Sermon on the Occasion of the Memorial Service for Alexei Navalny

Dear congregation, dear companions of Alexei Navalny, esteemed people from near and far, here and via the livestream, dear freedom-loving people, and most honored Yulia Navalnaya,

Today, we remember the birthday of your husband, Alexei Navalny. On June 4, 1976, he was born in Butyn, about 20 kilometers west of Moscow’s gates. He was a person who will remain in our memory and in the memory of God forever. It would have been an honor and a pleasure for us, we would have loved to celebrate today with him in freedom, in a free Russia for him and for you, dear Ms Navalnaya – that he lived for and that he fought for, with all his courage. We would have loved to sing “good fortune and many blessings” for him today, a classic, typical German birthday song that resonates richly in the round. That's what you do on a birthday, you sing for the birthday child. I hope, I trust, that the heavenly choirs are doing just that, perhaps at this moment. It’s only an image, I know, but it may bring comfort.

We believe that this man is in God's memory. On his birthday, we remember him and say thanks that he was born, that he lived. This is also part of a birthday – giving thanks for life. The world was privileged to share it with him for 47 years. You, your daughter, your son, his parents, his friends, his companions, shared it with him, in the good, happy days and in the many difficult days, shared his courage, his indomitable spirit, and also his humor, which was there especially then. Many of these 47 years were spent fighting, searching for freedom and justice, repeatedly facing imprisonment and jail, harassment, mental torture and physical humiliation, destruction, poisoning, making him sick and wounded. Despite all this – and in spite of his own diversions – he stood for freedom, for inner freedom.

I feel this inner freedom when reading one of his court speeches from February 2021. With clear words, in which theology and faith suddenly shine through, he tells how someone wrote to him about Jesus, words from the Sermon on the Mount recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, including this powerful sentence from Jesus: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”. And your husband, Alexei Navalny, then says: “Yes, that's right, I'm not well, but I know that what I'm doing is right.” That makes him inwardly free. And he continues: “That’s why I am not what they wish I were: lonely”. Because, he says, he may be alone, but he is not lonely. And there follows a sentence from him that I want to quote here: “Sooner or later, people who seek truth and justice will get it.” It is written that way and so the letter writer reminded him. It is written: “For they will be satisfied”.

Seeking justice and striving for it is elemental nourishment and to be without justice is like hunger and thirst. For they will be satisfied – these words from the Gospel, spoken by Alexei Navalny on February 20, 2021, may be our birthday meal today, his gift to us. For even if all this is still not there, it is comfort and hope. We will be full with the abundance of justice that God promises. We remember this on his birthday today.

A birthday means remembering life, first and foremost. And thanking God that life was. We thank You for the life of Alexei Navalny. And we say today, we promise that we will not forget. That's what they want, the persecutors, the dictators: that we forget. The person. His life. And what happened to him in the end. They want us to forget what and who drove him to his death. But we remember. Especially on his birthday, we don't forget.

When a person is born, like Alexei Navalny on June 4, 1976, he comes into the world with something we call dignity. Human dignity. It applies to each and every person and it remains, no matter how bruised and humiliated a person becomes. For dignity is from God and is the same for every person. No one can take this dignity away. Not in the trials, not in death. It is the unique gift that God gives and that connects us with God. Nothing could, nothing can separate us from it – Paul the Apostle, in his words in the Epistle to the Romans, says it with these words: I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither the mighty nor the powers, neither the high nor the low, or any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. I suspect that Alexei would have shared these words with us too. He once said that he was an atheist. But then he experienced being held by God. Nothing can separate him from this bridge made of human dignity, from this love of God – not even fear and not even isolation, the two greatest weapons against people who fight for freedom and who want freedom. When a person like Alexei Navalny, your husband and your friend, is born, he comes into the world with the human dignity that God gives. And it remains, even when he has returned to God. Because God's love remains. That holds him and binds to Him. And the love that binds you together, dear Ms Navalnaya.

On this birthday, dear congregation, when we remember his life and terrible death, on this birthday, when we hold on to what God has given and what he has promised, beyond death, when all this lives in us, then we also agree on what should be. What should be? Not only that we do not forget. Also, that we carry on with what he gave his life for and died for. Freedom. His hope for a free country. Friendship with all who stand up for it. Friendship with the courageous people who today remember Alexei Navalny and carry on his words. We commit to this, to each other, to the world. Birthdays are there for such commitments. And for the hope, even the confidence, that freedom and justice will prevail. From this, as is written, you shall be, we shall be satisfied. And in heaven the angels shall sing. Of happiness and blessings for all people who stand up for freedom.

Dear congregation, we are gathered here with mixed feelings. Life and death, hope and despair, grief and gratitude. We ask that God may bring order to what we feel. And strengthen hope. His promise. You holding on to each other. And: Please forgive me the somewhat naive thought at the end: Alexei may feel that we remember him. In God's memory, in God's name. Amen.