Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for ... - Stand Firm

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Sermon of March 11, 2012IntroductionBlessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.A favorite Victorian novelist of mine, George MacDonald, often described God’s nature as aloving Father who was “easy to please but hard to satisfy.” He then explained, “What goodfather is not pleased when he sees his young boy take his first toddling steps. But that samefather will not be satisfied until he sees his son grow up and take manly steps.” That is awonderful distinction between pleased and satisfied which bears keeping in mind as wecontinue our Lenten series through the Beatitudes of Jesus.God wants us to have a blessed life, a happy life. Jesus came to lead us to it. It is his prayer forus, to live as he lives.Jesus is drawing upon a deep assurance within the Jewish tradition. This assurance – that Godwants us to be blessed and to flourish – is most clearly articulated in Psalm 1:Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way ofsinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers.But his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates day and night.He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf doesnot wither. In all that he does, he prospers . . . .For the Lord knows the way of the righteous but the way of the wicked will perish.The blessed life is the unassimilated life. It does not meld with the ungodly. It is thedifferentiated but connected life. One can choose to not assimilate into an ungodly life but stillengage it.The Pharisees faulted Jesus for “walking, standing and sitting” with sinners. I am sympatheticto their misreading of the Bible. They were afraid – and for good reasons – of the contagion ofsin. They were surrounded, suffocated really, by Greco-Roman paganism. Matthew’s Gospel isparticularly sensitive to these Jewish challenges to Jesus. But Psalm 1 makes clear that thedistinction between the righteous and wicked is not just where he walks, stands and sits, butwhat he delights in. The blessed one delights in the Law of the Lord and he meditates on thatLaw day and night. And he flourishes like a tree transplanted by water.The verbs here are consumptive and transformative: the word “meditate” means to “chew thecud.” The blessed man is the man who hungers and thirsts for God’s truth, God’s light, God’s1

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Sermon of March 11, 2012righteousness. And this longing is eventually satisfied. Jesus could walk, stand, sit and even eatwith sinners, because he first delighted to walk, stand, sit and eat with his heavenly Father wholoved them so. Jesus also knew that contagion works in reverse. People can catch faith andholiness, too. People gathered around Jesus, and over time, they came down with a bad caseof hospitality. A peace-making virus broke out when Jesus came to town. Jesus delighted inthe glory of the Lord and his delight and his way of showing it was contagious.This background connects us to the beatitude we are considering this morning. So let’s put thequestion directly on the table: What does it mean to hunger and thirst after righteousness?This beatitude attaches concrete verbs to an abstract noun, not unlike “eating beauty,” or“embracing truth.” Why the combination of the concrete with the abstract?I think Jesus wants us to not only take this concept of righteousness seriously but to reconceiveit. He says in effect, “Thirst for it like water. Hunger for it as you hunger for bread.” For youmust. No family can afford to have a righteous-free diet; no church can fast from righteousnessand remain healthy. Our nation will go to hell if there is a famine of righteousness in our land.We need righteousness and we need to recover our hunger for it quickly if we have lost ourappetite.So what is it? What is this righteousness that we are to seek so deeply?Luther said that Jesus is not referring to the righteousness that is imputed to us in justification.This is telling, because Luther had an acute sense of seeing justification all over the place. Buthe said this is not the righteousness Jesus is talking about here. This is not imputedrighteousness but imparted righteousness. To be precise, he said, “Therefore take this in thesense of the outward righteousness before the world, which we maintain in our relations witheach other.” This righteousness is the world working right – its systems and institutions andthose who lead and abide in them – just as God made it. Do you hunger for that?The Lutheran scholar Joseph Sittler was traveling in Israel when his vehicle broke down. Hefound an Israeli mechanic, a Sabra, as native Israelis are known in Israel. The Sabra mechanicspent a couple of hours diagnosing and then fixing the carburetor. Once he thought he had itright, he told Dr. Sittler to turn the ignition – and it started right up. The mechanic stood erectand exclaimed, “Tzedehk!” Tzedehk is the Hebrew word for “righteous.” Righteousnessobtains when things are working right, when the world is humming!Jesus says if the home is not humming, if the church is not humming, and if the world is nothumming, then the blessed person is the one who is longing for it to be so. And if we do notlong for it, we will not work to make it so. Mechanics long for cars to run right. And Christianslong for the world to run right. Or we should.2

