“Happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they shall be satisfied.” (Matthew 5:6)
So Jesus commends a hunger for something different,
something that has significance in the whole scheme of life a hunger that when
filled with the right thing has lasting quality. Second, Jesus blesses appetite for righteousness.
Righteousness is a word that is used throughout
Scripture to convey a specific kind of wholeness as it relates to God’s dream
for the world. It literally means “right doing” which is applied to the context
of justice; doing what is right and just on behalf of those in need, being a
voice for the voiceless, a help for the helpless, a power for the powerless, a
hope for the hopeless. It’s a very active word—a verb, really—where a person of
justice not only values and respects all of life but works passionately and
tirelessly to bring wholeness and meaningful life to those who need it most.
Biblical righteousness is always described as an outgrowth of God’s
righteousness. It conveys a human passion and hunger to work on behalf of God
to set things right in the most just and merciful way possible, whether it’s for
people or the environment and natural world.
It is the pursuit of this kind of righteousness,
it is the passion and hunger for this kind of life, that Jesus says brings the
highest and deepest satisfaction and fulfillment. Because, as Scripture
emphasizes over and over again, when we
encounter those areas of life of greatest need and suffering and injustice, we
are encountering God. No wonder we experience such deep and meaningful
fulfillment when we hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Mother Theresa often said that when she held
that tiny dying child on the streets of Calcutta, she knew she was holding God.
And those acts of mercy and righteousness brought her greatest joy and most
profound spiritual satisfaction beyond anything else she did in her life.
It’s a fundamental spiritual principle: when we live to serve and love the broken
places in life, our own brokenness becomes more healed and we find greater
wholeness ourselves. When we live and hunger for what God lives and hungers
for, we are satisfied.
David Letterman once interviewed Eric Bergoust,
the American Olympic gold medalist in the freestyle aerial ski competition some
years ago. Dave asked Eric how many jumps he had to do in the finals. “Two,”
Eric replied, “So they have to be good, perfect if you’re going to get the
medal.”
“Well, what I want to know,” Dave said as the
audience began to snicker, “is how in the world you can get back up on your
skis and go flying down the hill and then shoot straight up into the sky doing
all sorts of twists and turns … after you’ve had a major crash. I mean, you had
a spectacular crash-landing earlier in the week.”
Eric smiled and the audience laughed out loud as
a video clip was shown of Eric’s disastrous run. After twisting and turning in
midair, he ended up landing right on his face; as Eric pointed out after the
clip, right on his Adam’s apple. It was a spectacular flop, looked terribly
painful!
“How do you get back up and do it again?” Dave
asked.
“Well, in all my years of ski jumping, I’ve had
thousands of face-plants in the snow. You get to knowing how it feels after a while.
I guess you kind of get used to it. So it doesn’t scare you. And you’re willing
to get back up and try again for that perfect jump. You get back up and do it
again if you want to win!”
That’s passion. Hunger. It’s what a person is
willing to do if they’re really hungry for something. You feel the hunger. You
allow it to move and motivate you to action. And you do something about it. You
direct that hunger to where it counts the most.
Imagine what could happen in this broken and
hurting world if people invested the same hunger and passion and tenacity
toward righteousness and justice they put toward winning a medal or a game or a
promotion or a courtship or an addiction. Imagine the kind of wholeness people
would enjoy within themselves as well as within the world.
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