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Let us continue in worship by giving attention to the reading of God's word as it is recorded in the second book of Kings, the sixth chapter. I begin the reading at the verse number 24. "Afterward, Ben-Hadad, king of Syria, mustered his entire army and went up and besieged Samaria.

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And there was a great famine in Samaria, and as they besieged it, they besieged it until an ass's head was sold for eighty shekels of silver, and the fourth part of a calf of doves dung for five shekels of silver. Now as the king of Israel was passing by upon the wall, a woman cried out to him, saying,

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'Help my lord, O king!' And he said, 'If the lord will not help you, whence shall I help you, from the threshing floor or from the wine-press?' And the king asked her, 'What is your trouble?'

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She answered, 'This woman said to me, "Give your son, that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow." So we boiled my son and ate him. And on the next day I said to her, "Give your son, that we may eat him, but she has hidden

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her son." When the king heard the words of the woman, he rent his clothes. Now he was passing by upon the wall, and the people looked, and behold, he had sackcloth beneath upon his body.

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May God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Jehoram was a king of Israel, but not a good one. He was as you would expect him to be. His father was the evil Ahab, his mother was the vicious Jezebel. When the Bible describes the reign of Jehoram, it says, "He did what was evil in the sight

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of the Lord, though not like his father and mother." That's small praise, indeed. But interestingly enough, there is included on the pages of Scripture one good deed done by Jehoram, and I'd like to think about that deed with you this morning.

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His capital city of Samaria was besieged by a Syrian army led by Ben-Hadad. Ben-Hadad means "son of the storm god," and the armies of Ben-Hadad were gathered like a storm about Samaria, thundering roar within them as the troops waited for that time when the besieged city would surely fall.

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Whenever the children of Israel would send out any small group hoping to get some food or drink and bring it back to the city, Ben-Hadad's army, like lightning, would cut them off. They waited for the fall of Samaria. Now, inside the city, there was great clamor, great agony, great famine.

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The people were starving to death, so much so, in fact, that an ass's head, something normally considered to be utterly unpalatable, was selling for $25.60, which in those days was a small fortune. Now, the king, Jehoram, is walking along the walls of the city seeking to inspire his people.

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He wears his royal robes. The sun glints off the golden coronet on his brow. The jewels in his silk gown sparkle, blink, and twinkle in the sunlight. He's seeking to cheer up his people, you see, and they see him, and some fire comes into

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their spirit again. Perhaps all is not lost. Here is our king, and he is still splendid in his strength. And as he walks, a woman cries out to him, "Hear, my lord, O king."

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Now, that was not a casual form of address. That was a formal appeal. Those were the words that were used whenever a legal matter was to be brought before the king, and this was the right of any Israel citizen.

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The king thinks she's going to ask for food. If the lord will not give you food, how can I give you food? How can I bring grain to the threshing floor when there is nothing there but dust? How can I bring wine from the press when there are no grates?

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And he strides away, but then he stops and walks back, and looking at her says, "Woman, what is your trouble?" And she tells her story. With cracked ribs and slit lips and swollen tongue, she tells her story.

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She has another woman by the hand. This woman, we entered into an agreement that yesterday I would kill my son and we would eat him, and today we would kill her son and eat him. And we did what we did to my son, but now she has hidden her son, and I demand that

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you bring her forth. Justice, O king, justice! It's horrible. It's horrifying.

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Oh yes, the plea is a just one, but is this to be the end of Israel? Cannibalism? Do you think he remembered that prophetic word of Moses spoken so many centuries before? "If ye will not hearken unto me, but walk contrary to me, then I will walk contrary

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to you in fury, and I will chastise you seven times for your sins, and ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat." Was this what he was thinking about? Whatever it was, it's so overwhelming that he did what devout Jews did in those days

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in great traumatic crisis. He ripped the neck of his garments and tore them open all the way to the head, and as they fell back, the people saw that the king was wearing sackcloth next to his skin. Sackcloth, the rough abrasive product of the goat or of the camel, sackcloth, always black

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or the darkest brown, sackcloth, which symbolized to the Jew heartbreak and defeat. It was a kind of silent, soft. And he wore it inside. He didn't wear it outside where everyone could see it.

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He hid his hurts in order to be able to inspire his people. But his smiles, you see, were hiding a sorrow. To bless others, he wore his sackcloth within. And that's the only good deed of Jehoram that's written in the pages of Scripture.

