Blessed are those that Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness
by Rev. Charmaine Braatvedt
Sunday 22nd January, 2006

Today we are looking at the 4^th Beatitude in our sermon series ‘Living with blessings’.

The beatitudes are the short blessings of Jesus which are to be found at the start of the famous Sermon on the Mount in Matthew Chapters 5,6 and 7. Some scholars think that the author of the book of Matthew collected the teachings of Jesus on different occasions and put them into these three chapters because the equivalent material in Luke does not appear in one block like this but is distributed in various parts of his Gospel . However, to all intents and purposes, exactly how the material was compiled does not really matter. What is important, is the fact that ever since the first century, these Beatitudes have been understood to be the broad principles and values upon which Jesus based all his teaching and ministry,

Jesus’ vision and mission statement if you like.

The word beatitude comes form the Latin Beatitudo, meaning ‘contentment’. In these Beatitudes we see that Jesus teaches a profound truth about life, that true happiness or contentment seems to have very little to do with the circumstances in which we find ourselves, rather it springs largely from our thinking and attitude towards life, other people and most importantly towards God.

Today we explore the fourth Beatitude: ‘Blessed are those that hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled.’

It is thought that Jesus was most likely basing this beatitude on the Isaiah passage Claire read us today, especially Isaiah 51:1a ,“Listen to me you who pursue righteousness and who seek the Lord,”

In the following few minutes I intend to reflect on two aspects of this 4^th beatitude:

l) What we might understand by the word ‘righteousness’, and

2) The nature of our hunger and thirst for righteousness, and how that hunger is to be satisfied.

As I was considering the statement:

‘Blessed are those that hunger and thirst’,

I tried to remember the last time I was really hungry….

Peckish? Yes. Worked up a good appetite? Yes. Starving? Never.

My personal experience of being hungry is when my body is signalling to me that it is time for my dinner, that’s all. I have always, all my life, had access to food and drink whenever I’ve needed it. Consequently while I know what the dictionary definitions of hunger and thirst are, I have no real first hand experience of those words in the way that someone who lives in a third world country, in Africa, or Asia or the Middle East might have.

It is sobering to reflect on some of the statistics about hunger.

· It is estimated that some 800 million people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition.

· Every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger.

· The Indian subcontinent has nearly half of the world’s hungry people. Africa and the rest of Asia together have approximately 40% and the remaining hungry people are found in Latin America and other parts of the world.

· Half of all children under 5 years of age in South Asia and one third of those in sub-Saharan Africa are malnourished. And this in a world where so many western children suffer from obesity?!

In desert communities such as the one Jesus was addressing, hunger means starvation and thirst means a desperate need for water in order to survive.

So when Jesus blesses those that hunger and thirst after righteousness, he is not merely talking about those who think that seeking out righteousness is neat idea,

He is saying: “blessed are those who long for righteousness as a starving person longs for food and as a person perishing from thirst desires water to soothe their cracked and parched mouth and throat”.

These metaphors of hunger and thirst which Jesus and the prophets and the psalmists use, describe the desperate longing of the soul for God and for God’s righteousness, as a matter of spiritual life and death.

Here in this 4^th Beatitude, Jesus is blessing, those who desire righteousness as a profoundly urgent priority in their lives, as something of vital importance, and He reiterates this priority in Matthew 6:33: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” before anything else. Surely that is basically the same as saying, “Hunger and thirst for righteousness” as a first principle in life.

But what is this righteousness that we are being challenged to desire?

The word “righteousness” occurs 5 times in this sermon (5:6, 10, 20; 6:1, 33). What does Jesus mean when he talks of righteousness?

The word ‘Righteousness’ is used to describe the nature of God. Included in this term are the qualities or virtues of justice; truth; mercy and love. There are many things the Bible reveals to us about God and God’s relationship with us, but justice, truth, mercy and love are the traits it most often identifies and these are summed up in the word ‘righteousness’.

So those Jesus blesses in this beatitude, are the ones who hunger and thirst after, who first and foremost deeply desire to identify themselves with the nature of God, with justice truth mercy and love.

