Sermon on the Mount--Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness Matthew 5:6 "God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice (righteousness), for they will be satisfied." Hunger is a funny thing in our culture. While we can imagine what it must be like for someone to be hungry, we are not hungry very often. More likely than not, our main goal is to deny hunger--to say "no" to carbs and fatty foods so we can lose weight. One famous depiction of the future in the comic book world is in the Judge Dredd comics where it becomes illegal to be overweight! We wish! We wish a judge on a futuristic motorcycle wearing a bullet proof helmet would burst through the door and demand that we put down that danish or slap the breakfast burrito out of your hand. While we may not fully understand the realities of being hungry, there are some elements of the idea of hunger and thirst that I believe we can get our minds around: We need food. We know we must eat and drink to stay alive. We structure our schedules around regular meals because we know we must eat often to stay healthy. We also know that once we eat a meal, another will soon be necessary--eating is part of living. The place in this passage where we become confused is in the area of righteousness. In most English dictionaries, righteous is defined in terms of doing the right thing--being morally justified, right. Our understanding of righteousness seems to usually come down to being based on how we behave. We make ourselves righteous (or unrighteous) by our behavior. In biblical terms, however, it turns out the concept of righteousness is less about behavior and more about relationship. Relational Righteousness. In the Old Testament, God bestows righteousness on his people through his saving acts. He saves Israel from Egypt in Exodus, not because they are behaving and warrant saving, but because God is bestowing his righteousness upon them. When God calls Abram, he declares him to be righteous. When they first met, Abram didn't know who God was, he hadn't done anything to make himself righteous, God declared him righteous and their relationship produced the subsequent behavior we see in Abraham. God's saving acts of righteousness and his declarations of righteousness on us produce the kind of behaviors we tend to associate with righteousness. Our human response to relational righteousness is compassionate acts on behalf of the people around us. The broken. The unrighteous. Every relationship you find yourself in, from your BFF to the guy walking past you on the sidewalk, makes a claim on conduct. When we enter into these relationships, we are agreeing to a code of conduct. I assume the guy walking toward me on the sidewalk will pick a side and let me pass on the other side--most likely each of us to our right. If I ignore the code of conduct it throws off the whole system. People think I am being rude and there is suddenly a traffic jam on the sidewalk. Jesus tells us we must be righteous and he proclaims makarios blessedness on us when we pursue righteousness as though it was our very sustenance. He is inviting us into a relational righteousness wherein God declares us to be righteous by his acts and therefore the claim of conduct on us is that we reciprocate by extending the same righteousness to those around us. Too often, in church circles, we force people to get their act together before they enter the door. We want proof of righteousness before we are willing to enter into community with each other. Jesus seems to be looking for a community of people, however, who will systematically declare righteousness on each other with the full expectation that this will produce the kind of behavioral righteousness we expect from citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus wants us to chase after this kind of relational righteousness in a way that reflects the consistency and repeated efforts we put into eating food and drinking water to stay alive. The result? God will satisfy our hunger and thirst. Our righteous behavior may not conjure up the good karma we hope it will, but we aren't looking to karma to satisfy our hunger. We depend on God to continue bestowing on us his righteousness as our source for our own righteous living.