Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
What is righteousness?
For some, this word can be loaded with negative meanings. Some might think of self-righteousness or a holier-than-thou attitude.
Actually, righteousness is quite the opposite because it involves the truth and integrity, as we will see later on.
To begin with, as I understand it, righteousness means rightness, a proper alignment. At its heart, righteousness is being in balance, in right relationship with God and others.
God created us for righteousness. As we see in the book of Genesis, when God created the universe, including humans, everything was in harmony. Adam and Eve were in balance with each other, with God, with the animals and with the rest of creation.
This all changed when Adam and Eve disobeyed God's command. From there onward, we can understand history as told through the scriptures as God's efforts at bringing humanity and the world back into righteousness, into right relationship with God, with ourselves and with others.
Important people in Israel's history are the prophets, and among them, one stands out in my mind as someone who hungered and thirsted for righteousness (although they all did), and that is the prophet Amos.
In obedience to God's call, Amos speaks God's word against the injustices of the nations Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab, and then against God's own people, Israel and Judah. He proclaims God's judgment against them and future disaster.
In one of these sayings, Amos recounts a message from the Lord: 'Look, I am setting a plumb line among my people Israel; I will spare them no longer’ (7:8).
A plumb line is a tool used by builders to make sure they build in straight lines. A string is attached to a heavy weight called a plumb bob, and this forms a straight line. If someone wants to build a wall, for example, they will build it next to the plumb line to make sure the wall is not crooked.
Thus we can also understand righteousness as straightness, living according to God's ways. Amos tells the people that God is comparing them against the plumb line of his righteousness, and they are not matching up.
These are some of the things they are doing:
They sell the righteous for silver,
and the needy for a pair of sandals.
They trample on the heads of the poor
as upon the dust of the ground
and deny justice to the oppressed.
Father and son use the same girl
and so profane my holy name.
They lie down beside every altar
on garments taken in pledge.
In the house of their god
they drink wine taken as fines.
(2:6-8)
We see that none of the relationships here are right. People are abusing their power over those who are vulnerable, and they have no love for God.
We also see that people are denying justice to the oppressed. Justice and righteousness go hand in hand. In Hebrew and Greek, the word translated as righteousness can also be translated as justice.
What does righteousness look like for us? What is our plumb line?
Today I want to think about the Sermon on the Mount as our plumb line for righteousness. There are many places we could look, but this sermon has been on my mind, one reason being its proximity to the Beatitudes, which are the introduction to the sermon.
Righteousness is at the heart of Jesus' sermon. Some theologians say the sermon could also be called 'The Righteousness of the Kingdom.'
I could spend the rest of the time reading the whole sermon to you – it is certainly better than anything I will say today. But we will look at just three parts of the sermon for now.
The first part comes towards the beginning of the sermon, immediately after the Beatitudes:
You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.
You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.
This would make a great vision statement for Christians, for the Church. Many organisations today write vision statements which clarify the goals for the organisation: who they want to become in the future. In fact, I was visiting a church recently and discovered in the pamphlet that this passage was indeed their own vision statement!
You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.
This salt and light is Christ in us, and our righteousness.
How do we shine our light? One important way is by following God's commands, and Jesus tells us that one of the greatest of these commands is to love your neighbour as yourself.
We shine our light by loving our neighbours: getting to know them, considering their needs, genuinely caring about them, praying for them. This is part of our vocation as Christians, a task we must all do.
These neighbours include our literal neighbours – the people who live next door to us, our co-workers, the people we see at the grocery store, our family and extended family members.
Miriam and I lived in Manchester for two years, serving in ministry at a local church. The church was located in a neighbourhood called Longsight, and we lived a few miles away, on the edge of the neighbourhoods of Burnage and Didsbury. So when I would go to work, I would catch the bus or drive to Longsight and serve the people in that neighbourhood, and then return to Burnage/Didsbury at the end of the day.
In looking back on that time, I realise that my ministry was not only to people in Longsight. As important as that ministry was, I was also called to love my neighbours in Burnage/Didsbury. All of my interactions with our neighbours – from meeting the family that moved in next door to greeting the man who owned the house across the street to speaking with the gardener that came once a week to work on the property - were equally times of ministry to the times I served the church in Longsight. They held just as much potential for God to be glorified and served.
Loving our neighbour as ourselves includes loving our enemies, as Jesus goes on to say in the sermon. In fact, Jesus says that loving our enemies makes us perfect like our heavenly Father, who makes the rain to fall and the sun to shine on the just and unjust. Even non-Christians can love people they get along with. It takes a Christlike person to love and offer grace to someone who has hurt or betrayed them.
