Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Bob Henry
February 9, 2025
Good morning, Friends, and welcome to Light Reflections. This morning we continue our exploration of the Beatitudes and will look at Matthew 5:6 from the New Revised Standard Version.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
I want to start this morning with some queries:
· What do you long for, yearn for, lay awake at night dreaming about?
· What do you hunger and thirst for deep down in your soul?
Maybe it has been a while since you had thoughts like these. Or maybe you have realized that much of what you yearn, hunger and thirst for never becomes reality.
When I was a kid, I desperately wanted to go to space on the space shuttle. I loved science and the space program. My parents even took me to Kennedy Space Center to satisfy my hunger and thirst for everything space. Sadly, I learned quickly in my exploration that astronauts had to be really good at math – I mean really good. So, my dreaming of a career in space quickly faced reality.
Maybe you had similar yearnings, dreams, hungers or thirsts, that today have faded or have evolved.
In our beatitude for today, Jesus says that there is a hunger that can be satisfied but it is not something that most people really care that much about these days. In Matthew 5:6 he says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
At first glance it doesn’t sound nearly as exciting as traveling into outer space (which I have to say, today, doesn’t even appeal to me). But the more I think about having a hunger for righteousness, the more appetizing it sounds. Think about it for a moment – especially in our current condition.
What would be different in the world if life was characterized by righteousness?
What if people actually did the right thing, treated each other with dignity, watched out for the hurting and weak and generally loved God and their neighbor above all else?
Can you imagine? Maybe this is why at funerals, disasters, national and international events, we continue to turn to the lyrics of the song that asks the same:
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
So, while we are pondering, or hungering and thirsting for a world like that, let’s take a deeper look at what Jesus was saying and speaking to in his time.
Historians tell us that because of the leadership of Herod the Great the people of Israel had been reduced to living in poverty (probably effecting even Jesus’ family, because in scripture when they came to the temple they only could afford the cheapest sacrifice, doves).
While Herod did not create a famine, it was common for people to share their food and money as a form of welfare. So, when Jesus spoke these words in our beatitude for this morning, the people of his day understood it better than we do.
In our day and in our privileged lives, food and water are plentiful, so we miss the urgency that Jesus intended.
Just the other night, I was flipping through the TV channels and saw the ending of the Tom Hank’s movie “Cast Away.” I personally think the best part of that movie begins when he is found by the barge floating to his death. Every scene is brilliantly written and filmed to show the reality of his struggle. From being offered a glass of ice, to a buffet with crab legs, to a simple lighter or pocket knife on his keys. All are presented to him as he returns to reality after 4 years stranded on an island, where he had to work so hard just to survive. All without the things we take for granted on a daily basis.
Hungry, thirsty people work hard, urgently, to gain food. To hunger and thirst for righteousness, then, means we should urgently pursue righteousness.
Let’s take a deeper pass through this Beatitude’s onion layers and look at the Greek again.
The first key Greek word that Jesus used was peinao. It is translated as “hunger” in our passage. It has the sense of a strong desire for food. It is the same word that was used to describe Jesus’ hunger after He had been in the wilderness for 40 days and nights without food. After 40 days of fasting, Jesus would have been very hungry, as would we. This Greek word describes a strong hunger for food.
The next key Greek word that Jesus uses is dipsao. It also describes a strong desire, but this time for water. It was used in John 19:28 to describe Jesus’ thirst after He had been whipped and beaten for hours by the Roman solders and then had been left hanging on the cross for hours. Near the end, Jesus cried out for something to drink and said, “I thirst.” That is the word Jesus used in this beatitude.
Another important Greek word that Jesus used was chortazo. The word was used to refer to fattened cattle. That is, it means having all that you want. This animal or person is completely satisfied or filled to the brim.
What is very interesting and must be pointed out is that the Greek words for “hunger” and “thirst” are both in the present tense. This means that Jesus was describing someone who was continually hungry and thirsty. Thus, we could rewrite the beatitude like this,
Blessed are those who are constantly, continually hungering and thirsting after righteousness, for they shall be completely and totally satisfied and filled to the brim.
Another thing we need to look at is what does it mean to hunger and thirst for righteousness?
The Greek word translated here as righteousness is dikaiosune, a term that refers to personal righteousness as well as to social justice. Those who hunger and thirst for dikaiosune have a deep yearning for things to be right in their individual lives as well as in society.
This is why studying the Greek is so important – unlike in English, Greek words often hold dual or multiple meanings – as I showed you last week with the word “meek.”
Cynthia Bourgeault describes righteousness in Jesus’s time. She says,
“righteousness was something much more dynamic than being moral or behaving correctly.”
Which many have translated it to mean, today. She also says, you can visualize it as a force field, an energy-charged sphere of holy presence. To be ‘in the right’ consciousness of God… means to be directly connected to this vibrational field, to be anchored within God’s own aliveness….as fierce and intransigent a bond as picking up a downed electrical wire…intensity of connectedness.”
The image that comes to mind is something from the Marvel movie, Black Panther – when T’Challa finds that his suit absorbs energy and then realizes he has more power to utilize. Obviously, he often used that for violence, but when we “hunger and thirst for righteousness and social justice” we fill ourselves up with a power that not only connects us to God but also to that of God in all people – this is a vibrational field of connectedness. For us Quakers it happens often in gathered meetings and unprogrammed worship – in these spaces as we hunger and thirst together, we absorb the Spirit’s energy and gain a new power together to make a difference in our world.
Bourgeault goes on to say that
“Some spiritual teachers will even say that the yearning you feel for God is actually coming from the opposite direction; it is in fact God’s yearning for you.”
Or maybe God’s yearning for righteousness for all people is part of our nature, too.
The Greek word for righteousness, dikaiosyne, means righteousness and justice, but it also means being in the proper relationship with God.
So, it’s not just about wanting to be righteous, but equally important, a person is to be in the right relationship to the Creator AND their neighbor – where that of God resides. This is why Jesus says the greatest commandment is to Love God and the second is to love your neighbor as you love yourself.
So, righteousness is about much more than simply following rules and being good people. There is a burning desire for making things right and bringing justice in the righteous person that cannot be quenched with the usual daily good works.
No, there is a much bigger hunger and thirst, and it is empowered by the consciousness of God flowing through us – from God, to and through us, and out into the world and to our neighbors.
We could name lots of people over the ages who have hungered and thirsted for righteousness: the Apostle Paul and the disciples after Pentecost, Francis of Assisi, or how about Teresa of Avila or Julian of Norwich, or many of the Catholic female mystics (who we will be exploring at this year’s Linda Lee Spirituality Retreat), and then there is George Fox and Margaret Fell and every one of the Quakers who I talked about in my last sermon series, and since it is Black History Month, we cannot forget Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglas, Martin Luther King Jr., and so many more, who followed the consciousness and inspiration of God to do their life’s work and to fulfill their purpose with God and their neighbor.
Folks, these were ordinary people (like you and me) who lived during trying times (also as we are in, today) – they hungered and thirsted and filled themselves to overflowing with the righteousness of God so that they could change their world. And now, it is our turn.
So, I return to those original two queries for us to ponder this morning:
· What do I long for, yearn for, lay awake at night dreaming about?
· What do I hunger and thirst for deep down in my soul?
I think it is time for people, like you and me, to actually do the right thing, treat each other with dignity, watch out for the hurting and weak and genuinely love God and our neighbor above all else. May it be so.