One hundred years ago this month, the Russian Revolution was reaching its climax. There were two phases to the revolution, the first of which took place early in 1917 and led to the overthrow of the tsar and the imperial government. Then followed a struggle between various power groups which came to an end when the Bolsheviks gained the upper hand in October 1917, promising “peace, land and bread” to the poor working class.
The new regime was anti-religion, and within months people of faith were feeling the heat. Churches and monasteries were closed and the buildings put to secular use, their bells silenced and in many cases taken down and treated as scrap metal. This represented a serious break with the past for since the 16th-century bells had had an important place in Russian culture. The finale of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, for example, includes a great chorus of bells which almost drowns the rest of the orchestra in a celebration of the defeat of Napoleon's army. Bells had a particular place in Russian religion and the silencing of bells represented for many the silencing of the voice of God himself as a harsh winter of persecution began. There would be no place for the things of God; the new regime demanded all.
Tomorrow’s gospel reading deals with the tension between one’s duty to the state and one’s duty to God. In a trick question, Jesus is asked if it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar. A wrong answer could have serious consequences. Jesus avoids the danger by using a coin bearing an image of Caesar to say that they should give to Caesar the things that belong to Caesar and to God the things that belong to God. That would not have been easy in Stalinist Russia.
Archbishop Anthony Bloom of the Russian Orthodox Church would later write: “During the Revolution we lost the Christ of the great cathedrals, the Christ of the splendidly architected liturgies; and we discovered the Christ who is vulnerable just as we were vulnerable, we discovered the Christ who was rejected as we were rejected, and we discovered the Christ who had nothing at his moment of crisis, not even friends, and this was similar to our experience. God helps us when there is no one else to help. God is there at the breaking point, at the centre of the storm.”
The desire to silence the voice of a demanding God is not confined to brutal regimes or indeed politics. History has many examples of religious bodies having the same inclination when it suits them. But however and why ever it is done it is arguable that a nation or a people that abandons or is forced to abandon its spiritual heritage and the values it sustains is much the poorer. And that is an issue in the western world today.
Nikolai Berdyaev, a Russian political and religious philosopher, was born in 1874. In the early post-Russian Revolution years he spoke out on the issues of his time from a Christian perspective but was soon jailed and later deported to France where he lived until his death in 1948.
In his book The State of Man in the Modern World he wrote these words which resonate in a prophetic way with the economic, political and religious confusion that reigns in our world today. "The present state of the world calls for a moral and spiritual revolution, revolution in the name of personality, of man, of every single person. This revolution should restore the hierarchy or values, now quite shattered, and place the value of human personality above the idols of production, technics, the state, the race or nationality, the collective."
These words speak to many of the uncertainties of today’s world where increasing numbers of people, especially young people, feel ignored and undervalued. Berdyaev argues that that is what happens when the things of God are ignored and the voice of God is silenced.