There are times when it seems altogether appropriate and important and valuable for the church to gather and plan to do nothing else than to be instructed by the occasion to let the occasion itself. Yes, inform us to let the occasion enlarge our sympathies, broaden our understanding to let the occasion tap the sources of our values and our beliefs, to let the occasion put us in touch with matters, eternal and final, and to be.

Blessed in the reflection upon them. Now, I know that many minister types are not content with that, that for it to be really a Christian occasion, someone has to lay an exhortation on the brothers and sisters. Somebody has to hurl an imperative into the room and let it explode on whomever it will. And some of you may be here today thinking that, and if you are, let me simply say that the imperative is in the occasion, if you can hear it and see it.

For us to spend this hour, even if we spend it until silence, to remember to remember in gratitude the saints and martyrs of all the ages. Some of them, we know their names. Some of them we were very close to. Some of them have made their exit so recently that the wreath has not withered to spend an hour.

Remembering and being grateful is to be challenged, to be instructed, to be called to account, and to be blessed.

This is an occasion like that.

There are some texts that should be read and left alone to be released into the room and let them do their work. They don't need our pale commentary, but if it is the disease of some preachers. That they have to fill the air with ought and must and should. It is also the disease of teachers that they have to explain everything.

It is enough, it seems to me, with some texts simply to turn them loose and do what they will to introduce us to a world of experiences and values. About which we don't talk very much, at least not directly. When we do, we do it obliquely and indirectly, not because the world of the scripture is not our world.

It is in more ways than we admit our world. It's pain and joy. It's hope, it's despair, it's struggle with God. It's effort to believe it. Shouts of faith, it's knight of despair. That's our world.

We don't talk directly of these things, not because we are cowards and are unwilling to witness to our faith. We may be, but we don't talk directly about some things because they're not supposed to be talked about. There are some things about your relationship and mind to each other and to God that has its strength in our silence.

It is stronger and healthier when assumed, but when talked about it dies, not because it's false, but because it's overexposed. The House of Faith has other rooms besides the Den. There are times to sit on the floor and talk about everything that'll come up, but look around the House of Faith. There's some other rooms too.

Not so much for, for privacy. But for intimacy, and I simply cannot talk about everything in public, there's a cheapening of it. In a way, it's better assumed

the beatitudes of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, according to Matthew, contains no imperative. No exhortation. No. Let us go and do no ought. No must, no should, except by implication. It's there embedded in the passage simply because the passage brings us into a realm of the eternal and the true and the valuable, and the right and the good, and in the presence of the true and the good and the right.

We all feel the imperative. It's like being in the presence of somebody of extraordinary value. Someone whose life counts for something. You know, people like that. To be in the presence of such a person to know here is someone whose life is a center of value and power, and whenever they appear, it makes a difference.

Whenever they speak, it makes a difference. Whenever they take a position, it makes a difference. The world will be different because they lived. You spend an evening with a person like that and they don't have to say what we ought to do and what we should do. We feel it and we go home feeling small and cheap and can't sleep and finally purchase a little sleep by promising with high resolve that tomorrow my life will amount to something other.

Than dealing with those questions. What shall we eat and what shall we drink, and what in the world are we going to wear?

There be attitudes. They cast their blessing into the room. Nobody in particular, anyone, everywhere, all ages, all places, all climates, they say their word and the blessing goes to anyone within reach of it. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Whoever you are, blessed are the meek, wherever, whoever. Blessed are the pure in heart.

Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. Blessed are those who are persecuted. Notice how impersonal and yet personal, how scattered upon all of us those expressions are. You need no commentary. There is, however, I'm sure you noticed at the close of the Beatitudes, a remarkable shift after talking to everyone in general, blessed of the pure in heart and the poor in spirit, and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Blessed are peacemakers and meek. Then it says, in closing and blessed are you. Did you notice that? And blessed are you when others revile you and mistreat you and say things about you that are not true. For my sake, the shift to the you seems almost like a historical note in the midst of the beatitude as though the writer knows that the ones who read this gospel.

Need a special word, a personal word, a you word for they are at the time of my writing under severe circumstance, suffering great abuse and hardship, being reviled and exiled. Blessed are you.

In other words, the writer is very much aware that those whom Jesus addresses are victims. Have you ever thought about how much of the teaching of Jesus is addressed to people who are victims?

If anybody strikes you on one cheek, Jesus doesn't have any instruction for what you do after you strike somebody else. If anybody strikes you on one cheek, if anybody forces you to go a mile. If anybody takes you to court to have your coat, if you are in the sanctuary worshiping and there, remember what?

That you have something against a brother? No. No, no, no. If there you remember, a brother has something against you. Have you ever noticed how much Jesus said was addressed to victims? I don't know why. Maybe because there were so many. Living in a land under army of occupation, declarations of martial law, the clashing of steel on steel, hostility, rape, assault, no rights at all.

