This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:1–24; Isaiah 2:1–11; 1 Thessalonians 2:13–20; Luke 20:19–26

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 11 (“The Third Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 60:1–3,11a,14c,18–19, BCP, p. 87); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 16 (“The Song of Zechariah,” Luke 1:68–79, BCP, p. 92)

 Swords into plowshares. Isaiah’s vision of the future is robust and challenging. He is the prophet of swords being beaten into plowshares (ch. 2), the prophet of the Virgin Birth (ch. 7), and the prophet of the Suffering Servant (ch. 53). Thus,, he is the prophet of Advent, of Christmas, and of Holy Week. It is difficult to get our heads around the comprehensiveness of it all. At the same time, it is exhilarating to live with the knowledge of the fullness of God’s intentions for our lives. 

In today’s reading in Isaiah, the prophet takes us to the distant day in which Jerusalem will have been ushered into her true destiny of being a beacon of God’s light for the whole world. It is a day when knowing the Scriptures entrusted to her become the goal and desire of all the nations, and when God’s peace—his shalom—reigns from pole to pole. 

Until the past century or so, Isaiah’s “swords into plowshares” theme was somewhat under-emphasized by biblical interpreters, artists, and by the church in general. Instead, Isaiah stirred earlier Christians’ imaginations with promises of incarnation and atonement. Two World Wars and a Cold War have made people—even secular people—more attentive to Isaiah’s vision of an era of peace. In 1959, the Soviet Union graced the United Nations with a striking nine-foot tall statue by Evgeny Vuchetich, entitled “Let us beat our swords into ploughshares.” (See the discussion in John Sawyer’s The Fifth Gospel: Isaiah in the History of Christianity, p. 232.) Such a day has become a universal—if sometimes disingenuous—aspiration. 

What is distinctive, however, about Isaiah’s foreseeing a day for beating swords into ploughshares is that it falls on the far side of forsaking divination, materialism, and idolatry (Isaiah 2:6–11). It accompanies a universal hungering to “‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of Yahweh, … that he may teach us his ways so that we may walk in his paths…” (Isaiah 2:4 Jerusalem Bible).  

Peace—but on whose terms? In his ministry among us, the Lord Jesus showed himself to be resistant to all attempts to take him captive to any human’s vision for the way things ought to be, or how to get there. The scribes and chief priests—accomplices of the Roman occupation and custodians of the opulent Nero-built Temple—want to trap Jesus with a question about taxation. If he supports the unpopular Roman tax, he risks alienating the people, and aligns himself with the occupying Roman power. If he renounces the tax, he becomes a folk hero, but virtually declares himself a dangerous revolutionary in Roman eyes. Jesus refuses the terms of the question altogether (I paraphrase): “If Caesar wants to put his image on coins that express his dominion, fine. But what about the God who puts his image on each of you? What are you doing with your responsibility to bear his image into the world?” End of discussion. 

Jesus does carry forth Isaiah’s vision of an era of peace—but on God’s terms, not ours. His incarnation, as the angels sing when they herald Jesus’s birth, is itself an expression of God’s goodwill and intention to bring peace (Luke 2:14). But it’s a peace that comes through the suffering of Mary’s Son (Luke 2:34–35). And it’s a peace that does not come without the Spirit’s empowering of a proclamation of “good news for the poor” (Luke 4:18–19). 

May this Advent season find us newly energized. First, may we be newly grasped by the way that our being made in God’s image takes on its proper luster by virtue of Christ’s incarnation. Second, may we be freshly awed and humbled by the way that his coming makes possible his shouldering our iniquities and our sorrows. Third, may we become more and more people of peace and of peacemaking, that the distant vision of “swords into plowshares” may be, at least in us, not as distant. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+