Swords into Plough Shares

Yesterday was Remembrance Sunday and we heard the familiar reading from Isaiah 2: 4: “… they shall beat their swords into plough shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” Isaiah looks towards a blissful future: something of a return to the Garden of Eden as Mark pointed out yesterday. Sadly, this is as much in the future today as it was when the prophet was writing. So as we do at this time each year, Christians (alongside other religions) remember with respect and sorrow those who died fighting in war, whilst yearning for the day when fighting will cease.

Interestingly, there is compelling evidence of societies in the period 1000 years before Isaiah was writing in which warfare didn’t exist. Societies in which the entire archaeological record (art as well as human remains) contains no evidence of violence at all. At the very least this might give us hope that Isaiah’s vision of a peaceful world is not expecting too much of human beings. That we have been made in such a way that we are capable of fulfilling the vision – of returning to Eden – if we can but learn how to do it.

But we are not there yet. In living memory so many have lost their lives in fighting which has seemed unavoidable, in which the cost of capitulation has seemed too high, in which reconciliation has seemed impossible and which has seemed just. Year by year. Generation by generation, we must continue to remember them.