Our country has also tried to honor and remember its first and greatest leader; George Washington. The center of our nation is called Washington, D.C. in honor of George Washington; and at the center of that city is a structure known as The Washington Monument. It is one of the most recognizable buildings in the country. There are, however, two great differences between Lenin’s tomb and the Washington Monument. First, Washington is not buried in the Washington Monument; he was buried at his home known as Mount Vernon in Virginia. Second, no one ever tried to preserve the body of George Washington. A copy of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution are preserved under very thick glass at the Smithsonian Museum, but not the body of George Washington. However, to this very day, 81 years after his death, the body of Vladimir Lenin remains on public display.

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However, things have changed in the world in the last 20 years. Today, Russia is no longer a Communist country. The teachings and speeches of Lenin are no longer being taught in schools or heard on Russian radio and TV. That entire era of Russian history, which they once thought would last for 1000 years, is now slipping into history and obscurity. The only thing that remains in public view that points back to the fall of the Czar and the eventual rise of the Soviet Union is the body of Vladimir Lenin that remains on display in its glass mausoleum. That leads to the headline in The New York Times that read, With Lenin’s ideas dead, what to do with his body?

What first struck me about this article was the fact that at the heart of Communism was the principle of atheism or the denial of the existence of God. Lenin and all of his successors — from Joseph Stalin to Nikita Khrushchev to Leonid Brehznev to Mikhail Gorbachev — accepted the idea that God did not exist, that faith was foolishness and that religion was a crutch for the weak. How strange it is that the man who said there is no God is now dead; his ideas are now discarded and a debate going on about what to do with his dead body.

Meanwhile, the ideas of Jesus Christ — the one name that Lenin hated more than any other — are more popular than ever and there is no debate about what to do with His dead body because three days after His death God raised Jesus from the dead. The Soviet Union has been dismantled but the church of Jesus Christ goes marching on. The words of Karl Marx that were at the heart of Lenin’s beliefs are little more than a lesson in 19th and 20th century history. Meanwhile, the words of the Bible are printed in every language on earth. Those words are read and cherished by people all over the world. In fact, while I laughed and chuckled when I read the news story about Vladimir Lenin, I woke up this morning with my mind stayed on Jesus.

I mention this news article to you, because there are many people who are inclined to put their faith in the ideas and beliefs of men and women just like themselves. Then that person dies or their ideas go out of fashion, and people are left trying to figure out what to believe in next. The lesson from Paul in our text today is for us to put our faith in a person and in principles that have already stood the test of time. Paul tells us not to get caught up in such passing ideologies as communism, or socialism or fascism. All of those ideas and their proponents have come and gone. Instead, we should cling to those things that Paul set forth when he was alive. At the heart of Paul’s message is this statement; “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.”