Reading: Matthew 5.20-26,43-48
We live in an age that places the highest value on personal ambition, self-advancement, self-fulfilment and material gain – even at the expense of moral principles. Jesus the Master Teacher said, “Happy are those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires; God will satisfy them fully!” (Mt. 5.6)
This “greatest desire” is, more literally, “hunger and thirst”.
Television has stirred us with graphic pictures of starvation in a number of countries worldwide. Nations and individuals have responded to appeals for food aid. Christmas Bowl money has been used to dig wells for communities with inadequate water supplies.
Against this background, we find it rather difficult at first to see what happiness there might be in hunger and thirst. Yet hunger is a natural and healthy sign of life.
All of us have had periods of sickness in which we have “gone off” our food. Then, when fully recovered, we “get our appetite back”. I recall visiting a young man involved in the serious head-on collision on Crosby Hill Road. He said to the intensive care nurse, “Is that dinner?” She said, “I’ll have to see about that.” But he could see that, indeed, some food had arrived for him – just a cup of soup and some jelly and custard – and he was feeling ravenous!
In a previous parish we had a whole team of people supporting, encouraging and praying for a girl with anorexia nervosa. Doctors, counsellors, psychiatrists and friends from the church all faced the trauma of yet another relapse. What were the origins of this lack of desire to eat? She would protest, “I’m just not hungry!”
God has made us with a hunger, not just for food and drink and for social contacts, but for fellowship with himself.
The Psalmist wrote, “As a deer longs for a stream of cool water, so I long for you, O God. I thirst for you, the living God; when can I go and worship in your presence?” (Ps.42.1-2)
This spiritual hunger is as normal and natural as our physical hunger. The lack of this desire to know and be with God is a sign that something is seriously wrong. The failure to recognise and treat this spiritual anorexia leads to serious consequences.
The old words of this Beatitude speak of “righteousness”. The word speaks of a right relationship with God and conformity to his will. We could translate, “Happy are those who earnestly desire to be right with God and to do what he requires...”
There were people then (and now) who were only concerned with the outward appearance of good works and piety. But in today’s reading, we heard Jesus say, “I tell you, then, that you will be able to enter the Kingdom of heaven only if you are more faithful than the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees in doing what God requires” (v. 20). The examples that he goes on to give make it clear that this righteousness works from the inside out – it comes from a heart and life transformed.
When we were thinking about the spiritually poor, we noted the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Lk.18.9-14). It was the tax collector who came acknowledging his sin and asking for God’s mercy. Jesus said of him, “he was in the right with God when he went home.”
He was aware of the great discrepancy. He knew that he fell far short of God’s intentions. He was hungry and thirsty for a life that was different. He felt trapped by his actions – how could he ever know God?
“As a deer longs for a stream of cool water, so I long for you, O God. I thirst for you, the living God...” “God, have pity on me, a sinner!”
Becoming right with God begins with this hunger and thirst, begins with this call for mercy, begins with this acceptance of God’s mercy in Christ. But this new relationship, this righteousness, will now be worked out in life – because of God’s acceptance, not to win it or earn it. Paul puts it this way, “For it is by God’s grace that you have been saved through faith. It is not the result of your own efforts, but God’s gift, so that no one can boast about it. God has made us what we are, and in our union with Christ Jesus he has created us for a life of good deeds, which he has already prepared for us to do.”
“God will satisfy them fully.”
By word and action, Jesus declared again and again that God desires to welcome people back into a right relationship. He expressed it in the parable mentioned – and also in the parable of the Prodigal Son (Lk. 15.11-32). We see it in his call of Matthew (Mt. 9.9-13) and of Zacchaeus (Lk. 15.11-32) . It is there in his attitude to the woman caught in adultery (Jn 8.1ff) and in his reaction to the woman, a known sinner, who anointed his feet with precious ointment (Lk. 7.26-50).
“God will satisfy them fully.”
God wants us back! Jesus came to make it possible for us to come back! The Just one has died for the unjust – “in order to lead you to God” (1 Pet. 3.18).
He offers forgiveness leading into a whole new life. This promised blessing is for all who will receive it!
© Peter J Blackburn, 2012
Except where otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Good News Bible, © American Bible Society, 1992.