Alexei Navalny

Alexei Navalny’s death in Russia’s maximum-security prison in the Arctic Circle reminds us that this generation is like all those that preceded it.  Always there have been despots and regimes willing to commit murder, even genocide, to secure their power. Putin’s chief rival joins a long line of potential adversaries who have met an untimely death.

 The public reaction in Russia is muted.  Everyone knows the dangers of resistance.  According to news sources about 400 people in 8 cities were arrested by state Russian police when they attempted to attend vigils or lay flowers in tribute to Navalny.  A priest was arrested for planning a public prayer vigil. Russia is not the United States.  Freedom of speech and public assembly is not protected.

 I visited Moscow shortly after the Soviet Union dissolved.  It was a bleak place  I viewed the corpse in Lenin’s tomb and descended into the depths of the subway system, the deepest subway in the world, built to serve as bomb shelters during the cold war. 

 Navalny’s death reminds us of events almost a century ago, June 30 through July 2, 1934 when Adolf Hitler consolidated his power by killing adversaries who would oppose him, an event that would come to be known as the Night of the Long Knives.

 A few years ago, my wife and I spent the summer in Nuremberg, Germany.  While there, we toured the Dokuzentrum, the Document Center that was constructed in post WW II Germany at the Nazi rally site that drew millions during Hitler’s rule.  The Center was built to document the atrocities of Nazi Germany, including the Holocaust.  We must not forget the depths to which governments can sink and the need for every generation to protect human rights and freedom.

 The Cross of Jesus Christ casts a dark shadow across the landscape of human history. The Cross bears witness to the depths of human depravity, the injustices to which individuals and governments can sink.  Bound up in the Cross is the innocent suffering in every generation.  All of our sins are there, in the darkness that descended upon Golgotha.

 The Resurrection of Jesus dispels that darkness.  The eye-witness accounts of those who saw Jesus, who spoke with him, ate with him and touched him after he rose from the dead bear witness. Life overcomes death. Righteousness triumphs over evil.  Two thousand years of testimony by believers in every age and every nation affirm this truth. 

 As Isaiah wrote, “Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been declared to you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.  He it is who reduces rulers to nothing, who makes the judges of the earth meaningless. Scarcely have they been planted, scarcely have they been sown, scarcely has their stock taken root in the earth, but He merely blows on them, and they wither, and the storm carries them away like stubble. ... Yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired. They will walk and not become weary,” (Isaiah 40).