Extreme poverty and extreme wealth, and here they were, the people of the soil. And Jesus said, blessed are you victim. Maybe he talked a lot to victims because they came close to Jesus. They heard in his voice. They saw in his face. They knew in his ministry. It was sympathy and understanding. Maybe that's why he spoke to them so much.

It could be that they found him also to be a victim. This one, who knew what it was to have someone else's spittle run down his face. Feel someone else's spit in your eyes. To be cursed, to be lied about, to be mistreated, to be slapped, to be mocked, to be joked about, to be dressed up in a costume like a king and have jokers bow down and then slap you again to be nailed on a cross.

Jesus knows what it is to be a victim. Maybe that's why they came here is a kindred spirit. Whatever the reason. I do know that my desire and the desire of many people to receive the blessing that Jesus pronounced upon victims, the appetite for that blessing is so strong and so constant and so real that I sometimes put myself or want to put myself in the place of victims so I can receive it now in a way that's where I belong.

I am a victim. All of us can say that we're all victims. In fact, it is customary among some parents to start teaching the victim role to their children when they're real small. Some of you parents may have done it. For instance, your little child falls down, starts crying. The knee is skinned. Kiss the knee and do what hit the ground mean old ground hurt my baby, and the child is happy.

That's right. I didn't hit the ground. The ground hit me. I remember when trying to help Laura, our daughter, learned to ride a bicycle and she ran right into a tree. It was there all along. No one moved it in for the occasion. It was there. She went right into the tree and her body went up against the handlebars and then over that and down on the sidewalk, and she was full of tears after arranging herself back on the bicycle.

With my help, I walked over there and I kicked the tree. What do you mean hurting Laura? When she's trying to ride a bicycle, and I think it was a pleasant thought for her. Yeah. I didn't hit the tree. The tree hit me. We're all victims. Victims of computers. Have you ever tried to give anything back to the government?

Have you ever tried to get a bill straightened out and all you get is it's, well, the, the computer has a mix up. We'll get it straightened out Year after year after year, I had a bill of $42, which I did not owe. Become in six months, over $5,000. And all I got was someone saying, well, the person in charge is not here, but the computer is new and we're just learning to operate.

Don't worry about it. And then the next bill came with that, with compounded interest. You just get infuriated. I'm a victim here. Forces in the world, there's nothing anybody can do. You victim of taxes, victim of government. Some are victims of unhappy home life. Some are victims of painful marriages. Some are victims of parents that are noisy and violent.

Some are victims of children that are noisy and violent. Some are victims of prejudice and, and, and just terrible injustice in the world. Everybody hears a victim. Just think about it. I recall that classic line. Of George Goebbels on the Tonight Show. Once when he was sitting there and everybody was having fun and he wasn't saying anything, and Johnny Carson turned to him and said, well, George, don't you have a word?

He said, did you ever feel that the world was a tuxedo and you were a pair of brown shoes? And I think the reason that struck me so funny is I've had the feeling lots of times victim, victim. I had like to be in the role of victim. There's something attractive about it, even though there are some people who really, really are victims of injustice and cruelty.

Victims of prejudice and hatred, victims of senseless violence, they just happen to be there at the time.

Victims of disease. But given the harsh reality of the fact that there are some people who really are victims, I have to admit, and I think you would too, there are times when it's an attractive position to be in, to be the victim, you see, to be a victim gives your life some importance and some publicity beyond its own merit.

Otherwise, a life just plain and ordinary. Gets a lot of attention. To be a victim is to be excused from so many things. Well, after all, just think what he's been through. It's to be exempt. It's to be exempt from responsibility. It's not to be held accountable. We lived last year in beautiful little place on a creek in the mountains, as many of you know, and I'm thinking about it now.

I'm a victim here. Down about a quarter of a mile below, a fellow moved in from Florida for about two months. His evidence there was a fierce German Shepherd dog. The scarcity of the dog chained to a sapling out front of his cabin. The bristling of its hair. When you'd go for an afternoon walk, its loud bark.

Its anger at the world. Change the whole setting in which we lived. And then there were the guns. The guns firing just at sunset. Gun after gun after gun. Sometimes rifle, sometimes shotgun, sometimes pistol. Boom, boom, boom. And we were so close and it was so serene and so peaceful until this man came.

I had not met him. I disliked him. I wanted him to move. The phone went out in an electrical storm. I had to go use the phone. I went down there to borrow the phone. I waited at some distance from this fierce dog. A woman came out and pulled the dog inside and said, come in. I introduced myself. I walked into that room and there on one wall, solid corner to corner.

The guns. The guns, the guns here. She held, I didn't think tightly enough. This fierce dog. I had to use the phone, but I still hated that place that I wanted them to move. And then the doorway came. The man, the owner of the dog, the shooter of the gun. And he wheeled his chair over to me and said, what do you want?

