What is righteousness, and why would Jesus consider hungering for it a blessing?
This Sunday our Pneuma Divina passage is actually a set of passages, all of which are highlighted in Jim Forest’s book, The Ladder of the Beatitudes, as revealing a particular quality of righteousness. Jim will be our Skype Guest, whom we’re bringing to us from Amsterdam! Do any of the following passages reveal a side of righteousness you may not have considered?
Ps 37:16
Better is the little that the righteous person has than the abundance of many wicked.
Ps. 92:12
The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
Proverbs 11:9
With their mouths the godless would destroy their neighbors, but by knowledge the righteous are delivered.
Proverbs 11:28
Those who trust in their riches will wither, but the righteous will flourish like green leaves.
Proverbs 21:26
All day long the wicked covet, but the righteous give and do not hold back.
Proverbs 28:1
The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.
Proverbs 29:7
The righteous know the rights of the poor; the wicked have no such understanding.
One passage that stands out most to me is this last one, about the righteous knowing the rights of the poor in contrast to the wicked. We don’t like to talk about either righteousness or wickedness much these days, but in the understanding of Proverbs, differentiating between the two revolves at least in part around which one knows and (one may infer) responds to what is just and right for the poor. If Proverbs is correct, and if Jesus’ observation that we are blessed when we hunger and thirst for righteousness is correct, then one implication is that yearning for justice for the poor benefits not only the poor, but anyone who shares this yearning.
In this respect, I’m very excited to have Jim Forest on as a Skype Guest this weekend. Not only has he written an amazingly good commentary on The Beatitudes, but he’s got an amazing story to tell about a woman named Maria Skobtsova, whose hunger for justice for the poor and oppressed led her to the most unusual form of blessing one might imagine. What was it? Well, get online and find out this weekend. You won’t be sorry. And … we’ll be streaming much smoother video and WITHOUT POP-UP ADS!
Currently I’m hungering for my username/password combination for this blog. Somehow it must have gotten reset…so I’m going to post my blog for this week as a reply to Eric’s.
First, I just want to let everyone know how excited we are to move to Phase II of our webcast strategy. Especially to lose those annoying pop-up ads and bring you a much higher quality stream. Thanks to Matt, David Thad and everyone else who has been working double-time to get it all in place.
So, this thirsty hungry thing? Jesus usually ends up leaving me with more questions than concrete answers. I’m assuming that is on purpose.
So, I’m wondering…does he mean the metaphorically hungry and thirsty or, like, really hungry and thirsty. So, of course, he’s smart enough to realize that you can talk on a couple levels at the same time. Even so, I have some experience with playing to an audience. One of the tenets is that you want to make a point, hit them wear they live.
I think the place those people lived was pretty tenuous. I’m guessing that being hungry and thirsty wasn’t an uncommon thing. They “got it” like I don’t really get it. I’ve never really been that hungry or thirsty…at least not enough to be worried about it.
So, I think Jesus is saying…
Blessed are the people who walk across the desert to come to America and find themselves in a tough, sometimes brutal and lethal, spot.
Blessed is the homeless guy digging around in the dumpster at Beyond Bread because they throw out a bunch of loaves every night at closing.
Blessed are people with AIDS when their bodies won’t use the nutrients from the food they eat, so they waste away without nourishment even though their plate may be full
So, on the surface, he’s kind of missing me. It’s like, “Wow, I just really need to be in bad shape before this one counts at all. Thanks a lot. I’ll just skip this one. Next Beatitude, please.”
However, when I pause, it occurs to me that if I’m working on that hierarchy of my own needs and development, I have hungers and thirsts that are just a real as the lack of food and water. Though not as immediately dire, painful or life-threatening. I’m fortunate not to be struggling with some of the more visceral manifestations of hunger right now. Even so, my needs for everything from food and shelter to some form of communion with the sacred on a different scale probably come from the same place. Essentially, whatever interrupts my humanity (or your humanity) stops me from my natural, organic experience of living into the divine nature of this incredible universe.
Hunger and thirst at every level is a distraction…a sort of obstacle to wholeness. I need to be physically, mentally and spiritually firing on all cylinders. I need food and water for my body, my mind and my spirit.
Pretty sure Jesus understood that. When he did that thing with the loaves and the fishes, or produced extra wine for the wedding, he was, I think, pointing out that the Kingdom is an abundant place flowing with what we need in every way. It’s a party, and no one should leave the party hungry or thirsty…even though they may show up that way.
And just in case Darkwood Brew isn’t enough “Hungry” for you this week, check out this episode of Snap Judgement…all about “Hunger.”
http://snapjudgment.org/-hungry
The Day After
One of the things I most love about Darkwood Brew has been its ability to first explore scripture or precepts, shining light on context and meaning and then move me to discern how that intersects with my life and how I might better get in sync with the Diviine.
This morning I was observing that I missed the mark last night, that what I hunger for didn’t seem to relate to any of the passages in a way that illuminated much of anything! It occurred to me that the question for me to explore this week will be “what do I hunger for the world to be, what ‘social justice issues’ trip my trigger and tip me to indignation (and the dangerous ground of self-righteousness)”? Wow. There’s material there! Mother Maria was surely acting out of overflowing love, not righteous indignation. But is there an intersecting path or clues there?