They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. “Peace, peace,” they say, when there is no peace. – Jeremiah 8:11

Today’s Scripture Reading (February 19, 2014): Jeremiah 8

On March 16, 1935, Adolph Hitler ignored the Treaty of Versailles and ordered Germany to begin the process of rearming the nation. In hindsight, this was one of the major signals of the battle that was to come. But the reality at the time was that there were those outside of Germany that really believed that the Treaty of Versailles was too tough on the German people. The Treaty of Versailles was the treaty that Germany had agreed to in their surrender at the end of the First War to End all Wars (World War I). But some people had already begun to ask the question – when do we allow Germany to return to business as usual. Hitler seemed to know this and he was sure in the early days of Germany’s rearmament that the world would not react as Germany began the process of remilitarizing. 

On March 7, 1936, Germany moved troops into the Rhineland – a demilitarized zone specified in the Treaty of Versailles. The act raised a few eyebrows, but no one reacted overtly to the move. At about the same time Hitler revealed to British historian Arthur Toynbee that Germany needed to make some limited expansionist moves in order to secure the future of the Greater German nation. At the time, Hitler said that he hoped that Britain would understand the need for such action in order for Germany to secure its borders.

On March 12, 1938, Austria fell to the German Empire, their territory annexed into Germany. It was a non-violent action and the world continued to stand by and watch. In September of that year, Germany turned its eyes on Czechoslovakia. The Czechs had formal ties with France and the USSR, but Hitler was convinced that they would not move against him. And again, he was right. Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, and a delegation from France signed “The Munich Agreement” which gave a portion of Czechoslovakia to Germany. The accord specified that if the Czechs did not agree with the move, the resulting war would be considered to be their fault, and therefore France and Britain would not intervene. Maybe the most telling comment about “The Munich Agreement” was that it was signed for the sake of obtaining “peace in our time.” But as events were about to reveal, peace was not an available option. Hitler was about to push the other European powers beyond the breaking point.

The events leading up to World War II seem to echo the events that Jeremiah was watching in his own day. For Jeremiah, it was not Germany that was advancing, but rather Babylon. And according to Jeremiah, no one in Israel seemed to be taking the threat seriously. They were proclaiming peace and treating the incursions of Babylon as if they were insignificant. For Jeremiah, it was not just Babylon that was moving. He saw God on the move as well. And it was precisely that because God was on the move that the Babylonian Empire needed to be treated seriously.

God has never asked us to look through the world with “rose colored glasses.” In our search for peace, we need to understand the forces in this world that prevent peace from happening. And then we need to commit ourselves to the removal of those things – especially when the opposition to the peace is occurring inside of us.    

Tomorrow’s Scriptures Reading: Jeremiah 9