Beatitude: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
I was on the baseball team while I was a student at Hesston College. Each year in March, we would travel to Phoenix, Arizona during spring break to play in a tournament. Our coach had a good perspective on life. He took baseball seriously, but also knew, and wanted us to know, that life was about more than playing a game. So each year, on our way home, we would take a diversion north to visit the Grand Canyon and see one of God’s greatest natural beauties.
One particular year, we hiked several miles down into the canyon to a majestic view. It was breathtaking.
Going down was the easy part. Coming back up, was the hard part. We were all 18-20-year-old athletes, in prime physical condition, but that hike back up the canyon, switch-back after switchback, ascending several miles along the sheer vertical wall of the canyon kicked our butts. Additionally, the weather turned windy and began to snow.
I remember being so cold, and so tired, and so HUNGRY when I finally reached the top. Yet before we could eat we still had to drive 45 minutes back to our hotel, and then wait another 45 minutes for the pizza to be delivered. When the pizza finally arrived, I could not wait to sink my teeth into it.
When hunger reaches that level, it’s an interesting phenomenon. It’s as if a person’s body has reached a certain limit. The person needs food and drinks at an essential and core level. A person longs for food so deeply that they can think of nothing else until that hunger and thirst are satiated.
Psalm 42:1-2 says, “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I behold the face of God.”
Hunger and thirst are apt metaphors for our deep longing. I would go even further and say that it’s not just a metaphor. Our deep longings for God, for justice, for righteousness, are in fact deep pangs of hunger and deep thirsts.
In the fourth beatitude, Jesus says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” I can attest that when I finally bit into that savory, meaty, doughy, melty piece of pizza, I felt blessed. This beatitude gives a similar promise to those who hunger not for physical food and drink, but for God’s righteousness and justice.
If you are reading closely, you may notice that the beatitude just uses the single word, “righteousness,” while I’ve been using two words, “justice and righteousness.” This is my attempt to be very technical and accurate in the words we use.
In the Hebrew worldview and language, there was only one word that meant both justice and righteousness. In our English language, we have two words, that each brings out a different aspect of the world. People tend to associate the word “righteousness” with personal holiness before God. People tend to associate the word “justice” with social relationships.
If we could stand before Jesus and ask him, “Teacher, are you talking about personal holiness or social relationships?” he would answer, “Yes!”
After all, this is the same teacher who said the greatest commandment was to love God, and the second is like it; to love neighbor. A person can’t love God without loving their neighbor, and a person can’t fully love their neighbor (especially the difficult ones) without loving God.
Unfortunately in our polarized world today, the two essential concepts of personal righteousness and social justice have been pulled apart. I guess it’s not surprising that the world becomes polarized. What is disheartening is that even within the church there are polarized camps between those that emphasize personal righteousness and those that emphasize social justice.
Yet either emphasis, without the other, is heresy. Literally. Heresy means to reduce something. It means to reduce something to an absolute that overtakes the whole. It happened in the early church where one group emphasized Jesus’ divinity over his humanity, and another group emphasized Jesus’ humanity over his divinity. Each group reduced Jesus to one over the other and lost sight of the whole.
The same thing is happening in our world with regard to righteousness and justice.
Personally, I grew up in an era where the dominant Christian voice emphasized, personal, spiritual holiness. In such a context, it is necessary and right to emphasize and work toward social justice. We must continue to do so, without neglecting one’s inner relationship and attitude toward God, the work of Christ, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
Zacchaeus was a man who held the two together. We read about him in Luke chapter 19. He was a tax collector. As a tax collector, he benefited materially at the expense of those suffered under difficult financial situations.
Then Jesus came by. Despite Zacchaeus’ physical wellbeing, there was a deep hunger inside of him for something more, so he went to see Jesus. Jesus saw Zacchaeus and went to his home for the evening.
Luke 19:6 says that Zacchaeus welcomed Jesus. Let’s pause there. Zacchaeus welcomed to the fullness of Jesus into his home. He didn’t just invite part of Jesus, though he certainly might not have expected all of who Jesus was.
This encounter affected Zacchaeus. It satisfied a deep hunger and thirst that had not yet been satisfied.
And Zacchaeus didn’t stop there. His hunger and thirst for righteousness with God led him to an equal hunger and thirst for justice with others. He knew he had defrauded people. He knew he benefited at their expense. He knew it wasn’t enough to simply have a personal encounter with Jesus. He completed his encounter with Jesus by pursuing social justice.
(Other interpretations of Zacchaeus suggest that maybe he had already pursued social justice before encountering Jesus, and that could be true. I’m convinced that full conversion to the righteousness of the Kingdom of God can flow in both directions.)
If Zacchaeus had just encountered Jesus personally, he would not have been fully satisfied. A nagging thirst would have remained because his conscience would have known that he wasn’t fully aligned with God’s will. If Zacchaeus had just pursued human justice, he might have remained bitter, empty, and lost.
The Mennonite missionary John Driver points out in his book Kingdom Citizens that righteousness does not equal moralism. Too much of what passes as Christianity is mere moralism, and great energy is directed toward enforcing one’s preferred moral and purity codes.
Rather, righteousness before God involves aligning with God’s will. We see in the Sermon on the Mount that aligning with God’s will means ordering one’s life to the teachings of Jesus. In the Sermon on the Mount, the teachings of Jesus are personal and social. They have to do with human wellbeing in its broadest sense and describe a life characterized by love.
So here’s a practical exercise. Anytime you come across the word “righteousness” or “justice” in the bible, substitute it with the phrase “right relationships.”
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for the right relationships, for they will be satisfied. The prophet Micah makes this clear in Micah 6:6-8. It’s not about a religious moralism, or what we might consider today to be virtue signaling. Rather, it’s about the quality of the relationship, with God and others.
Brene Brown, author, and professor of Social Work at the University of Houston put it this way, “I’m here to get it right, not to be right.”
In regards to interpreting this fourth beatitude, I think she nails it.
May we like Zacchaeus, follow the teaching of Jesus to focus more on getting it right, rather than being right. If we do that, I believe we will find ourselves closer and closer to the Kingdom of God.
AMEN.
Joel Shenk is the pastor of Toledo Mennonite Church and lives in Toledo with his wife and two daughters. Originally from Scottdale, PA, Joel studied at Hesston College, Eastern Mennonite University, and Fuller Theological Seminary. He has been pastoring since 2010 and is also an amateur blacksmith apart of the RAW Tools disarming network turning guns into garden tools. He likes baseball and is an avid fly angler.
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