Hilton Head Island, SC – March 18, 2012
The Chapel Without Walls
Mark 10:17-22; Mark 11:15-19
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. – Matthew 5:6 (RSV)
BLESSED ARE …THE SEEKERS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
Geographically, the land of Israel is like the state of California in certain respects. There are places in both locations which are naturally green and fertile, but they are relatively few and far between. The seacoast of Israel gets a good bit of rain throughout much of the year, just as much of northern California has plenty of rain. But everything east of the north-south mountain range in Israel and the entire southern part of the country is very dry desert, and nearly everything south of San Francisco in California would be almost an uninhabitable desert were it not for water brought in from the northern part of the state or from the Colorado River. Both California and Israel are wonderful and beautiful places, but it is not because either God or nature naturally made them paradises on earth. It has taken a huge amount of effort by human beings to turn what otherwise would be a forbidding wasteland into a semi-tropical garden.
The most fertile part of Israel is the Plain of Esdralon and the Jezreel Valley just south of Nazareth. When Jesus presumably delivered the Sermon on the Mount, he did so on a rocky mountainside to the north of the Sea of Galilee. The people who listened to him were very poor peasants. Some of them no doubt made sufficient income that they never went hungry, but probably the majority of them were so poor they regularly didn’t have enough to eat or drink.
Therefore the fourth Beatitude would speak very powerfully to people such as that: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” It was the continuous reality of their poverty which would lead them to perk up their ears when Jesus said those particular words. If sometimes you didn’t have enough to eat, and anyone promised you anything as a result of your hungering and thirsting, you would pay very close attention.
Fortunately, I have never been poor, nor do I suspect any of you has been really poor. Thus we cannot truly imagine what it would be like to live like that. My supposition is that many if not most poor people believe their poverty is not solely of their own doing, but that an unrighteous system places them on the lower rungs of the income ladder. That may or not be true. But Jesus told them that if they honestly hungered for righteousness, they would find it and be satisfied. The implication seems to be that God would give it to them.
However, surely Jesus intended a desire for righteousness to be a two-way street. That is, it was certainly acceptable to seek righteousness from other people, but it was also necessary to seek righteousness from oneself. We cannot expect others to treat us fairly if we do not treat them fairly. Even in an unfair social order (and every social order has its built-in inequities), it behooves all those who want to follow God’s commands for His kingdom to do whatever they can to promote righteousness, despite many people being on the bottom of the societal pile.
How much does any of us really desire righteousness? All three of the Synoptic Gospels have stories about a wealthy man who came to Jesus, wanting to become a disciple. In Matthew the man is further identified as being young, and in Luke it says that he was a ruler, or leader, of his synagogue. Thus he has always been known as “the rich young ruler.”
The man began his conversation with Jesus by asking an earnest question. “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He obviously considered Jesus a proper rabbi, because he referred to Jesus as “Good Teacher.” Without question the “rich young ruler” hungered for righteousness. Nothing in any of the three accounts of this episode suggests otherwise. He wanted to do whatever would make him righteous. However, Mark’s Gospel gives us a detail neither of the other Synoptics provides. It says, “And Jesus looking on him loved him.” At a glance Jesus realized the sincerity of this earnest seeker, and he was greatly impressed by that sincerity.
Then, perhaps looking at the young man’s $2000 Savile Row suit and his $400 Italian alligator-skin loafers, Jesus said, with sorrow in his heart, “One thing you lack; go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Mark tells us, “At that saying his countenance fell, and he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions” (10:22). We shall leave the story at that. If you want someone to deal with the wealth issue, you will have to ask Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum or Barack Obama. They all have strong but conflicting notions about keeping the rich rich. We have other fish to fry in this sermon, and we shall proceed to try to fry them, the issue of wealth distribution notwithstanding.
For our purposes, the point is this: did the rich young ruler hunger and thirst for righteousness enough? Was he sufficiently motivated? Are we sufficiently motivated? Do we hunger to do the right in the same way that a starving man hungers for food?
My old and now long-deceased biblical mentor William Barclay has yet another fascinating comment on the fourth Beatitude. He says that in New Testament Greek the words for hungering or thirsting are always followed by the partitive genitive. I suspect each of you is intellectually blown away to realize that. I confess I certainly was. So what does it mean? Well, Willie says, in English we would literally translate the Greek to say, “I hunger for of bread,” or “I thirst for of water.” Of course that makes no sense in English, but here is the idea in Greek: I hunger for some bread, not the whole loaf. I thirst for some water, but not the whole jug.
And now for the essential Willie Barclay linguistic commentary: In the fourth Beatitude, it is not the partitive genitive which is used, but the accusative --- I hunger and thirst for the entirety of righteousness. In 21st century idiomatic American English, we would say, “I hunger and thirst for the whole enchilada of righteousness, for everything that righteousness entails.”
Does anybody do that? Can anybody do that? We can’t put that degree of righteousness into effect, because sin prevents us from doing it, but we can hunger and thirst for it nonetheless. And Jesus is telling us that if we really hunger and thirst for true righteousness, in ourselves as well as from others, that we shall be sufficiently satisfied to accomplish it through God.
