The events in Paris a week past Friday have raised lots of questions, really fundamental questions for us all. What is security? What is freedom? Where should the balance between the two lie? Who is powerful? Who is in power?
 
On the face of it, the terrorists who murdered more than eighty people at the Bataclan Theatre, who shot many more in several restaurants and cafés and who tried to cause mass carnage at the Stade de France, seem to have had power. They had the power to cause death on a dreadful scale. They had power to terrorise. They had power to terrify people and cause immediate changes in behaviour and policy. As you know, in a few days time, Paris is to host a major UN Climate Change summit. Many thousands of people were due to travel to Paris to call for real action to be taken to limit the effects of climate change. Now many of these gatherings have been cancelled. There is a sense that gathering together is not safe, as sense, particularly, that Paris is not safe. A football match in Hanover was cancelled because of a bomb threat. An over-reaction, perhaps, but no one can be sure at the moment. In major or in quite subtle ways, all our lives have been changed and may yet change more. And these terrorists have done that.
 
The reaction to these terrible events has been about power too. Most immediately, we saw the raw power of the French state, embodied in the paramilitary police units who brought the massacre in the theatre to an end, and have raided properties and killed suspects on several occasions since. The sight of these operations raises conflicting feelings – reassurance that people of goodwill are prepared to take terrible risks to tackle and stop people of bad will and, at the same time, fear that violence is the only tool available.
 
Then there is the response from governments in France and elsewhere. These are people in power. Governments have huge resources at their disposal, armouries which totally eclipse the power of a few Kalashnikovs and suicide vests. But many are left wondering if being in power and having such firepower at their disposal really translates into being powerful. Bombing Syria, a country already suffering intense bombardment, may only be giving an illusion of power, especially if those on the receiving end are as innocent and terrified as concert goers, diners and football fans in Paris; especially, as seems likely, if the terrorists wrought terror in order to escalate war for their own twisted ends.
 
What we are seeing is a curious mixture of power and powerlessness. Both terrorists and the nations states they terrorise have immense power at their disposal, physical and psychological, but where, we might well wonder, is it getting them? I am sure that you will have been moved, as I was, by the messages of defiance from ordinary French people, especially from the man whose wife was killed who wrote that the terrorists would not have his hate, because that is what they wanted and he would not give them that satisfaction. We need to take inspiration from people such as these. We cannot destroy our lives, our freedoms, our rule of law, our tolerance, our hospitality, our humanity in the ultimately fruitless quest for perfect security, for that would be handing the terrorists victory on a plate.
 
But at the same time, both terrorists and nation states are also quite powerless. France and Europe will not be overthrown by women and men with guns and suicide vests and a total disregard for life, their own or anyone else’s. But neither, it seems, is Europe, or Russia or the US, capable of bringing peace to those parts of the world where war and suffering are fuelling this terrorist ideology. For all our power, we are powerless. For all our strength, we are weak.
 
Today, our Bible readings lay before us images of power. Daniel and Revelation are books with much in common. Mostly, they describe visions, visions of God in the imagination of the writers. Thousands and ten thousands worship, serve and obey the Ancient One in Daniel’s vision. John of Patmos, in his Revelation, speaks of strength and immovability, of not even the mightiest forces of nature being more powerful than God.
 
And then we have John’s Gospel. This tells us, not about a vision, but about a real event. And the contrast could not be more stark. Here is the God imagined by Daniel and John, not enthroned, not attended by multitudes, but alone, on trial, facing death. It is an image of weakness, an image of powerlessness, yet appearances deceive. Who here is powerful? Who here is strong? Is it Pilate, calculating the political and security consequences of different possible courses of action; working out if the man before him is expendable; weighing up the benefits and risks of doing the bidding of the Chief Priest and his crowd of goons? Or is it the man who will not give a straight answer, yet still tells the absolute truth; who will not defend himself, knowing exactly the consequences of not doing so?
 
We who are Christians know the answer. We are not Pilatians, followers of Pilate. No one is, yet many kind of are. They don’t take their inspiration directly from the Roman Governor, but still think the way he did, weighing up the risks of displeasing some more than others, calculating how much violence to use to preserve their position, trusting in the command of things which give a sense of power – soldiers, crosses, nails, electronic eavesdropping, air forces, bombs.
 
