Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for right-ness, for they will be satisfied. Wait, that’s not how it goes, is it?
Blessed are those who yearn for right-ness? It certainly seems to fit our culture which means it can’t be right. I’ve noticed this climate lately. I’m guessing you’ve noticed it, too. It’s hard to ignore, really, this need for rightness. And it’s not just “them” out there in the world, it’s all around us and it’s here. We want to be right (about all things)… about our cause, our candidate, our political party. We want to be right about our solution to gun control and violence, our stance on immigration and other religions. We want to be right about our interpretation of Scripture and our own certainty. We want to be right in our convictions and our decisions and even in our mistakes. We often want to be right at the expense of listening and relationships. We want to be right at all costs, it seems. And if I can offer an explanation, I think we want to be right because things are so clearly wrong.
Something or many things have gone terribly wrong. We turn on the news and hear of a mass shooting, a suicide bombing, or a capsized boat filled with refugee men, women, and children. We hear about how many children in our own backyards go hungry when they’re not in school. We hear about states pulling vital funding for public education. We hear about mass incarceration at an alarming rate. We hear xenophobic hate speech, racism, sexism and discrimination against entire people groups. We hear about churches closing their doors and countries closing their boarders. We hear about thousands upon thousands of people fleeing their homelands for a safe place to call home. We hear about tests of fellowship amongst the faithful intended to deny those who would seek the grace of God. It’s no wonder we want to be right because things have gone terribly wrong.
I think our desire may be a little misplaced, though. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst to be right, for they shall be satisfied” is not the way it goes. And somewhere deep down we know it. Friends, we’ve been working our way through the Beatitudes, the opening section of Jesus’ sermon on the mount this summer. And when we read them we have to remember that Jesus was turning things upside down with each statement. He was doing and saying something surprising, perhaps shocking with each blessing. Jesus was blessing us with a vision of the way things ought to be, a vision of the way things will be when God makes all things right. I’ve wrestled and wrestled with this particular blessing because it can seem simple, at first glance. Where is the surprise? Where is the shock? What exactly is Jesus turning upside down with this one? Well, I think Jesus is, once again, reminding us that we don’t get it right a lot of the time. I think Jesus is reminding us of our utter dependence on God. You see, we don’t get to define righteousness all on our own, as much as we wish we could. If I had to translate this beatitude, I would say something like “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for God to make all things right, for they will be satisfied.” Put another way, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for God to do what only God can do, for they will be satisfied, filled, sated.” “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for God.”
When we look at the world gone wrong, we want so badly to be right. We want to make sense of things. We want to find answers to questions that cannot be answered this side of eternity. We want to take up our righteous causes and save the world. But we don’t get to define righteousness or rightness. God does that. And as much as we want to make things right all on our own, we can’t. We don’t have the power to make things right on our own. We can’t work toward making things right unless we are completely reliant on God. You see, in order for us to hunger and thirst, we must first be empty, we must lack. In order for us to yearn, something has to be missing. In order for us to learn, we have to own that we may not know it all. When we look at the state of the world, we may think that we are yearning for our own rightness but in truth we are yearning for God’s righteousness. We are longing for God to make all things right. We are yearning for redemption, salvation, and freedom…not just for ourselves but for the whole world. We are hungry for the day when all will be fed and free. We are longing for the day when the downtrodden will be lifted up, when the refugee will have a home, when all will be welcome at God’s banquet table. We are yearning for God’s saving action.
When you look up imagery surrounding hunger and thirst in the Bible, you will find stories in the Old Testament of God’s provision in the wilderness. Water from a rock and manna from heaven. Life giving resources needed for the people of God wandering in the wilderness. You will find the psalmist likening his need for God to that of a deer yearning for cool water to drink. You will hear the voice of the psalmist at the end of his rope, from the depths of the pit cry out time and again for God to do something. You will find stories in the New Testament of Jesus at a well talking about living water and multiplying a simple meal for one into a feast for many. And you will hear Jesus make the claim, I am the bread of life over and over again. When we look at the claim Jesus makes in the gospel of John, he does so in answer to a crowd of people who are seeking after him. They were there when Jesus multiplied the loaves and the fishes when everyone’s bellies were filled. And when he disappeared from their sight they went looking for him. They wanted their bellies filled again. And they wanted proof, more signs and wonders that Jesus was who he said he was. But Jesus accused them of looking for the wrong things, of seeking after food that perishes. They wanted actual bread when what Jesus had to offer them was something else entirely, eternal life. They wanted signs and wonders when Jesus was offering himself.
We’re no different. We go after perishable things when we are offered eternal things. We look for signs and wonders when Jesus offers us life. We often seek our own rightness at the expense of all else. We set about righting the world on our own without asking God for help. We forget that we are actually reliant on God. We forget that we need God. You see, when we hunger and thirst for God, we live into our absolute dependence on God. When Jesus says, I am the bread of life, he is making the claim that he will fill the emptiness inside of us and he alone will satisfy our deepest needs. When things are going wrong in our own lives and in the world around us, that feeling of emptiness in our gut is our hunger for God’s righteousness. It is our deep desire for God to make all things right. It is our longing for God to do what God does. God saves. God sets free. God redeems and makes whole…even our broken lives and our broken world and our need to be right.
The really good news here, the promise of this blessing is that those who hunger and thirst for God to make all things right, will be satisfied. Those who recognize the emptiness within themselves that only God can fill will be satisfied. Those who long for God’s eternal kingdom will see that kingdom come. Those who long for all to be fed, for all to be free, and for all to be welcome at the table of grace will be satisfied. We get a glimpse of it today. As we gather around Christ’s table and share the bread and the cup, we get a glimpse of the righteousness of God. It is here that we are fed the bread of life. It is here that we drink from the cup of salvation. It is here that we are called and equipped and strengthened to do the work of God in the world. It is here that we confess our utter dependence on God. And we who have tasted the bread of life, we who have tasted the living water go out to share what we have been given with the world because the world is hungry and thirsty for God’s righteousness, too.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Rev. Alex Rodgers
Decatur Presbyterian Church
Decatur, GA
July 3, 2016