Some of you (if you’re like me) might be asking God, where is my mission field? Where – whom – do you want me to serve? One of our mission fields is wherever we live, wherever we work, wherever we spend our time. God has placed us wherever we are in this season of life, even if our own choices have played a part in that. Therefore let us bless and serve the people in our lives, that they may see our good deeds and praise our Father in heaven.
Jesus warns us not to lose our saltiness. What takes away our saltiness? Sin. With God’s help we must struggle against sin.
In the sermon, Jesus talks about some sins that take away our salt: lashing out in anger, lust, not speaking the truth, hatred. He also tells us how to fight against them.
Although righteousness is a gift from God, it also requires our participation and effort. It's like if someone gives you free football lessons and a football to go along with it. You need to put in the time and practice in order to become skilled at the sport.
Or take a relationship with a family member or a spouse. The relationship is a gift, and to some degree it is beyond any of our doing, but it also requires our daily attention at making it work and grow.
So, righteousness too is about exercising the muscles of our relationship with God. This is what Jesus says in the next part we will look at, which I think of as the heart of the sermon:
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you - you of little faith?
So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (6:25-33)There are many things happening in our lives and in the world which can cause anxiety. Jesus does not tell us not to think about the future or make plans, but he tells us to concern ourselves foremost on God's kingdom and righteousness. If we do, everything else will be taken care of.
If the vision statement is 'You are the salt of the earth. . . You are the light of the world,' then the mission statement is this: 'Seek first God's kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.'
In other words, this is how we live into the vision statement, how we become salt of the earth and light of the world.
When Miriam and I accepted the offer to serve in ministry in Manchester, the next question was, where will we live? In the midst of looking for houses, we received a phone call from one of Miriam's family friends. To our surprise, he owned a house in Manchester which his son had been living in but recently moved out of. When he heard that we were moving to Manchester, he decided to offer the house to us, since he was looking for someone to look after it, and at a low cost. When we visited the house, we were amazed because it matched so many things we were looking for, and we could afford it.
Can you think of a time when God provided for your needs when you had taken a step of faith to put his kingdom first?
In our plans, whether small day-to-day decisions or major life choices, how can we prioritise God’s kingdom and his righteousness, trusting that he will give us everything we need to accomplish the task?
This deepens our understanding of righteousness: it is a relationship with God built upon trust and dependence.
This leads us to the last part of the sermon, in which Jesus teaches us how we are known and recognised by God.
Not everyone who says to me, 'LORD, LORD,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'LORD, LORD, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'
Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.
The moral of the story is to build our house on the rock. If we connect the dots of this passage, we see that building on the rock means putting Jesus' words into practice, and in so doing, we are doing the will of the Father. If we do the will of the Father, then Christ knows us.
On the other hand, we are like those who build our houses on sand if we do not put Jesus' words into practice. This means we are not doing the will of the Father, and Christ does not recognise or know us: 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'
I can think of no more frightening words than these. When we are judged by God, as we all will be, he will recognise us not by our acts of worship or piety, but by how well we put Jesus' words into practice.
Our spiritual gifts, worship and religious activity are all important, but they are not how Christ recognises us. He looks for righteousness, which is ultimately love for God and others, as expressed by Jesus' words in the sermon. Without this love, everything else we do is an empty shell. With this love, our worship and prayer will come forth naturally like fruit from a tree.
If we are honest, we know we are not righteous. No one is. If I judge my life based on the Sermon on the Mount, I realise that I am crooked.
This leads to repentance, which leads to God's help at making us righteous. As written in Psalm 51, 'The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.'
Jesus tells a parable of a Pharisee and a tax collector (the modern day equivalent might be a loan shark; tax collectors in those days were despised because of their reputations for abusing their power and stealing money) going to the temple to pray. The Pharisee looks up to heaven and thanks God that he is righteous, giving his money to the poor and praying regularly, unlike the tax collector.
Then we hear the tax collector's prayer. He stands at the back of the temple, looks down and beats his heart, saying, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'
Jesus says that it is the tax collector who goes home justified - made righteous - before God.
Thus in order to be righteous we must first be humble, coming before God knowing that we need his help in living out his commandments, knowing that we need to be in relationship with him.
We were created for communion with God, for righteousness. Just as we were created to eat and drink, and just as we get hungry and thirsty without food, we also hunger and thirst for righteousness.
We receive God’s blessing when we seek righteousness, because God provides for our needs and will fill us, will make us righteous, if we first simply ask.
Blessed are those who hunger and
thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