It is no easy assignment to become a follower of Jesus Christ. As the 20th century German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” “Take up your cross and follow me,” said Jesus. It was not an insignificant or offhand observation. He who knew his own cross was soon coming challenged us to take up our own crosses in our quest to enter fully into God’s kingdom.
On the other hand, Jesus bids few of us, and probably none at all, literally to die, or to be executed for our discipleship. In a similar way, Jesus does not literally promise that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will necessarily attain it. As I said earlier, sin prevents any of us from achieving complete righteousness. However, Jesus surely is telling us that if we sufficiently attempt to attain righteousness, we shall be sufficiently satisfied within ourselves merely for having done so. “Sufficient attempt” is the key word. As Jesus said later in the Sermon on the Mount, after he had presented the Beatitudes, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Mt. 7:21). The words don’t matter if the deeds don’t follow.
Nearly everyone remembers the story in which Jesus overturned the tables of the moneychangers in the temple. Oddly, this event happened very early in Jesus’ ministry in the Fourth Gospel. In the three Synoptics, however, it happened on Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday of what the Church calls Holy Week.
As in most such matters, I tend to side with the historicity of the first three Gospels rather than the fourth. When Jesus came into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the first thing he wanted to do was to make a major symbolic statement about what he thought were the abuses of the sacrificial religion practiced by the temple priests. For Jesus, the number of animals sacrificed on the altar had nothing to do with the forgiveness of anyone’s sins. Only God could forgive sins, and nothing any of us might do, including taking the lives of innocent animals or actively pursuing righteousness, would atone for sin.
When Jesus went into the temple, he went first to the place where he knew the moneychangers always set up their tables. He loudly shouted so that everyone with earshot would hear him, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all that nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers!”
To us that may seem solely like an attack against the people who changed various forms of money from various nations into the coinage by which they could purchase a pigeon or goat or lamb to be slaughtered by the priests. But really it was primarily an attack against the priests and the entire sacrificial system of religion. By his bold, even brash, actions, Jesus was declaring that no human activity can atone for sin; none. Only God can provide a proper atonement. And in a few days Jesus was going to engage in the ultimate demonstration of how that could be done, by means of the cross which Jesus knew loomed ever larger in his path throughout the Holy City.
By means of the cleansing of the temple, Jesus showed us how we should hunger and thirst for righteousness. This is not a minor thing, a low-key thing. It is a major thrust, a bold move, a difficult and even dangerous challenge. We must not faintly or mildly hunger and thirst for righteousness; we must give ourselves wholeheartedly to the attempt, or else it isn’t worth doing in the first place.
Now I shall make some statements which can easily be misconstrued. I pondered not saying them at all, but I concluded perhaps they will better illustrate what the fourth Beatitude is all about. We need to seek righteousness the way the Taliban do, but decidedly without the mindless fanaticism. We need to hunger and thirst for it the way the members of Al Qaeda say they do, but without their excessive and bloodthirsty zeal. The problem with zealots is always that they seem incapable of realizing they cannot and they do not measure up to their own super-charged zeal. Nevertheless, their hearts are in the right place, even if invariably their heads are severely and tragically dislocated.
But we need also to understand that there are great differences in the levels of our righteousness. An illustration: A priest and rabbi happened to be seated next to one another on an airplane. After exchanging pleasantries, the priest asked the rabbi, “Is it still a requirement for rabbis that they not eat pork?” “Oh yes,” said the rabbi, “and not only for rabbis, but for all Jews.” “Have you ever eaten pork?” the priest asked. Embarrassed, the rabbi said, “I confess that one time I did eat a ham sandwich - - - but only once!” A short time later, the rabbi asked the priest, “Is it still a requirement that priests must be celibate?” “Yes,” said the priest. “Did you ever break the rule?” the rabbi asked. With a rapidly reddening countenance, the priest said, “Yes - - - but only once.” The rabbi was quiet for a few moments, and then he said to the priest, “It sure beats a ham sandwich, doesn’t it?”
Jesus is NOT telling us to become thoughtless pursuers of righteousness. But I suspect Jesus would agree that there is a difference between a violation over a ham sandwich and one over a vow of celibacy. Instead he is urging us to seek to do the right as though we were starving people seeking food and drink. He also is telling us that we can’t say we long for righteousness and then we ignore those who are in need all around us. Further, Jesus also would probably tell us it is better to be a no-good scoundrel who helps people in need than a self-proclaimed goody-two-shoes who wouldn’t give a crumb to a starving panhandler regardless of what the needy person told him.
Let us hear how William Barclay put it. “This beatitude says, it is not enough to be satisfied with a partial goodness. Blessed is the man who hungers and thirsts for the goodness which is total and complete. Neither an icy faultlessness nor a faulty warm-heartedness is enough. So then, the fourth beatitude could run: O the bliss of the man who longs for total righteousness as a starving man longs for food, and a man perishing of thirst longs for water, for that man will be truly satisfied!”
If, in the deepest part of our being, we truly hunger and thirst for righteousness, we shall be satisfied: not satiated, not sated, not gluttonously gorged, but satisfied. What God gives us will suffice; it will be sufficient. But it will occur, and we will know it has occurred, only when we truly hunger and thirst to do what we know we ought to do. Neither God nor Jesus requires of us anything we can’t do, but they do require of us what we can do. So let us do it.