Blessed Are Those Who Are Hungry

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled.

Sermon manuscript for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists

Sabbath, March 2, 2013

Comments welcome, especially if they come in before 8 a.m. on March 2.

Fourth in a series

Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, For they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, For they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, For they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, For they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, For they shall be called sons of God

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

These blessings, The Beatitudes," are recorded in the Gospel of Matthew as the beginning of the “Sermon on the Mount,” the most famous collection of the sayings of Jesus. This “sermon” has been a primary source for Christian visionaries, humanists and radicals for at least 1800 years.

Sometimes hunger is funny.

This fall I got back home from a two day hike. I had miscalculated the food needed for the trip, so when I got home I was seriously starved. The first thing I did, before taking a shower, before unloading the car was to make a sandwich. As I was carrying it to the table I was overcome with dizziness. I managed to sit down and put my head on the table. After a minute, I lifted my head enough to get a bite of food in, then put my head back on the table to chew. I repeated this process until I finished my sandwich.

I was glad Karin wasn't home. She would have given a me scolding. Why didn't I take more food? I thought it was funny. I live in a society where food is readily available. I was sitting in a kitchen full of food, and I was fainting from hunger. There are others here who have had similar experiences: you have run out of gas while running a marathon, you have failed to carry enough food for a long hike. Hunger ambushes you. You get dizzy. You faint. Someone gives you a granola bar or some goo and you revive.

These kinds of hunger stories are entertaining. In fact, among skinny trail runners, this kind of story is part of the swagger. This kind of hunger is funny.

Then there is another kind of hunger. Soul-bending, ugly hunger.

I recently starting reading Les Miserable, the novel by Victor Hugo. The central figure in the is a hardened convict. A man who has spent nineteen years under the lash in the prison galleys of the French navy.

How did he get there? Hunger. Bone-gnawing, heart-crushing hunger. There is nothing funny about this kind of hunger.

Jean Valjean had lived with his widowed sister and her gaggle of kids who are perpetually hungry. Starving kids, for whom a bit of bread is a superlative luxury. His sister was eaten not only by the miserable emptiness in her own belly but by her inability to feed her children. And Jean Valjean? He worked day and night, at any job he could find. Was paid a pittance, Walmart wages in a BMW society. It was never enough. He lived with perpetual economic impotence. Until one day, driven by rage against the hunger—his hunger, the kids' hunger, his sister's hunger—he steals a loaf of bread. And for stealing a loaf of bread he is sentenced to five years in the galleys which stretches out into nineteen.

In Hugo's story hunger is never comical. It is never the transitory difficulty experienced by skinny hikers and runners. It is an ugly, excruciating emptiness. A desperate lack of sustenance that puts life itself in question.

This is the kind of hunger Jesus had in mind when he said, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled.

In Jesus' world if a laborer didn't find work today, he didn't eat today. His wife didn't eat today. His children didn't eat today. The 99 percent in Jesus' day were not obese. They weren't even near their “ideal weight.” They were stringy, scrawny people, like the pictures you see of Chinese laborers a hundred years ago. Like rickshaw pullers whose arms and legs were as skinny as the spokes of the rickshaw wheels.

Jesus' audience knew hunger. Real hunger. Soul-bending hunger. They knew what it meant to put kids to bed at night who were whimpering with hunger. Hunger in their world was not funny. It was this ugly, biting hunger Jesus had in mind when he said, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteous for they will be filled.

When you are hungry for righteousness, you are keenly aware of your lack of your righteousness, your need for more righteousness. Your awareness of your unrighteousness eats at you, gnaws on you. It's pretty easy to translate that sense of deficiency into a sense of condemnation. The distance between the ideal and your performance is a measure of God's disapproval. Your awareness of your deficiency feeds a sense of shame.

Jesus spoke to this natural sense of condemnation and shame when he said, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst—who feel their lack of—righteousness. Blessed. God is not screaming at you for your failure to achieve. He is not smirking. He's not shaking his head and saying scornfully, “Again?” According to Jesus, God notices our hunger, our ache for doing better, and God's word in response is, “Blessed.” God says, “I'm rooting for you. You can do it. We can do it. It's going to happen. Give it another go.”