When we identify ourselves with something , we align ourselves with it, we honour it, we draw strength from it, we make it part of our own experience and we commit ourselves to adopting it and making it our own. This is the challenge in the 4^th Blessing: “Blessed are you who strive to identify yourselves with the righteous nature of God in all you think and say and do”.

A few years back the fashion was to wear bracelets with WWJD inscribed. (What woud Jesus do?). This practice was an attempt by young people to take seriously the this 4^th Beatitude. The question was to be applied to all areas of our lives. Jesus challenges us to take the template of what we know about the righteous nature of God and to habitually apply it to all areas of our lives and to the world, until it becomes an integrated part of who we are, what we value and how we live our lives.

This will obviously impact the way we treat each other, the way we treat the environment, our political views, the way we conduct our business, the way we shop, the kind of neighbours we are, our parenting, our leadership- every part of our existence. It will also cause us to make some kind of response to the stats about hunger and thirst that come our way a little earlier.

WWJD with the fact that every 3 seconds someone dies of starvation while westerners grow fatter and waste more?!

We are not called to dabble with righteousnessie with justice truth mercy and love, we are called to hunger and tto thirst for it as one who lives in a dry desert community. This is serious stuff and when I reflect on my own life, I am appalled at the vast gulf between God’s righteousness and my own nature and lifestyle.

So what’s to be done?

The bible frequently acknowledges that none of us has a God-like character. As King Solomon confessed in his prayer to God at the dedication of the temple, “there is no man who does not sin” 1Kings 8.46 and Paul decalres in Romans 8, that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

The question then is: How can we be blessed when we are so far removed from the righteous nature of God?

It is significant that this beatitude does not say, ‘Blessed are the righteous’. Rather it says ‘blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled’. It seems to me that there is implied in this blessing an understanding that we are being challenged to commit ourselves to a process, a journey, an ongoing reaching out for the righteousness of God. Jesus blesses those of us who do this and his blessing comes with a promise, that we will be filled. This 4^th blessing comes with a promise, we will be satisfied, we will be filled, we will be transformed by his Holy Spirit.

Thus it seems that as we hunger and thirst to identify ourselves with God, God’s holy Spirit will honour that desire, fill us and transform us. Jesus says, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you.”

Those who seek God’s rightousness in their lives will find it for all to see. Their lives will bear witness to the presence of God at work in their lives. The fruits of his Holy Spirit will be revealed as they become iincreasingly truthful , humble, compassionate, merciful and courageous in the pursuit of justice and they will increasingly become a blessing to the world in which they live, c.f. President de Klerk.

Harking back for a moment to the desire of hunger, it occurred to me that in physical life, hunger is a normal healthy sign. There is nothing abnormal about the drive of hunger. It is the sick who have no appetite, no desire for food. Just so it is in our spiritual life. If a person is sick spiritually speaking, then he will have no appetite for God and the things of God. But if he is spiritually healthy, he will be hungry and thirsty for God and for the things of God. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”.

Let us resolve today, to focus our lives on striving towards God. On earnestly seeking his righteousness. Let’s not merely toy with the idea of discipleship, by saying, “I am interested in following Christ”, but rather let us take up the challenge of extreme discipleship and say as St Paul said, “For me to live is Christ”. I hunger and thirst for God.

We saw last week that The Beatitudes build on one another. Each one is foundational for the one that follows it.

· Jesus blesses those who acknowledge their dependence on God (the poor in spirit, the first beatitude)

· those who grieve for their own fallenness (those who mourn, the second ),

· those who approach God with humility ( those who are meek, the third)

· and those who fully and profoundly desire to be transformed and filled with God’s righteousness (the fourth beatitude).

Let us focus our lives on seeking God’s righteousness that we too might receive this fourth blessing which comes with the promise that God will honour our hunger and thirst for him and will fill us with his Holy Spirit and transform us into his righteousness.

Daniel’s song: To live is Christ.

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