How hungry and thirsty have you ever been? We have all been out for a long walk and had no lunch, and when we returned said “I’m famished”, “I am starving”. But we have not been really hungry. We have not been starving as people in Africa or Asia, where food is scarce. Many of us are actually overfed and overweight. However when Jesus said, “blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness” (Matthew 5.6), he was speaking to what it was like to be hungry. For life in first century Palestine was hard and people were not far off the breadline. The daily wage of a working man was less than four English pence. No one ever grew fat on that. Furthermore, if a person was unemployed even for one day, hunger invaded his home.
So in the first instance, to “hunger and thirst after righteousness” – or in the words of the GNB “Happy are those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires” or in the words of the New English Bible, “How blest are those who hunger and thirst to see right prevail” – is to desire righteousness as a starving person desires something to eat or as a thirsty person desires some water to drink. This intense desire should characterise life in the Kingdom of God. Christians need to heed the prophet Amos. Amos lived in the southern kingdom of Judea, who on a visit to the northern kingdom of Samaria was appalled by the corruption, the sexual immorality, and the exploitation of the poor (see Amos 2.6; 4.4). Acting as God’s mouthpiece, he declared:
I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies…. Take away from me the noise of your songs… But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream (Amos 5.21, 23a, 24)
In other words, God will not listen to our prayers and our songs of worship, if we do not treat others fairly. Worship is not enough; for there has to be a way life that is also an act of worship. Furthermore, as Douglas Hare pointed out, those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness” will be concerned by “the inequitable distribution of goods and services that allow millions to starve on a planet capable of providing food sufficient for all”.
Secondly, however much we may seek to live righteous lives, we always fall short of what God requires. Ultimately righteousness is something to be received. In this sense those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are blessed not because they are righteous but because they know that they need God to work in their lives. As Frederick Dale Bruner commented:
God’s promise is given to those for whom righteousness and right conduct are painfully missing, in themselves and in others. The meaning of ‘hungering’ and ‘thirsting’ is this: these people do not believe they can live until they can find or see righteousness. They long for what is right, they crave justice, they long to be living lives that are fully in accord with God’s pattern for life.
Those who follow Jesus should not be engrossed in the pursuit of money and a comfortable life, rather they have to “seek first” God’s kingdom and his righteousness (Matthew 6.33). This means that it is not enough to seek to live righteous lives, rather it includes social righteousness. As John Stott pointed out, Luther expressed this concept with his customary vigour:
The command to you is not to crawl into a corner or into the desert, but to run out, if that is where you have been, and to offer your hands and feet and your whole body, and to wager everything you have and can do.
What is required, he went on, is:
a hunger and thirst for righteousness that can never be curbed or stopped or sated, one that looks for nothing and cares for nothing except the accomplishment and maintenance of the right, despising everything that hinders this end.
Like all the other Beatitudes, this fourth Beatitude challenges both the way in which we live our lives and also the way in which we should realise the need of God in our lives.