(Isaiah 55:1-3; Matthew 5:6, Colossians 3:1-4)
We have a problem with this Beatitude: there might not be anyone in this room who understands the kind of hunger and thirst Jesus was talking about. We have supermarkets and water mains, restaurants and drinking fountains—in the course of normal life, we have food and drink everywhere around us. We may be the first society in world history in which the great nutritional problem for the poor is obesity. When pundits talk about “food deserts” in this country, they don’t mean places where you can’t get food, they mean places where you can’t get fresh vegetables; the problem is too many calories, not too few. And as for thirst—well, I’ve read about what it’s like to suffer extreme thirst, but I’ve never come anywhere close. Lack of water just isn’t a daily concern.
That was not so for those gathered around Jesus. Theirs was a dry land, especially in the hot summer, and travel was far harder and more dangerous than it is in our day. They knew the sort of story Kenneth Bailey tells of a trip into the Sahara in which it was 110° in the shade and there wasn’t any shade, and then one of their goatskin waterbags leaked. As he says, “my mouth became completely dry, and eating was impossible because swallowing felt like rubbing two pieces of sandpaper together. My vision became blurred and the struggle to keep moving became harder with every step.” The only thing that kept him and his companions moving forward was the desperate desire to reach the well that lay at the end of the journey; its water was their only hope of life.
What would it mean to desire righteousness as our only hope of life? What would that look like? Let’s be clear, this isn’t about earning our salvation, and it isn’t about having a certain lifestyle; Jesus doesn’t say, “Blessed are those who live righteously.” This is not a blessing on those who think they have everything together, it’s on those who know they don’t; the all-surpassing desire for righteousness is the point.
So, again, what does that mean? Well, the first thing to understand is that the Hebrew word for righteousness, tsedaqa, doesn’t refer to some sort of abstract ethical standard that we just have to measure up to, which I think is how we tend to think of righteousness. Rather, it’s a relationship word. Every relationship we’re in—dating, marriage, parent-child (from either end), friendship, work—makes certain claims on us, because the other person in that relationship has the right to expect certain things from us. When we honor those claims and answer those rightful expectations, when the relationship is right, then you might say we are righteous in that relationship.
You can see that isn’t just a matter of law and duty. Is it my duty to go home to my wife in the evening, or to tuck my kids into bed at night? In a sense, yes, but that’s not why I do it; I do it because I love them, as an expression of love. If I came home grumbling about being ordered around and having better things to do with my time, if I put the kids to bed in an angry and resentful spirit, that wouldn’t be to the point at all. And so it is with righteousness before the Lord.
Of course, we understand that our righteousness is not from us; rather, God has declared us righteous in Christ Jesus and given us his righteousness by the work of his Holy Spirit. He has acted in righteousness as the Mighty One who saves to give us a status that we could not earn on our own; he has established us and claimed us as his people whom he will pronounce righteous in the final judgment.
Which means, if every relationship makes claims on us, that his infinitely great gift of acceptance in his presence rightly deserves our unending gratitude and love; and if we live in love for God and gratitude to him, that will have a powerful effect on our behavior. We will do what pleases him, not because we think we have to or because we want to get something, but because we want to please him. I don’t go home because I want to manipulate my wife and kids, I do it because I love them and want to be with them. Our righteous behavior is our grateful response to God’s righteousness in us.
At this point, the Greek gives us a blessing. In Hebrew, righteousness and justice are two different words. We’ve talked before about the Hebrew word for justice, mishpat; Paul Hanson, an Old Testament scholar at Harvard, has defined it as “the order of compassionate justice that God has created and upon which the wholeness of the universe depends.” Actions in keeping with mishpat are those which advance the restoration of the original created order of the universe, when “everything was right, just, whole, in accordance with God’s perfect will.” The Greek brings these together, with one word for both righteousness and justice: dikaiosune. The one who is righteous in the Lord, the one who lives to please him, is the one who does justice for others.
Note that: it is to do justice for others, not to demand justice from others. We have been shown incalculable mercy and infinite grace, by the righteousness of God; this is the model for how we should treat others. This isn’t about demanding what we think we deserve, but about setting that aside to serve others. It is, however, about standing up to do justice to those who are suffering injustice, and to show the mercy of God to those who are broken, suffering, or in need. You may not have thought of the ministry of our deacons as a ministry of righteousness, but it is.
So what does it mean to hunger and thirst for righteousness? Do I always passionately desire to please God? No, I don’t. But I want to get there. I want, first of all, to be filled with wonder at God’s mighty act of salvation in my life, to be grateful to him as I should be and to be moved by that gratitude. I want to love him more than anyone else, and to desire to please him above all others. I want to live a life that pleases him, because I see the beauty in that. I want to be free of my own unrighteousnesses, of the ugly places in my heart; I want to be pure and clear and undivided in his service, not struggling against myself, my own worst enemy.
And as part of this, I want to see God’s righteousness in others; I want to see justice done, the poor and oppressed lifted up, the sick and wounded healed, and those who are lost in the darkness brought into the light. I want to see the redeeming work of God; I want to see him making all things new—and I want to be a part of that.
Can I honestly say I hunger and thirst for righteousness? Some days; some days I’d rather have a burger and a Coke. But I want the hunger and thirst, if you know what I mean. And I have experienced enough of it that I’ve come to understand something very important: “they shall be filled,” “they shall be satisfied,” does not mean “they will cease to hunger and thirst.” Rather, it means that our hunger and thirst will only grow.
That might sound like an addiction, but the thing about addictions is they give you increasing cravings for diminishing pleasure; that’s because they lead only to death. In God is only life, and so the more we hunger and thirst for his righteousness, the greater the joy and delight we find in his righteousness, and in his presence, and therefore the more we hunger and thirst. Psalm 37, which we read last week, says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart”—because the more you delight yourself in the Lord, the more that becomes the desire of your heart. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, not because the time will come when they will achieve righteousness and won’t need to desire it anymore; rather, blessed are they, for the hunger and thirst are themselves the blessing. The blessing is the thirst.