Alcohol has dominated Bob's life for decades. He has gone through detox repeatedly. Through rehab. He has joined AA. He has prayed. Then proceeded to betray friends, ruin romances, destroy his employment with drinking. More than once he has stood up in church to ask us pray for him. “I just got out of detox yesterday, pray that I will remain clean and sober.” Or, “I'm going into detox on Monday, please pray.”

Bob was desperately hungry for wholeness. This hunger started early in his life. And the impossibility of filling that hunger was also set early in his life, in the pervasive alcoholism of his parents and aunts and uncles and cousins and neighbors. It was probably written into his genes.

Bob was a gentle soul. Loved his dog and cat. Cared about people. He dreamed of serving people, of doing them good. It was an illusive dream. It was a hunger always blocked by his fatal weakness and the tyranny of alcohol.

When I would sit with Bob and his friends in their dilapidated house, I find myself wondering, does God notice? Is God watching?

Jesus insists, yes, God is watching. And his word to people like Bob, to people who are desperately hungry for an elusive righteousness, an unavailable well-being, is Blessing. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, they will be filled.

Blessed. Not screamed at by God. Affirmed by God. Not scorned, not condemned, not rejected. Blessed.

Further, God's promise is, “You will be filled.” Bob's hunger would not forever eat his soul. Bob was not consigned to eternal failure. In this world, for Bob, alcohol will always be a deadly threat. Bob would like to enjoy the freedom to casually, freely, comfortably say no to the urge to drink. Given his personal and genetic history, that's not going to happen. Not in this world. Only in a different world, with a brain transformation not imaginable here, can Bob enjoy that freedom. Jesus promised it would happen. A world where Bob will be different, where he will no longer be tormented by hunger that cannot be satisfied, hunger for an unreachable wholeness, an unattainable righteousness.

Jesus words are a special gift to people who struggle against the tyranny of addiction.

In contrast to Bob, who was fairly open about his struggles, William's hunger was deeply hidden. He first experienced drugs in his teen years—that was in the late sixties. In college he experienced a dramatic conversion. Along with others he led in a revival that swept Adventist college campuses. People were transformed, the course of their lives changed. People became ministers and teachers as a result of the power of God evident in William's ministry. He went to seminary where he demonstrated brilliant theological acumen, graduating magna cum laude. He was a dearly loved pastor before deciding to leave the clergy and take medicine. He became an admired, beloved physician.

Publicly through all those years of seminary, pastoring, medical school and medical practice, drug use merely part of his pre-conversion story. In reality, they had never let go of him. For decades, they secretly pleasured him, tormented him, and eventually ruined him.

To people like William Jesus said, Blessed are those who desperately long for holiness, honesty, self-control. They will be filled. Blessed, not cursed.

Some of us here this morning live with aching hunger for a righteousness that eludes us. Maybe we're battling an addiction. Maybe we coping with a profound sense of never being good enough. We learned in Bible class or from some preacher that the only acceptable standard for “these last days” is perfection. And we are not yet perfect. Our hunger for righteousness torments us. We experience our hunger as a measure of our condemnation or as a measure of our shame.

We imagine God watching our performance and scowling. Our flaws are blocking God's work in the world. We are responsible for the delay of the Second Coming. Our sense of inadequacy and failure is overwhelming. It crushes our spirits. We long to be better, to do better.

Jesus says to you: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, they will be filled.

God is not scolding you. God is not screaming at you in frustration. God is not shaming you. God notices your hunger and pronounces blessing. He offers hope. You will be filled.

Bob and William have found partial satisfaction of their hunger even in this life. The last time I talked with Bob he had been clean and sober for two, going on three, years. William has been clean and sober for three or four years. Both men live on the edge of relapse. The ultimate fulfillment satisfaction of their hunger is beyond this world, in a place where there is no more sin, no more weakness, no more dealers. Still, they are experiencing some measure of satisfaction. That is sweet.

