NEXT YEAR IN MOSCOW

 

NEXT YEAR IN MOSCOW

Pages have been written on two brief statements in the gospel about surprise finds and the reaction of the finders. So excited are they, they sell everything to buy what they have seen. They are seized by a desire to possess them. Everything else is put aside. Nelson Mandela could perhaps have left prison earlier if he had compromised. But he didn’t. He had discovered a vision for South Africa and he was prepared to die for it.

Alexei Navalny is Russian and, like Mandela was, he has been sentenced, in practice, to life in prison in his own country. His health is failing from undernourishment and the conditions in his cell are much worse than those endured by Mandela. He is in solitary confinement, caged in a six square meter cell and his mattress is taken away at 5.00 a.m. The only furniture is an iron stool fixed to the floor. The light is never switch off and there is no ventilation.

His crime is that he speaks the truth about Russia and his message is that those who have the truth have the power. It may take a long time but one day Russia will be free and there will be no more war. From his prison cell, he says Russia should withdraw from every inch of Ukraine and use its oil revenues to rebuild the country. He believes Russia, like Ukraine, is gaining a new sense of national identity, from this war. ‘Change is possible’, he says, and a new generation of younger, poorer and angrier Russians is listening.  

‘Prison exists only in your mind’, Navalny says, ‘I am in a space capsule traveling to a new world.’ He knows he may not live to see it - Mandela would have thought in the same way – but the important thing is that it will happen. Navalny is a Christian but he also draws on the Jewish Torah, the epic journey of the Jews to the promised land. He borrows their saying – ‘Next year in Jerusalem’ -and makes it, ‘Next year in Moscow’.

Navalny has found the treasure, as Mandela did before him and as the two in the gospel did. They ‘sold everything’, risked everything, to gain what they discovered. They had found the truth and it was so attractive they were prepared to die for it. Truth is beautiful. The ancient Greeks knew this and the poets added, ‘beauty is truth’. When the world is seized by this, there will be no more war. There will be perfect peace.   

(The above draws on a series of nine astonishing podcasts from The Economist: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/next-year-in-moscow/id16707).

30 July 2023    Sunday 17 A     1 Kgs 3:5-12    Rom 8:28-30    Mt 13:44-46