The Blessed Life: Hungry for Justice
DATE: September 21, 2008
SCRIPTURE: Matthew 5:1‐12
Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, AIG, government bailouts, volatile markets—all this week the news has been full of important stories about our struggling economy. Around water coolers and kitchen tables, folks are talking about bankruptcies and mortgage foreclosures and investment banking. It is, by all accounts, a pivotal moment in our economic history as a nation. And it has many, many lives in turmoil.
Almost overshadowed in all the talk about economic disasters on Wall Street, is the fact that a natural disaster has occurred once again on the Gulf Coast. And just as Mississippi and Louisiana sustained great losses three years ago with Katrina, so the people of coastal Texas have been devastated by Hurricane Ike.
The stories and pictures coming out of Galveston and Houston have been unsettling to say the least. Whole neighborhoods have been washed out to sea. At least fifty people have died in the debacle and there is an estimated eleven billion dollars worth of property damage, making Ike the fifth most expensive disaster in U. S. history. (LA Times, 9‐18‐08)
For the folks in the region, basics, like food, water and electricity, have been short supply.
So the Federal Emergency Management Agency, better known as FEMA, has set up a number of distribution sites to hand out ice, water and food. One of those sites is at Harvest Time Church in Houston.
A recent report on NPR noted that folks started showing up at the site long before it was open—and lines of cars and people several miles long waited for hours and hours to get much needed supplies. Many had gone without food and potable water for days.
One recipient at Harvest Time, Sheronica Smith, waited on line with her husband and baby. They had been totally wiped out by the storm, and were down to their last seventeen dollars. "That's it," she told a reporter, "that's all we have . . . ." ("All Things Considered", National Public Radio, 9‐18‐08)
Folks in Texas are hot and tired. They are hungry and thirsty. And so they are willing to go to great lengths to get relief.
It is that kind of intensity of need and desire that Jesus is talking about in the fourth Beatitude. "Blessed are those that hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled." (Matthew 5:6) Blessed are those who are so hot and tired, so hungry and thirsty for justice, they will go to great lengths to find relief. Relief for themselves, relief for the poor, relief for the downtrodden, relief for those who've been mistreated and forgotten by society.
Scholar Jim Forest writes: "Jesus doesn't say ‘Blessed are those who hope for righteousness,' or ‘Blessed are those who campaign for righteousness' but ‘Blessed are those who hunger qand thirst for righteousness'‐that is, people who want what is right as urgently as a person in the desert wants a glass of water or a child in a refugee camp cries desperately for a crust of bread." (The Ladder of the Beatitudes, 64)
Righteousness. Doing things the right way. Doing things in line with the will of God. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are longing to be personally pious, personally faithful, personally obedient to God's will. They are looking for the strength and courage to be just and fair and kind. In the words of Amos they "hate evil and love good." (5:15a) And, in the words of Douglas Hare, they also eagerly await the day when God will "set things right." (Interpretation: Matthew, 40)
Earlier this year Fitness magazine polled one thousand women and asked what they would be willing to do to reach their ideal weight, how badly did they want it? Would you shave your head if it meant reaching your goal weight? Yes, said 23% of the respondents. Would you appear on television in a bikini? Yes, said over one in five. Would you spend a week in jail? Yes, said 23%. Would you give up ten years of your life? Amazingly, 21% of those polled said yes. 21% of the respondents would cut a whole decade from their lives if they could be assured of losing the weight. That's hungering and thirsting. That's wanting something so badly you can taste it.
So what would you give up for righteousness, for justice? How much do you want to see the world set right? How much do you want all people to have enough to eat, and clean water to drink, and a roof over their heads, and good health care, and a chance to be educated and an opportunity for meaningful employment and freedom from war?
Are you hungry for justice?
Shane Claiborne is. He's one of the founding members of The Simple Way, an intentional community in Philadelphia.
Back in 1997, Shane and five of his friends decided to find a home in a poor neighborhood where they could live a life dedicated to righteousness. Not self‐righteousness, but righteousness, justice. Doing things God's way—the Simple Way.
"We had no big vision for programs or community development," he writes, "We wanted only to be passionate lovers of God and people and to take the gospel way of life seriously."(The Irresistible Revolution, 121) So what did they do? How do they love others? How do they work for righteousness and justice? They help neighborhood kids with their homework—kids who are at great risk of failing. They operate a community store where folks can get a grocery bag of clothes for a buck. They turn trash‐strew abandoned lots into community gardens. They protest against societal ills. They renovate old houses. They stand up for their neighbors, even if it means going to jail. In short, they have joined with the poor and the oppressed in their struggles. As one of their members puts it, "We try to shout the gospel with our lives." (Ibid) And that's risky at best.
One of their many efforts is working with the homeless. It was in that work that Shane leaned a valuable lesson about hungering for justice.
Mobile soup kitchens, vans with steam tables of food, make their way at night through the streets of Philadelphia. (Similar vans patrol the streets of New York and Bridgeport as well.)
Shane writes about observing one night as homeless men and women swarmed around such a van, looking for what might be their only meal of the day. One woman in particular was determined to worm her way through the crowd to get a plate of food. Shane asked her if the meals were ‘really worth the fight." "Oh yes," she said, "but I don't get them for myself. I get them for another homeless lady—an elderly woman around the corner who can't fight for a meal." (Ibid, 50‐51)
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness . . . ."
Blessed are those willing to fight for justice. To take the risks . And there are risks. Shane writes: "When people begin moving beyond charity and toward justice and solidarity with the poor and the oppressed as Jesus did, they get in trouble." (Ibid, 129)
Charity—which in and of itself is a very good thing—drives the mobile soup kitchens, hands out the meals. Charity gives out water to hurricane victims in Texas and Louisiana.
But justice asks why. Why in a nation such as ours, are there old ladies without homes, dependent on others to get them a sandwich? Why in a nation such as ours does our government rush in to bail out huge corporations, but stands by as thousands of individuals, hardworking individuals, are caught up in by complicated mortgage schemes? Why are so many of the poor black folks of the Ninth Ward still unsettled three years after Katrina? Justice asks why is the system so flawed, so unbalanced, often, so unfair?
Hungering for righteousness, hungering for justice, means taking a stand for and with the poor and oppressed. It means being willing to go to any lengths to live a life which reflects
God's will that all people be treated with dignity and respect. Not just the rich and powerful, but all people. This beatitude forces you and me to ask some hard questions. Would I be willing to fight through a swarming crowd to help feed the hungry? Would I be willing to stand in line for hours to bring water to those who thirst? Would I be willing to reorder my own life to share the life of the poor?
Would I be willing to risk going to jail to stand up for the oppressed? We can't all join a commune and move into the inner city of Philadelphia. But we can all do something. For that old maxim is true—if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. It may be risky to take a stand. It may be risky to speak out.
But hear this: if you are willing to go to such great lengths then your life will be blessed, says Jesus. If you are hungering and thirsting for righteousness you will be filled. And the hour will come when God will set things right.
And the hungry will have enough to eat. The thirsty, good water to drink. The homeless a safe place to sleep. The sick the care they need. All children will be well‐educated. All adults will have honest and meaningful work. And all God's children will be free of the ravages of war.
God will set things right, and you and I are invited to be part of the solution. You and I are invited to stand with the Holy One. You and I are invited to shout the gospel with our very lives.
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled." Amen John H. Danner