Plowshares, Pruning Hooks and Hope

Sunday November 30

Rev. Jackie Hibbard

Here we are at Advent. The beginning of the church year. One might just as well say “Happy New Year” today. I have come to appreciate the rhythm of the church liturgical calendar and year and particularly have always loved advent and lighting the candles of hope, joy, peace and love. Diana Butler Bass, in her new book, A Beautiful Year, says this about Advent. Advent is both “about waiting for a birth and more waiting for peace. … It’s a month-long journey in the ambiguity of waiting.” (pg 14) It feels relevant today, and for me it’s an active rather than passive waiting that we are being called to. What is ready to be born and what kind of peace is possible? In the world and in myself.

There were four lectionary readings offered today, and  the reading from Isaiah called out to me. Maybe because of our gun violence prevention work. I don’t want to dwell too long there because we are actually reflecting more about that next week for Gun Violence Prevention Sunday. It is the verse “they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks”  that anchors the Guns to Gardens movement. It offers a wonderful vision and sense of hope in a world of chaos, endless wars, violence, and fighting.

I find myself wondering about swords and spears and plowshares and pruning hooks. Literally and metaphorically. 

Swords, spears, guns, bullets, sharp words, hateful rhetoric, drone bombs, nuclear weapon threats, fear of difference and of “the other”, lies, greed, half-truths, manipulation, criticism. All of these are meant to destroy and hurt. To kill that which is different. Some humans think collecting more wealth, and destroying that which we disagree with, don’t understand, or want to get rid of will bring peace and harmony, but in truth it never has throughout history. It only breeds more instability and destruction, fear and distrust.

Today marks the 161st anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre here in Colorado. A day of tremendous loss of Arapahoe and Cheyenne lives, primarily women, children, and elders, at the hands of Colorado soldiers even though they were under a white flag of surrender and were not fighting or resisting. This day of guns, destruction, terrorizing and death. It also is a day of shame and looking within at what greed, domination and fear can do to destroy and harm. Nothing was won that day, but submission, fear, anger and resentment lingers these years later. But maybe it is also a day of hope - a time to join together for reconciliation and building relationships and commitments to know one another and learn how to live in ways that build up and support. 

Moving from weapons, a plowshare is the sharp steel blade that cuts through the topsoil. Plows help to prepare the soil and make room and a healthy environment for plants to grow. A pruning hook trims plants. Sometimes it is used to cut off dead or diseased parts of a plant and sometimes it is used to cut out overgrowth that is preventing a plant from growing. These tools, plowshare and pruning hook, help transform the land and plants in order for growth and life to flourish. These are tools of hope, creation, possibility. 

Singer Spencer Lajoye wrote a beautiful song a few years ago called the "Plowshare Prayer." If I had remembered it in time, I would have gotten permission to share the music video because it is moving and powerful, but here we are. I encourage you to find it on you tube or wherever you stream music. Instead I’ll share the words of the chorus of the song - “I pray if a prayer has been used as a sword against you & your heart Against you & your word I pray that this prayer is a plowshare of sorts That it might break you open It might help you grow.” (Plowshare Prayer lyrics © Jennifer Lajoye)  In the song, presence, love, understanding, recognition, and truth telling are the plowshares that aid in transforming hurt, fear, and alienation. Plowshares and pruning hooks can be healing; leading to growth and offering hope even when forces hurt you. 

In the scripture people go to the holy mountain of Jerusalem and what do they do? They surrender. They lay down their plans and weapons of domination, of conquering, of power by might and pick up their hopes of peace and walk in the light of love. And in the poem by John Roedel, he was clinging to hope like a gemstone in his pocket. Holding on for dear life. And then he lost it and hope found him. And like a river, hope lifts him up because he surrendered and let it hold and carry him. 

During the 2024 Presidential election I handed out hope stones to either carry or add to an altar space for those who participated in the 40 days of prayer leading up to the election. During and after the election I carried that hope stone with me every day. I often reached into my pocket to feel it on days when the news was heavy and bleak and filled with fear and domination. My heart was heavy and fear pulsed and I would feel that hope stone and pray. 

At some point in the spring, I stopped carrying it every day. Not that I was leaving it behind, but I noticed hope had become part of me. I still see that stone everyday. Sometimes I touch it and every once in a while I pick it up and put it in my pocket. But now hope feels more like a river. A river with all sorts of others who are praying, feeding the hungry, supporting queer and trans people, writing to people in ICE detention, holding up signs calling for justice, visiting the sick or lonely, singing, writing poetry, making art and more. All these acts of hope - these plowshares and pruning hooks of hope and some say resistance to the powers of domination and hate. 

What if we are being called to create plowshares and pruning hooks from the weapons of division, hate, greed and violence we see and experience? What might those plowshares and pruning hooks look like for you?

What if this advent we focused on creating what is possible, what we want the world to look like, what we see God, Sophia, the Good calling us to build like the  prophet Isaiah saw and described? Maybe it’s a time of creating the right environment for seeds to be sown so that they can eventually sprout. Or pruning the old things that no longer work or perhaps never did? 

Maybe that’s on a large scale for you working for justice and healing  in the world. Or maybe it’s a time for you to focus more on you. Transforming the weapons of words, stories, expectations handed to you in your life that you now carry as truth. Maybe stories and messages that you aren’t worthy of love or anything good. Or that you have to produce and work hard all the time in order to be worthy. How might those be transformed into plowshares of love, worthiness, acceptance and healing? What old messages that you received over your life need to be trimmed off so that you can flourish and thrive? 

Now let’s take a few moments to reflect with one another. 

Questions - 

What if we are being called to create new plowshares and pruning hooks from the weapons of division, hate, greed and violence we see and experience? What might those plowshares and pruning hooks look like for you personally, the church, the country or the world?

This is a season of hope. A season of active waiting. Working with God to turn weapons into something that helps life flourish and grow rather than destroy ourselves or one another or that keep us small or submissive.

We get to choose hope, to carry it sometimes and let it carry us when we are exhausted.  Let hope carry you this Advent season beyond whatever fears or confines that empire shouts or whispers at you. Happy Advent. May it be so.