By James E. Brenneman, president
Scripture: Isaiah 2:1-5 (NRSV)
The world can end in bloody warfare to our judgment or in wondrous peace to our blessing. The choice is ours. Indeed, that choice was laid out starkly in Scripture by two biblical prophets, each with opposite visions for the end of the world as we know it.
The prophet Joel (3:9-12) prophesies of a day when nations will come down the sacred mountain into the valley below to fight alongside God, the Almighty Warrior. In preparation, they will beat their plowshares into swords and their pruning hooks into spears for one dreadful universal war.
By contrast, the prophet Isaiah, in today’s Advent reading (2:2-4), dreams of a day when the nations of the world will flow up the sacred mountain to learn the ways of peace from God, the Teacher of Peace. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks and study war no more.
In the story of Adam and Eve, of ancient peoples at the time of Noah’s ark, of the Hebrew tribes about to enter the promised land, and in many other stores of Scripture, human choice in our own destiny is a sacred value like no other. We can choose to obey or not, choose life or death, choose to serve God or not. So why would prophesies about the end of the world be any different?
“The Broken Shield” on Goshen’s campus
No other text of Scripture is quoted more in the writings of the first three centuries of the early church than Isaiah’s version of swords being beaten into plowshares. At Goshen College, we too have chosen Isaiah’s vision as that dream we want to make come true to the world’s blessing. For the last 30 years, smack dab in the middle of campus, the iconic blood-red nine-foot sculpture by Professor of Art John Mishler — entitled, “The Broken Shield” — stands as a sentinel guarding our daily choice. We choose to study and act to make come to pass a world where swords are beaten into plowshares and all wars cease.
What better advent gift can we give ourselves and those we love, indeed, all of humanity, than the gift of lasting peace? The choice is ours.
Scripture: Isaiah 2:1-5 (NRSV)
The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. 2In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. 3Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. 4He 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 any more. 5O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!