.
Yet, while these words and images point to what God promises to accomplish eternally, it’s also true that they are lived out incrementally.
Over the course of a lifetime, there will be opportunities to bring this world about in small ways. Times when we’re handed a sword—something with a sharp edge meant to cut and wound and diminish. And so we’ll be given an opportunity either to use it for its intended purpose and continue the cycle of violence and divisions that grips us so tightly we can scarcely imagine an alternative…or we can imagine an alternative.
We can choose instead to beat this sword into a plowshare; to turn it into a tool that allows something new to grow.
There may even come times when we’ll have a plowshare, something meant for good—a gift, a blessing, a church bell! Maybe even the gospel itself. And we’ll be compelled to use it for harm, in the name of profit or protection, and we’ll have to choose which it will be.
The gospel hope is that when all of these smaller choices over so many lifetimes and generation upon generation are accounted for, and added to the wild dream of an all-loving God, in the end—we’re told—all of this will turn out to be enough.
It’s this story of small things, in the hands of God, revealed to be much larger things, that we begin to tell together again this morning. To the world out there, this is a season of big things: big meals, big sales, big expectations. But in here, we’re reminded each Sunday that it is first a season of small things. Small hopes, small peace, small joy, small love. A season that ends with us gathering by candlelight and telling each other again how small things make all the difference. How we’re a people of small things.
So as you enter this season, this season of bright lights but also the shadows they cast, look for these small things. Look for all the many ways the people of God are already choosing plowshares where there could be swords; light where there could be darkness; life where there could be death. Look for these things, these places, these people. For it’s in these things that you will find the Christ.