It's easy to pronounce a blessing on those who have attained righteousness. If we had heard Bob or William tell of their victory over alcohol or drugs twenty or thirty years ago, we would have cheered. What a wonderful demonstration of the power of God to change lives!

Would we have been as boisterous and thrilled if we had know that the victory was temporary? Jesus calls us to celebrate the hunger for righteousness even if we do not see it satisfied. The challenge for us as disciples of Jesus is to set aside our natural instinct to condemn those who fail to realize their ideals and join Jesus in pronouncing blessing.

We should bless those who dream of triumphing over addictions. We should bless those who hunger for more control over their tongue. My guess is that there is more than one person here who is secretly ashamed of there inability to make their speech unfailingly courteous. How many times have you regretted your sharp words? You blow it. You speak sharply to your kids or your spouse or your employees. Then your conscience pricks you. You find yourself hungry for a sweeter tongue.

Jesus does not scold you for your failure. He blesses your for waking up and realizing that God's call is higher.

Let's be crystal clear, righteousness is worthy of our hunger. It is foolish and tragic to deal with the distance between our performance and our ideals by lowering our ideals.

When I was sitting at the kitchen table, faint from hunger, unable to hold my head up. The remedy was to shove food in my face whichever way I could. It would also be silly not to learn something from that fainting spell. Next time I will take more food. Our goal is not to deny our hunger but to satisfy it with good things.

Jesus blessed those who were tormented by hunger for righteousness. He assured them they were under the smile of God. He encouraged them in their pursuit of righteousness. And he urged them to keep that hunger alive.

So we come to church to encourage one another in our own pursuits of righteousness. Especially to those of you who think of yourselves as young, I challenge you to be satisfied with nothing less than righteousness.

Earn your degrees. Master your athletic skills. Become an expert in your field. Cultivate social skills. Build your networks. Those are all worthy goals. Above them all is the goal of righteousness. Integrity. Compassion. Self-control. Honesty. Generosity. A commitment to human well-being that goes beyond your family's standard of living.

If you are not now hungry for righteousness, if you find yourself quite satisfied, then maybe it's time for you to trying running a longer race, climbing a higher mountain. Dream of making a bigger difference in the world.

When we are aware of a distance between our performance and the ideal toward which we strive, Jesus' blessing sets us free from shame and condemnation. Jesus' blessing frees us to devote all of our energy to seeking to satisfy our hunger with the very best—righteousness, a life shaped by the teachings and example of Jesus.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. They will be filled. God will be pleased.

HERMEUTICAL NOTE:

In the Gospel of Matthew, righteousness means doing right, goodness, nobility, integrity, wholeness, spiritual and social well-being. The Pauline/Augustinian/Reformed notion of righteousness as “divine approval” is derived from the earlier and more fundamental definition of righteousness as doing right. In this view, God grants people his approval—i.e. counts them as righteous—on the basis of their spiritual connection with Jesus who was the supreme right-doer, the ultimate exemplar of goodness, nobility, integrity, wholeness, spiritual and social well-being.

Matthew presents many pictures of God's grace, the most dramatic of which is the first beatitude. He also vividly pictures the righteous life—that is a life lived according to the will of God—as the ideal for those who wished to participate in his kingdom. Jesus aims to move people toward a new, holy way of life. This is illustrated in the story of the call of Matthew the Tax Collector.

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at his tax collector's booth. "Follow me and be my disciple," Jesus said to him. So Matthew got up and followed him. Later, Matthew invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. But when the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with such scum?” When Jesus heard this, he said, "Healthy people don't need a doctor—sick people do." Then he added, "Now go and learn the meaning of this Scripture: 'I want you to show mercy, not offer sacrifices.' For I have come to call not the righteous, but sinners." Matthew 9:9-13

Jesus looked at human brokenness and said that's what I'm here for. I'm a physician. My job is healing. And Jesus fully intends to succeed as a healer. He intends to move people from wherever they are in the realm of sin and darkness into the pattern of life he has mapped out for the children of light. Jesus is a teacher who expects his students to learn.