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And I think we can learn three very important things from it. We can learn, first of all, that everyone has her or his troubles. We're very prone, you know, to look on the outward appearance of someone and assume that we can make some judgment about their inner state.

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A man tells a joke, we figure he's happy-go-lucky. A woman drives a big in a brand new car and we think, well, everything must be going well with her. Those outward signs and symbols, of course, really say nothing at all about what is secret

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and in the heart. You remember when God said to Ezekiel, "Go and prophesy to the people on the banks of the river Kebar." And Ezekiel didn't want to go because they were comfortable people.

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They were well-fed. They were in good circumstances, or if he so he judged from appearances. And God said, "You will go and you will sit among them for seven days and you will say nothing but you will listen."

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And so Ezekiel goes and sits amongst them for seven days and the scriptures say that at the end of seven days he was overwhelmed. He'd been given the opportunity, you see, to discover that sackcloth that was within. We look at another life and we say, "The grass is greener there," but climb the fence and

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most of the time we discover many, many weeds and hard and unyielding stones where we thought only green grass was. Do you remember a poem of Edwin Arlington Robinson? It's an odd poem.

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It's called "Richard Corey." It's not long. It goes like this. "Whenever Richard Corey went downtown, we people on the pavement looked at him.

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He was a gentleman from sole to crown, clean-favored and imperially slim. And he was always quietly arrayed and he was always human when he talked. But still he fluttered pulses when he said, 'Good morning,' and he glittered when he walked. And he was rich, yes, richer than a king and admirably schooled in every grace.

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And in fine we thought that he was everything to make us wish that we were in his place. So on we worked, waited for the light, and went without the meat and cursed the bread. And Richard Corey, one calm summer night, went home and put a bullet through his head." What's the first thing we say when we hear of suicide?

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I wonder why. My friends, the highway of hurt is a crowded highway. And the way people look on the outside with their silk and their tools does not speak of the back loss of it.

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Do not think you're the only one in all the world who knows what it is to be bruised and to bleed. Chances are if you knew the sufferings of others, you would not trade yours for theirs. For if every man's eternal cares were written on his brow, how many would our pity share

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to have our ending now? But there's a second lesson here for our learning, and that's this. I think we ought to learn to appreciate those who suffer in silence and who do not burden others with their difficulties.

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Now not like Richard Corey. Obviously, Richard Corey was very, very depressed to so end his life, and people ought to seek out psychologists and psychiatrists or ministers or counselors or close friends or members of their family with whom they can share these things, thus bringing new light and perspective

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into their lives. I'm not saying we are not to share anything, but there are some burdens which are not aided by sharing. And about those, it's better to keep quiet.

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Did you ever hear that little couplet, "How are you?" is a greeting, not a question. Don't tell people about your indigestion. Some people do that, you know. They bore you to death with it.

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It is a sad truth that there is so much disappointment in life, that there is so much heartache. When we look at others, we need to remember the fact that they may know the agony of some awful treachery that's been performed upon them. They may be suffering physical pain.

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They may be in the vicissitudes of a moral temptation more intense than we have ever felt. They may have just seen some dream defeated. They may know an aching loneliness, stern, hard things.

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They may be old and worried about that. They may be young and worried about that. But the noble one, keep it quiet. Like Joseph, remember Joseph in Egypt?

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He had risen to the pinnacle of power. The only one above him was the Pharaoh. He was the number two man in the land. And I wonder if the Egyptians ever knew how much Joseph missed his father and his brothers.

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We know that he did because that day when his brothers came before him, and they didn't recognize him, but he knew them. The scriptures say, "And Joseph made haste, and he sought a place where he could weep, and he entered into his chamber, and he wept there.

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And then he washed his face and went out and refrained himself." Even then, you see, he didn't cry where anyone could see. Ethel Barrett, that noted Christian writer, started out as a nurse. And she tells in one of her books about going down a corridor in a hospital one morning,

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and a voice came out of one of the rooms saying, "Hey, come on in here for a minute." So she turned and went in, it was a good-looking young man there in the bed. He said, "You know, I see you go by every day and you never stop in to see me, and I call you happy feet because you just kind of bounce down the hall.

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So how about a happy feet? Why not stop in and say hello to me?" And she said, "I'll do it every day." And she did.

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Every morning she'd stop by and say, "Hello, how are you?" A few pleasantries as she went about her duties. And one day, just as she went in, she discovered that the doctors and the nurses were ministering to the young man.

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So she turned and left immediately. But in the moment that she was there, she saw that the bedclothes were gone, and the dressings had been removed from his abdomen. She saw there a hideous x-ray burn.