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Sermon of March 11, 2012A more precise translation for righteousness in this context is “restorative justice.”Restorative justice is that branch of law which seeks to not only to meet out just punishmentfor crimes committed but also to restore to health all those affected by the crime, including thecriminal. Here is a good definition of restorative justice:Restorative justice is different from contemporary criminal justice practice in a numberof ways. It views criminal acts more comprehensively: rather than limiting crime tolawbreaking, it recognizes that offenders harm victims, communities, and eventhemselves. It involves more parties: rather than including only the government and theoffender in key roles, it invites victims and communities as well. It measures successdifferently: rather than measuring how much punishment has been inflicted, it measureshow much harm has been repaired or prevented. Finally, rather than leaving theproblem of crime to the government alone, it recognizes the importance of communityinvolvement and initiative in responding to and reducing crime.Our own Sr. Warden, Dan Van Ness, wrote that definition and the definitive book from which Iquoted. I confess to having read it only this week. I have learned much from it. For example,restorative justice pertains to more than crime. Another way Dan has described restorativejustice is that it has three key features:1. The first is encounter: the people affected by the wrongdoing or conflict meet together.2. The second is repair: the emphasis of that meeting is to identify the harm that has beendone and take steps toward making things right.3. The third is transformation (this does not always happen): the people, relationships andsometimes even structures can change as a result of the encounter and repair that theparties engage in.For the past few years a number of us, including Dan, have hungered for this kind ofrighteousness and we have sought to satisfy this hunger by working for it. Let me tell you thestory of how we have reached out to the Diocese for a more righteous relationship andoutcome.1. Encounter – I reached out to Bishop Shannon over a year ago. He quickly and graciouslyreciprocated. In our first meetings, we did not paper over the differences between us,but neither did we exaggerate them. We began by accurately naming the cause(s) ofdivision (i.e. it is more about anthropology than Christology) and restoring trust.2. Repair – over the past year of meetings, we have identified some of the harm that hasbeen done and we have begun, even before the litigation concluded, to take steps tomake things right. I have treated Bishop Shannon as a bishop of the AnglicanCommunion and with the respect that is due a fellow Christian. I have opened up3

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Sermon of March 11, 2012relationships and ministry opportunities to him in the CofE. He has reciprocated byallowing me to minister in Episcopal parishes in the Diocese of Virginia as DOK Chaplainand has encouraged my relationship with VTS and Dean Ian Markham, who has invitedme to teach a missions course there. The old habit of trying to “displace” each otherhas been rejected as unworthy of disciples. On the contrary, we are trying to help eachother and bless each other where we can legitimately do so.3. Transformation - Though our relationship is being transformed, we are still waiting forour communities’ relationship to be affected. I think we may be seeing the first-fruits ofthose efforts.So what is the fruit of this longing and acting for restorative justice, this hungering and thirstingfor righteousness?1. We are invited to stay on our church campus until August 31 st rent-free. This is aminimum. We may arrange a longer term to stay. Dan and Tom are working diligentlyon those negotiations. They are practicing restorative justice. In their hunger forrighteousness they are pursuing it with energy and good faith.2. The Bishop of Virginia, Shannon Johnston, has secured a two year reprieve from TEC’srequirement that Anglican churches that use Episcopal buildings disaffiliate from allAnglican bodies. This change in policy gives us the possibility for a longer negotiatedstay in these buildings and less possible disruption to our ministries and the time tocontinue to work for righteousness in our relationships.There are many particulars for the vestry and diocese to negotiate and we are in a very delicateplace in our relationship, but this does signify a breakthrough. So you might rightly ask me,Tory, are you satisfied? No, I am not. And far from it. But I am pleased. Very pleased.4