Dec. 2, 2007

By Harry T. Cook
Isaiah 2: 1-5
So today is the beginning of Advent. For the church, it is the new year about 30 days earlier than most of the rest of the world will celebrate it. For us, Advent is supposed to be a time of taking stock, of seeing where we are, of figuring out to get where we want to be and need to be, hoping that we want to be where we need to be. Those who arranged the schedule of readings we quaintly call “the lectionary” left little doubt about where we are and where we need to be – in our case, two different places.

Not only is this day the beginning of Advent but the beginning of the first year in the three-year cycle of readings, and the very first reading for the very first Sunday of the very first year in the cycle is a portion from Isaiah in which we hear the words 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.

By the gauge of this passage, we are still holding the 21st Century version of swords and plowshares with nations still lifting up swords against one another and still learning war. Learning by doing.

That 8th Century B.C.E. pundit, Isaiah, envisioned the reallocation of resources from the manufacture of weapons of war to implements of cultivation. Isaiah thought it better to feed people than to kill them. What a revolutionary idea! All those in favor, say “Aye.”

But you and I are citizens, or at least residents, of a nation that deliberately started a senseless war now more than four years ago. It was not – and remains today not – a war of justifiable defense by any ethical standard ever set forth by the Christian church or any of its legitimate moral theologians. Far from not studying war any more, our nation has become obsessed with this particular war, and its most powerful leaders have become more bellicose than ever.

We have not beaten our swords into plowshares nor our spears into pruning hooks. At a ruinous cost to the citizens of their own country, and especially to its poor, our leaders have only honed the sword and sharpened the spear, all the while adding more and more to the arsenal not of democracy but of destruction. These are the facts, and they are undisputable.

What do people like us who aspire to be Christians in practice as well as in theory do about the biblical wisdom that calls us to study war no more? Are we in any way required to heed that 2800-year-old mandate? Why should we? We do not heed many other biblical mandates. Why this one?

Why? Because it is in our long-term best interest to do so. War and the inclination to war have been shown in the history of Homo sapiens to be the worst possible impulses. True, sometimes it becomes necessary to take up arms in our own defense – though one of those biblical mandates is to turn the other cheek. How, though, could that have been done on a global level in dealing with the malign powers of the Axis of Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini 70 years ago?

It is that very question that has vexed the church’s moral theologians from the beginning. They knew that turning the other cheek only goes so far in the larger picture, outside of the inter-personal environment. So it was adjudged that a war is just if waged in defense of the life, liberty and welfare of a people. It is still a regrettable thing, but, under the circumstances, necessary.

No just-war theory worthy of the name makes excuse for such a thing as Hitler’s rape of Europe or for the Holocaust. No just-war theory worthy of the name makes excuse for the attack on Pearl Harbor, which occurred 66 years ago this coming Friday. And by those standards, no just-war theory worthy of the name could make excuse for the United States’ unprovoked, pre-emptive invasion of Iraq almost five years ago.

So we’re still studying the subject. We’re still turning out the swords and spears, creating shortages of plowshares and pruning hooks and, therefore, problems in the enterprises for which the latter are suited. That’s where we are as a people today. Where we need to be and, I devoutly hope where we want to be, is in an age of plowshares and pruning hooks.

We will not get there through the passive piety of prayer. We will not get there by giving in to bullying by super-patriots who would foreclose our constitutional right to dissent. We might make a start toward where we need to be by joining peaceful but pointed demonstrations of the sort that helped bring the disastrous war in Vietnam to an end.

We will get there most effectively by using the time between now and next November 4 to figure out who among those asking for our votes are committed to putting an end to the age of swords and spears and to inaugurate the age of plowshares and pruning hooks – before it’s too late.

The traditional thematic prayer of this day includes the admonition to put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life. We hear Paul in his Roman epistle telling his congregation that they should owe no one anything except to love one another. The reading from Matthew’s gospel counsels us to keep awake and be ready.

There is a clear sense of direction and urgency in all of this. If you can discern the one and feel the other, all the better.

© Copyright 2007, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.