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All that was left was a thin membrane between his organs to the outside. And the doctors were taking away the pieces of a shooting raft that had not worked. The next morning when she went down the hall, he said, "Hi, happy feet." And she went in, and he was standing, covered in the bedclothes, wearing tights, and he

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had a good smile. And she greeted him then, as she did every day. But she said, "Never after the day when she saw his first did she think of him." In the same way, the sackcloth was suddenly revealed.

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And when she saw it, she was humbled. She bore quiet service. Compare that with the woman who said to me in the first church I ever served, "I always feel worse when I feel good, because I know that when I feel good, it's not going to be

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very long until I feel bad again." So there are those who suffer in silence, just like Jesus, who was a chief before his years were done, and who opened not his mouth. Just one last thought.

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It seemed to me that knowing this about the sackcloth worn within, that we ought to learn to be more kind and gentle. I know that's not very profound, but that's what I called you to today in this serious name.

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The truth is that the world is full of sharp and biting sadness. And there are so many people who walk through this world with careless feet, planting their clodhoppers right in the middle of the blooms of other people's hopes, running roughshod over other people's ambitions, setting lives on fire, destructive fire with the heat of

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their own tongues. Not kind. We say sometimes, you know, that children are the cruelest of all. But children do not know.

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We aren't kids anymore. We ought to know that we can turn the noble tree of someone's highest hopes into ash by our cynicism and our defeatism and our criticism. And, you know, we need to walk more sensibly, more in tune with the sackcloth.

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It happens, you see, when Jesus Christ takes over in your life. We often speak of him in terms of his divine nature and we speak of him in terms of him saving us for eternity and we speak of him in terms of his power and his presence and all these things are true.

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But I would ask you to remember this morning that he was a compassionate man, that he was full of tender, loving care. And when we're at school, at least, we ought to be the same way. You remember James Russell Lowell's "The Vision of Sir Longfall"?

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Sir Longfall was the knight who went out in search of the Holy Grail and as he left his castle resplendent in all of his armor and rode down the road just beginning his quest, he saw off to the side, just glanced there, a beggar who came and asked for alms. And without even looking firmly at the man, he just slipped him a coin.

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The beggar didn't even pick it up out of the mud because he knew that there was no real concern or caring there. It's like some people sit down and write out a set for Christian deals. So Sir Longfall goes out and spends all of his life trying to find the Grail.

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He never finds it. But in the course of his search, Jesus enters into his life and forges in him a great and profound debt of money until at the very end of his life, he returns to his castle only to discover that it isn't his castle anymore and those who live there drive him away.

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And as he walks, no speed is now, as he walks away, he sees the same beggar and he has no coin to flip. In fact, all he has is a crusted grave and he breaks it in half and he gives half of it to the beggar and he keeps half of it for himself.

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Suddenly, before he dies, the beggar becomes the Lord Jesus Christ. And he says, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." It's when Christ enters into us and forges gentleness that we begin to live like him.

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And to those of you who wear secret sackcloth, to those of you who walk in here smiling this morning and who will walk out of here smiling in a few minutes and who will not breathe to anyone except to Jesus in that time of prayer, what your hurts and your heartaches are, I plead with you to keep your flags flying and your bells ringing.

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You know, during the Civil War, that great college of William and Mary down in Williamsburg was closed. They had no students, they had no faculty, the buildings fell into decay, the roofs leaked. But the president of the school, President Ewell, went out and he raised the flag and

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he rang the bell every day for seven years when no one was there to hear it or see it. But the time came when the school was great again. So keep your flag up. Keep your bell ringing.

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And as the dew disappears before the sun and as the clouds are driven away by that same sun, so eternity will come, and it will take away all pain, all tears, all sorrows, and you will turn your silent suffering into the greatest glory that heaven ever knows. Walt Disney put it like this.

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He used to have a little character called Bucky Buzzard. And Bucky said, "Think of the thing you do in comic books. Happiness is like perfume. Inside you want to sell it.

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And every time you pour some out, you fill some on yourself." And that's absolutely true. When Christ is within us, there is part of our sacrifice, the source of our happiness and power.

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And there's enough happiness and enough power to share with others who hurt as much as he hurt, or maybe not as much. And that's what Christmas is about, happiness. [inaudible]

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[inaudible] Oh, Lord. [inaudible] Hold the glass.

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Hold the glass, please. [inaudible] Please, Lord. [inaudible]