One hundred years ago this week Vladimir Lenin hurried through the streets of Moscow on his way to the Winter Palace, desperate to be at the forefront of the revolution breaking over Russia. Wanted for high treason he was heavily disguised with a wig, cap and bandages around his face. In a heart-stopping moment he bumped into two policemen, but they failed to recognise him and let him go on his way. Within hours the provisional government had been overthrown and Lenin declared the Chairman of a new Bolshevik government, promising a brave new world of freedom and equality. The rest, as they say, is history.
While for Lenin arrest would have spelt disaster, for Jesus the opposite was true. His arrest, trial and subsequent execution entirely served His purpose, and rather than marking the end of the story, they heralded it’s true beginning.
By 1924 Lenin would be dead and while the godless revolution he began would grip the world for most of a century, it too would crumble and fall. By contrast the death of Jesus was not a defeat but the greatest of victories; and the peaceful revolution that He began has outlasted and outgrown all the other empires that have come and gone over two thousand years.