Feeling hungry?

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Matthew 5:6

I know what it means to feel ready for a meal; but I don’t think I know what it means to be hungry. There’s a big difference. “I’m starving!” we might say, “what time’s dinner?” But of course the word starving – really hungry – is nonsense for most of us.

In the time and place in which Jesus lived, most people would have known hunger very well. Many of us (vegetarians and vegans, please excuse me here) feel hard done by if we don’t eat meat at least once a day; in Jesus’ world you might be fortunate to eat meat once a week.

And as for being thirsty…!

Without food and drink we die. No wonder, then, that Jesus used hunger and thirst as a way of talking about spiritual appetite, “hungering and thirsting for righteousness”.

This, the fourth “beatitude”, is possibly the most challenging of the eight, because it forces us to face the question, What is it that I want above all other things in my life? And Jesus is saying that our answer should be: righteousness.

But… what is righteousness?

It’s a tricky word to grapple with for at least two reasons.

First, it’s not in much use in modern English. We might say, “She’s a lovely person”, or “He’s a great bloke”, but would we ever call somebody a “righteous” man or woman? The word seems very old-fashioned: ask the average person what they understand by it, and they would probably come up with something like “Goodness, with a sugar-coating of religion – and not something particularly attractive, thank you very much”.

Second, while it obviously has to do with “rightness” and “goodness”, in the Bible it has several layers of meaning - a bit like those burgers that are so thick you can hardly get your mouth round them.

However you come at the word, it has to begin with the character of God himself, for he is ultimately the righteous one. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”, Genesis 1:1 tells us. And when he had completed the work of creation he “saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).

But it has become spoiled. The Adam and Eve story tells us that in the Garden of Eden they disobeyed God and dragged his good creation into ruin: what the Bible calls “sin”. And so we see the consequences every day of our lives: in human relationships, lies, cruelty, injustice, war; and the spoiling and polluting of planet earth on a universal scale. And, even more, we see the consequences when we look into our own hearts: anger, jealousy, hatred, greed, pride, lust.

It’s into this sad picture that the Christian Gospel brings hope, for its message is that God is at work to turn bad to good, to put right what has gone wrong. Go from the first chapters of the Bible to the last, and what do you find? – not just another garden, but this time a perfect garden-city, the “new Jerusalem”, the holy city “prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband” (Revelation 21:1-2).

God is in the business of putting things right! – that’s the point. And he is not going to stop until he has completed the job.

So when Jesus declares as “blessed” the person who hungers and thirsts for righteousness, he is talking about the person whose passion and craving is to see the “new heaven and new earth” (Revelation 21:1) which is totally cleansed of sin and full of the glory and beauty of God.

And so the question: Is that me? Is it you?

This great programme of “putting right” has to begin with each individual person, for the rot is deep within us. And this is what God himself came to earth to achieve, in the person of his own son Jesus Christ.

Perhaps the clearest statement of this is given by Paul in Romans 3:22-24: God’s righteousness, he says, “is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe… for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified (that word can be translated “made righteous”) freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ…”

So… Do I want my heart to be “right” as God intends it to be? And do I want to be part of that perfect “made-right” world which God has promised to bring about? And do I want to see the beginnings of it now, “on earth as it is in heaven”, not just waiting for this earthly life to be over?

I do? Then on to the next question: What am I doing about it, day by day, and hour by hour?

That’s “hungering and thirsting for righteousness”.

Loving Lord God, teach me what it means to hunger and thirst for righteousness, not only in my own life, but also in terms of international justice, political integrity, economic fairness and the health of this beautiful planet you have made. Amen.