Before Pilate stood Jesus, facing the man he knew would order his death. And though Pilate did not know it, before him stood one infinitely stronger, infinitely more powerful. For the death he would order would not destroy Jesus. The political calculations he made would never fully add up. Even the soldiers he commanded could have been overwhelmed and defeated.
 
The man before him was stronger because he loved. He loved the world with that divine love which is greater and purer and stronger than we will ever fully understand. He was stronger because, in love, he was prepared to accept suffering. He was stronger because, no matter what happened, he could not be broken. For that is what Christ stands for, what Christ came to reveal – that love is stronger than death and that God’s commitment to the world he made and loves can never be defeated.
 
We who are followers of Christ are called to follow his example of love. And we can do that because of what he did. We are called to love our enemies, because Jesus loved his. We are called to pray for those who would persecute us and terrorise us, because that’s what Jesus did. We are called to suffer without turning to bitterness and anger, because that is what Jesus did. We are called to these ways of living because Jesus lived that way and because living lovingly, prayerfully, openly, tolerantly and free from bitterness and anger will empower us in the face of every evil, and ultimately bring the peace the world so need and which it will never achieve with armies and armaments.
 
Amen.

 
“Do you see all these great buildings,” Jesus replied. “not one stone here will be left on another. Every one will be thrown down.”
 
There seems little point in denying it but Jesus’ words in the temple precincts were strange and disturbing. They were occasioned by an innocent remark, a perfectly understandable statement from one of his disciples. Who among us has not been impressed by magnificent buildings, skilfully built from the finest materials? The temple, recently restored at that time, was indeed a most impressive place, built from massive stones and richly decorated with sheets of pure gold which caught and reflected the sunlight. Though they had seen it many times, it had not lost its power to awe the disciples. Yet Jesus predicted its destruction, not its weathering, not its decay, but its absolute and total destruction.
 
Of course, he was right to do so. We know from other sources that in AD 70, the temple and all the rest of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Roman occupiers. It was a systematic demolition of the whole city and not one stone was left in place. So on one level, Jesus was perfectly correct. Within thirty-five to forty years of his own death, the city would be laid to waste. But this was not all he was talking about – a little glimpse into the near future. He had a much deeper meaning.
 
I would like to try to approach that meaning through another quite different story, the story of Hannah longing for a child.
 
Like so many of the great stories of the Bible, the story of Samuel has a very inauspicious beginning. We have a man, Elkanah. Elkanah is so noteworthy that he only appears in the Bible, at the beginning of this book named after his son. He was descended from a man called Tohu, which means ‘waste’, as in a waste of space. Not a highly thought of person, one might imagine. Not a great line to come from. We also have two women, co-wives of Elkanah. Hannah’s name means ‘grace’ and, as we shall find, she lives up to her name. Peninnah’s name is untranslatable but, as we shall see, her character is anything but gracious. Despite this, Peninnah is an abundantly fertile woman who has borne many children. Hannah is, as the story begins, still childless, and this weighs very heavily on her. She desperately wants a child. It is the one thing she wants more than anything in the world. Nothing can make up for the fact that she has not had a child. Peninnah clearly has a really nasty streak in her, because she taunts her co-wife constantly for her childlessness, flaunting her own fecundity at any opportunity.
 
We hear of how Elkanah and his wives and children would go each year to Shiloh to make a sacrifice. Part of the ritual was to share out the meat of the slaughtered animal among the family for a celebratory feast. It was an utterly miserable occasion for Hannah, because each year Peninnah would taunt her, pointing out as the meat was given out how much was coming to her children. The double portion which Elkanah gave to Hannah was no substitute for the child she longed for so desperately. In fact, this probably only made her pain even greater as she had no child with whom to share her portion.
 
One year, Hannah reached the end of her tether. Weeping and unable to eat from misery, she fled from the feast and went straight to the Temple by herself. Significantly, she marched straight past Eli, the priest. She was going to talk directly to God.
 
