Blessed are the Hungry

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” (Matthew 5:6)

I’ve always felt this was one of the rawest of the Beatitudes, and hence one which has often been stirred up in my heart. “Hunger and thirst” is no half-hearted language. Jesus isn’t talking about that 11:30am growl in your stomach or that midnight hankering for ice cream. It is a blessing on people who are aching, starving for something – for righteousness Matthew tells us, although Luke simply has Jesus blessing those “who are hungry now.” It is a blessing on the stomach twisting up on its own emptiness, a dust-choked throat and a swollen tongue. It is a curious blessing indeed.

What does it mean, to hunger and thirst after righteousness? It means first of all to make God’s ways our desires. This is the primary preacherly application, but it is true even so.  It means that the gaping pit in our stomach is our sin, and that we long to replace it with the meat and potatoes of Christian discipleship. Jesus blesses longing for virtue, for obedience, for faithfulness in the face of temptation. Hungering and thirsting for righteousness defines our diet; it is passing on the sugar-puffed dainties of worldly vanity and the arsenic-laced morsels of sin because our appetite is for the hearty and heady fare of Christlikeness instead. We must desire to be conformed to His image; we must long for it like the man stumbling across sand dunes longs for a sip of water.

Yet if this is a part of the answer, the part we all nod knowingly to, it is only a part. Hungering and thirsting call us to consider their object, but also its absence. Those who Jesus blesses in the beatitude are not the satisfied but the starving. His promise is not for those who have arrived but for those who feel the weight of the journey. Jesus has no use for people who do not crave holiness, but neither does he cherish those who believe they have achieved it. Jesus is blessing those people, people like us, who fall short, who fail regularly, who hang their heads and beat their breasts and beg for mercy.