“The Blessing of a Hungry Heart”

Matthew 5:7

“…let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.” Amos 5:24.

“… cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow” Isaiah 1:16-17.

“… and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Micah 6:8.

“Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.” Jesus in Matthew 23:23.

Justice and righteousness. Righteousness and justice. We can’t have one without the other. We are not in a truly right relationship with God unless that relationship is reflected in our right relationships with one another. There can be no right relationships without justice – God’s justice. God’s justice, God’s law, God’s will: these are not matters of keeping strict sets of rules or unwavering adherence to rituals. They involve an active and passionate striving to discern and carry out the will of God: in our lives, in our homes, in our communities, in our nation, in our world, and in our churches.

Please note that it is this striving for righteousness that God desires of us, not perfectly achieving it this side of heaven. The Apostle Paul made it very clear that none of us is righteous, no not even one. Only in Jesus Christ can we be made right with God. The crucifixion took care of that. And if we truly are in Christ, if we are indeed his faithful disciples, then we will seek to do God’s will, we will seek righteousness in all our relationships, with the same passionate yearning as the starving man has for food and the man dying of thirst has for water. It is this unceasingly passionate yearning for and praying for righteousness that marks us as disciples of Jesus, that opens us to the blessing of having our yearnings fulfilled.

Back to the text: the Today’s English Version’s translation describes people who passionately strive for righteousness as “those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires.” And what did Micah tell us God desires of us? To do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God. Isaiah describes the person striving for righteousness as someone willing to cease doing evil, learn to do good, and work to defend those unable to defend themselves. There is no righteousness without justice, and there can be no justice until we are willing to oppose evil, especially the evil in our own hearts, uphold goodness, treat others with kindness, and walk through life with an attitude of humility.

There’s that humility thing again. It’s a common thread that not only runs through all of the Beatitudes, but also through all of Scripture. Again and again, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob demanded humility of his people. Again and again, Jesus made it clear that humility was one of the rock-bottom attributes of a disciple. Again and again, we are reminded that we are nothing apart from God’s grace. Without humility it is impossible to accept as real our need for God’s grace. Without humility we cannot put ourselves in a position to receive that grace.

Without that grace we cannot know the deep hunger we have for God. Without grace, that hunger can never be satisfied. Apart from God’s grace working in our lives through the power of the Holy Spirit we will never passionately yearn to see God’s justice and righteousness prevail in our lives and in our world.

If it seems that I’m talking in circles, well, it’s because I’m talking in circles. There is no righteousness without justice. There is no justice without righteousness. There can be neither justice nor righteousness in our hearts and in our lives apart from grace, mercy, kindness, faithfulness, and humility. Not as noble ideals. Not as abstract ideas. Not as some sort of vague spirituality that is detached from real life. And definitely not as that arrogantly assumed righteousness that is self-righteousness, which really isn’t righteousness at all.

We Presbyterians know a lot about self-righteousness. The liberals promote a self-righteous social agenda, that while appropriately focusing on the injustices of our culture and the world, inappropriately ignores God’s demand for personal righteousness and piety in terms of moral and ethical behavior. To some extent they’ve hijacked the notion of God’s justice for themselves, often thinking that any theology other than their own is unjust.

Conservatives can also be self-righteous, but in a different way. The stress on individual righteousness as measured by one’s willingness to refrain from selected works of the flesh, more often than not those dealing with sex, often leaves them blind to the great social sins of our day. And sometimes they take on an uncomfortable likeness to those Pharisees with whom Jesus had to deal.

I realize that I’m guilty of some simplistic overgeneralization. So be it. When God’s judgment fell on Israel it was as much for social and economic injustices as it was for gross indulgences in the sins of the flesh. When Jesus ripped the Pharisees it was often in terms of their cold and heartless religiosity that allowed them to adhere to the letter of the law while severely sinning against its spirit. Conversely, although Jesus ate and drank with immoral and unethical people, he never condoned sinful behavior. In the moment after he had brought those men who were about to stone a woman caught in adultery face to face with their own self-righteousness, he turned to the woman and told her to sin no more. Injustice and self-righteousness are sins. So, too, is personal immorality.

The person who passionately desires and pursues the righteousness of God is opposed to any and all forms of sinfulness. Evil, no matter what form it takes, is an affront to God. As we individually seek to faithfully follow Jesus we must be prayerfully in touch with our own attitudes and behaviors, especially as they reflect on the cause of Christ or do harm to other people. We must also be aware of the sin going on in the world around us, opposing it to the best of our ability. We cannot stand idly by, turning a blind eye to policies, beliefs, and behaviors in our culture – or our church - that cause human suffering. People are not to be used, abused, and objectified in the pursuit of pleasure, power, profit, or political gain. Sinful behavior is to be named for what it is no matter how accepted, popular, or profitable it may be. Example: Just as we censure those who buy, sell, and participate in the making of pornography, we must also censure those so-called respectable people and businesses that profit from the marketing of it.

None of us is righteous, no not even one of us. We are unrighteous people living in an unrighteous world. But if we are Christians, even as we implicitly trust that Jesus has purchased our righteousness with his blood, and even as we look forward to that day when the righteousness of God will be eternally perfected and our hunger for it satisfied, we must still pursue righteousness. We must hunger and thirst for it, hope for it, pray for it, and work for it.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness: who hunger and thirst to see right prevail, whose greatest desire is to do what God requires, who hunger and thirst for all that sets them right with God. They shall be fully satisfied. Not because they were perfect in their righteousness, but because they so desperately sought it. Amen.