A Kingdom for Those Who Hunger for Righteousness
For Meditation (corey Widmer)
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
The fourth beatitude is sort of a “hinge” that holds together the beatitudes before and after it. On the one hand, it shares the quality of the beatitudes before it because it speaks to human need. Just as Jesus blessed those who were lacking in spirit (v.3), lacking in joy (v.4), and lacking in power (v.5), now Jesus blesses those who are lacking in righteousness (v.6). They hunger for it because they need it from God. They are aware of their lack.
On the other hand, unlike the first three beatitudes, the fourth beatitude begins to orient us outward toward our neighbors, much like the 5th, 6th and 7th beatitudes that we'll look at in the coming weeks. The ‘righteousness’ that Jesus speaks of is not a private, internal morality, but refers to “rightly ordered relationships” with neighbors and the world.
So you could put it like this: Jesus blesses those who hunger and thirst to see the Kingdom come on earth as it is heaven in the lives of their neighbors and their communities. They are acutely aware of the Kingdom's absence, and of the presence of injustice and suffering in the world around them. Yet they deeply yearn for the day when God will bring about the world-made-right, and they yearn to participate in its coming.
Jesus says that people who live with this yearning for the Kingdom will one day be deeply satisfied.
In preparation for worship, consider the following questions:
What do you most deeply yearn for? What is the object of your soul's strongest appetites?
As you look around your community, neighborhood and world, where do you see an absence of God's love and justice?
How could you live with a deeper yearning for God's Kingdom to come?
Matthew 5:1–5
1 Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2 and he began to teach them.
He said:
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.