While I continue to pray about the war in Ukraine, I wrestle with the efficacy of my personal prayers in the face of such monstrous evil. There is a story told about a political meeting in Kiev that correlates to this Easter season. The powerful Russian communist leader, Nikolai Bukharin, traveled to Kiev in 1930 to speak about the virtues of communism. He was an avowed atheist who often said of Christianity, “Religion and Communism are incompatible.” He delivered an impassioned address on communism to a large crowd and invited comments and questions at the end. An elderly man sought permission to speak, stood next to Nikolai and shouted to the crowd, “Christ is Risen.” The crowd’s response was thunderous and instantaneous in return, “He is risen indeed.” Luke records in his gospel that the two men who encountered the risen Jesus on the road to Emmaus tell the apostles, “Christ is risen indeed” (Luke 24.34). God raised Jesus from the grave and defeats death. Paul declares in his first letter to the Corinthians that Christ’s resurrection foreshadows our rising from death to life (1 Cor. 15.20-23). These triumphant words have been passed down to Jesus’ followers through the centuries.
Today’s Easter prayer is attributed to Hippolytus (170-236), one of the leading theologians of the third century: