Mutual Assured Construction--November 29, 2022

 

Mutual Assured Construction--November 29, 2022

"The LORD 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 anymore." [Isaiah 2:4]

If I can be honest with you, I think it can be hard for people to take these words seriously.  Maybe especially hard for a lot of religious folks in our culture at this moment in time. 

I think for many it is hard to imagine a life where we don't need to have weapons at our disposal to fend off the ones we see as enemies.  It is woven so tightly into the fabric of our society, we can hardly conceive of a world that doesn't operate by the logic of "You've gotta get them before they get you!" And nobody wants to be the first one to lay down their arms--everyone's afraid that if you would put yours down first, the rest of the world will pounce and take their shot at you.

For at least the first decade of my lifetime, and for forty-odd years before I was born, that was quite explicitly the order of the day on this beautiful blue planet: the "superpowers" of the day held a fragile balance they called "mutual assured destruction," and everybody just accepted it as "the way things are."  During the Cold War, the prevailing logic was basically one eternal worldwide Mexican standoff--each country pointing its missiles at their enemy, and everyone certain that if you fired yours, they would fire theirs and blow up the whole planet. And that assurance was supposed to be enough to keep someone from pushing the button to launch Armageddon.

Even now, decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the assumption is that the only way to have peace is to have a bigger stick than your enemy, so that you can hit them before they hit you.  It is a shallow kind of peace rooted in fear and intimidation--if you can make the other guy afraid of getting hit by your stick, maybe he won't take the risk of attacking you with his.  But as fragile and hollow as that notion of "peace" really is, we have largely convinced ourselves that's the best and most we can ever hope for.  And we cannot bring ourselves to imagine that things could ever be any other way--we are so ingrained with the idea that we have to be able to reach for our stick, our sword, or our Stinger missiles that we can hardly envision what Isaiah talks about here.  It can sound downright scary to hear the prophet talk about hammering swords into plowshares--after all, how will we keep the next "bad guys" in line from winning the day unless we have a weapon to point at them?

But that is in fact what Isaiah dares us to picture: a world disarmed by grace. What if, Isaiah says, we didn't have to resolve our disputes by killing each other, but rather we let God point us in the direction of justice?  What if nobody had to worry about a mass shooting erupting at a Wal-Mart... or a grocery store... or a dance club?  What if we didn't automatically see those who are different as a threat?  And what if we were brave enough to be the ones to take the first step, to lay down our arms and to say, "There is no one I will ever meet who is not made in the image of God, and therefore, I will not mar that image or dishonor that God by threatening anybody's life"?

I know--it feels like a gamble.  It would mean refusing the right to attack someone or threaten somebody else, pre-emptively.  It would mean taking the risk that someone else might still tighten their grips around their sharpened sticks even if you have laid yours down.  It would mean creating a whole new way of living together as human beings--one not based on fear and threats, but on a promise not to do harm.  It would mean creating a new order of things--a new arrangement built on "mutual assured constructive care" rather than "mutual assured destruction."  What Isaiah dares us to imagine is a world in which love really does animate our actions--even love for those deemed "enemy."

So yeah, I can understand why we may not want to take Isaiah seriously, or why we may want to dismiss these words as just an ancient version of John Lennon's "Imagine," offering hopelessly out-of-touch platitudes and unrealistic wishes for everybody to just get along.  It feels easier to dismiss Isaiah's vision or push it off into some distant future that can only be possible once we're in heaven.  At least then we won't have to let his words remake our actions and attitudes in the here-and-now.  But... what if we dared to let these words go to work on us?  What if we let the prophet's vision overhaul our whole way of seeing the world?  What if we really were transformed, disarmed, and embraced by the God who whispered these images to Isaiah in the first place? And what actions might that lead us to take... today?

Lord God, make us brave enough to take the first step of building genuine peace today. Disarm us in your embrace.