Remember, here was a woman suffering in bitter agony. Sobbing convulsed her body as she wept and prayed. But Eli, seeing and hearing her, leapt quickly to the wrong conclusion, mistaking her for a drunk. “How long will you keep on getting drunk?” he asks her, making a crass and degrading accusation. But Hannah, this woman of grace, did not turn on him in anger for his insensitivity, nor did she storm out as she had every right to do, but instead, through her deep sadness, gently explained why it was that she had been praying with such intensity.
 
Without a word of regret or apology, Eli absentmindedly says – may God grant you what you have asked of him.
 
The rest, in a way, is history. Next time Elkanah and Hannah slept together, she conceived and the son she bore she called Samuel. From his very earliest years, his life was dedicated to God and he grew up to become one of the greatest of Israel’s prophets, the one who was to anoint the first two of Israel’s kings, Saul and his successor, David.
 
In so many ways, this is an archetypal Biblical story. So often, when there is infertility, it is a sign that the longed for child will be particularly significant in the history of God’s chosen people. So often when there are two or more wives, it is the second wife who is preferred and who goes on to bear the significant child. So often where there is adversity, where there is simplicity, where there is ordinariness, God is at work. The human story of the Bible begins with a man and a woman, in a garden. The choosing of a nation begins with an old man and his old wife who miraculously conceives in her old age, long after she had given up hope of bearing a child. The saving of that nation from slavery begins with a murderer reluctantly called to leadership by a voice from a bush. The entry into the promised land begins with a couple of spies and a prostitute. And most importantly of all, the Christian story begins with a humiliated man and his much-too-young, pregnant girlfriend, far from home and then forced to flee still further. So this story of prophecy and kingship, of Samuel, Saul, David and Solomon begins with an insensitive husband, a foolish priest, an arrogant co-wife and an despairing woman who dared to demand from God that which would give her dignity and respect. From the strangest of beginnings do great things happen.
 
The destruction of the Temple is a strange sort of beginning. It sounds more like an ending, as do the other signs Jesus predicted – deception, wars, earthquakes and famines. Yet Jesus talked about beginnings. He talked about birth, something pure, natural, desirable, life giving. To hold these concepts together – destruction and birth – must mean that he was implying that something good would be coming from these terrible things.
 
Let’s go back for a moment to the personal anguish and ultimate joy and fulfilment of Hannah. She was in a bad situation. One might say she was surrounded by evil – a wicked co-wife taunting her for her childlessness, a husband who was weak and insensitive, a priest who made false allegations against her. Yet it was in her that God chose to work, giving her the gift of bearing a son who was to become pivotal in Israel’s history, a man who was to move through the wars and wickedness of Saul’s reign, still witnessing to the truth, still witnessing to the justice and the grace of God, a man who was to keep the light of the Lord shining both literally and spiritually through very dark times.
 
In this story we have a window on the greater story Jesus was telling his disciples. Through this understandable, human story, we can find a way of comprehending what he was saying.
 
For Christ was teaching that the world was and is in the grip of evil, that, while the current system lasts, there will always be wicked deeds and senseless disasters and suffering and pain. Yet in these things, God will be found working, working as he did through Hannah, through Abraham and Sarah, through Moses, through Mary and Joseph. He will be found working to bring into life a new system, a new order, bringing to birth the time when all will acknowledge the reign of Christ and be gathered joyfully into the kingdom of God.
 
It disturbs me when so-called Christians relish wars and rumours of wars and claim them as signs of the imminent coming of the Kingdom. It angers me when ultra-rightwing neo-conservatives delight in war in the Middle East, seeing it as the beginning of Armageddon. St. Peter wrote: Look forward to the coming day of God, and work to hasten it on. He did not mean to encourage people to violence. He did not mean that we are to work to hasten the coming day of God by encouraging war, or by spreading rumours of it, or by rejoicing in earthquakes or famines. He was encouraging people to be like himself and James and John and Andrew, to be like Hannah, seeking to be channels of God’s saving grace. Work to hasten the day of God by giving yourself to God, that he might work through you.
 
Amen.