And I looked at the legless man, and the dog was not as fierce, really. I mean, if I were in a wheelchair, maybe I'd need a big dog. Maybe if I were in a wheelchair, I'd need some guns to shoot at targets across the street while I made up my mind and got up the nerve to turn the gun on myself. If I were in a wheelchair, what do you want?

I reduced his crimes because of the wheelchair to misdemeanors. Do do you do that? There's something attractive about being a victim. Just think about it. If you are the victim, you never have to make the awful decisions that belong to those in positions of power and those that have extraordinary capacity.

Just think what a terrible thing it is to sit in certain places and know that's your decision. Affects hundreds, thousands, millions of people. Just think what it is to know that your signature can mean life or death. Just think what it must be to be a person of extraordinary capacity and gift and talent.

My I don't envy those. Do you envy those? No.

There's something attractive about being a victim. It means that we're excused. I'm sorry, you go ahead. 20, 25 years ago when it was quite common in the newspaper to read a paternity suits involving Hollywood people, and I remember very popular actor was taken into court by some young woman in a paternity suit.

This. The case lasted for some days. She seemed to have all the evidence she needed, that this actor, this popular fellow, was the father of her child and she was claiming some support and all the other things that she claimed in a paternity suit, whatever that is. And when the case had been heard and counter heard and argued and counter argued, the judge then said, it seems quite clear that this woman.

Has been a victim of this charming and attractive man,

but isn't this man himself also a victim? A victim of a culture that makes heroes and heroines out of movie stars, a victim of a culture that's losing its moral fabric. A victim of a culture that is ethically confused, a victim of a culture that has abdicated in the realm of truth and right and good.

Isn't this man himself a victim of his society? Case dismissed.

There's something attractive about being a victim, but the difficulty is it is almost sick. It is very close to sickness because if I develop the victim mentality, it isn't long until I began to celebrate my failings. Celebrate losing and use all my incapacities and weaknesses as argument conclusive that I'm a really sincere person and that is sick.

It is. It seems to me when I began to celebrate failure. And develop a victim mentality that uses my incapacity to prove that I'm really just a really good person and sincere. I'm approaching a flat denial. Of that dignity and worth that belongs to the fact that I'm created in the image of God and recreated in Christ Jesus.

And with that, there is a quality of dignity and value and worth that I must not deny by scooting it around under the edges of victim mentality. There is a dignity to be claimed. You remember James, uh, ags in, uh. Now let us praise famous men. His description, while he lived that summer in northern Alabama, his description of a black man who worked at a sawmill, middle-aged black man, worked at the sawmill.

Most of his work consisted of taking care of the mules. He was treated in the 1930s. He was treated sort of like one of the mules. I think he probably got the same pay as the mules. He was a tragic figure except. Four times a day in the morning. In the evening to start noon and to close the noon hour, he walked over to a wire hanging from machinery above, reached in the bib of his overalls, and took out a dollar watch, fastened to his overalls by a greasy shoestring, and he looked at the watch.

And grabbed the wire and on the tick of the hour, he pulled the wire and the sawmill whistle blew and people started to work or people stopped working or people took lunch break, or it ended lunch break, or people went home and he pulled the wire. It was that simple act of pulling the wire. That enabled him to go home at night and sit at the head of the table and command the respect of his sons and his daughters.

He was a victim, but he refused to be a victim. You see, it is very important if the shade of difference is not too subtle. It is very important for us to say Jesus called to himself victims, but it is not right to say Jesus called us to be victims. That is not right

for he said. If anyone slaps you on one cheek, don't slump in the corner and say, I belong to the company of the slapped. You turn the other cheek as a way of taking control of your life. Take the initiative, but Jesus we're victims. If anyone, if anyone. Takes you to court and says, I'm going to get your coat.

Let him have your shirt too. But Jesus, we're victims. You take the initiative, you take the initiative. If anybody, if anybody, a, a soldier going back to his barracks, weary with his own load of shield and sword and pack turns to you and said, Hey, Jew. Carry my pack a mile. When you get to the end of the mile, take it a second mile.

But Jesus, look, Hey, we're victims here. We didn't do anything wrong. If you are at worship. And while you're offering your gift at the altar, you suddenly remember, somebody has something against you. But Jesus, they have it against us. We don't have it against them. We're the ones in church. They're not the one.

If you remember that someone has something against you, you leave your gift at the altar, go take the initiative. Take control of your life, make it right, then come back. But Jesus. You surely know what it's like to be a victim. You were a victim. They spit on you. They slapped you, they abandoned you. They left you to die in your own blood.

They crucified you, Jesus. You know what it's like to be a victim? Weren't you a victim? And he said, no. No. A thousand times. No. But they took your life. Oh, no, they didn't. Oh, no they didn't. No one. I took my life. I gave my life. I gave my life.