Beatitudes 2 - Blessed are they that Hunger

“Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness.” Matthew 5.6.

When Laura Bridgman, deprived alike of hearing and of sight was a small inmate of Dr Howe’s Asylum for the blind at Boston her teacher one day made some reference to the soul.
A look of bewilderment overspread the girl’s face and she slowly spelled out on her fingers the question, ‘What is the soul?’ ‘The soul’ replied Dr Howe, in the complicated language used in dealing with blind mutes, ‘the soul is that which thinks and feels and hopes!’ A look of rare discernment mantled the blind girl’s face. ‘And is it’ she immediately inquires with eager fingers ‘is it what which aches so?’
Exactly! And in that respect at least mankind is akin to God. We have so been made that we cannot find satisfaction in any fixed state and be truly happy. If the Soul within us be alive we experience Laura’s ache, or as Jesus puts it in this text we have a delicious hunger. Blessed are they that hunger etc. And so we see at once that
1. Self satisfaction is not a thing that receives His blessing.
Jesus made a startling statement once bidding men when “they have done all the  things which were commanded” to say “We are unprofitable servants. We have done that which it was our duty to do”.
It is a bit surprising isn’t it to be told after doing your duty to regard yourself as an unprofitable servant.
Surprising because it is so far removed from our ideas and standards of life. We are inclined to think that when we have done our duty we’ve done all that is required of us. ‘As though morality were a thing that could be exactly defined, a goal that could be reached’ so easily.
We all know the people who claim to be virtuous because they say, we pay 20/- in the pound, have done nobody any harm etc, There are quite a lot of such people in the world, but the surprising thing is that they don’t seem to rid the world of evil. * Pharisees in Christ’s day were similar +I’m not so sure that it wasn’t the cause of much evil.
I thought quite a lot about the old adage, “If  each before his own door swept, the village would be clean” during the snowy days last winter – some pavements were clean – what about roads?
No! When I face up to the truths of Christ’s Kingdom I begin to realise that no place is found for the self-satisfied spirit of Little Jack Horner – what a good boy am I.
I meet a whole realm of new requirements – If I merely do my duty I am an unprofitable servant.
Christ did His duty, but never do I find Him sitting down in satisfaction. He did more, and more and more, until finally He gave Himself. And such a life shows me that “Duty” - self-satisfaction, are not enough, but Love so amazing so divine demand my soul my life, my all. Jesus had little to say really about ‘Duty’ ‘Service” but He implores us to love God with, heart and soul and mind, and strength.
When love enters the heart service has another meaning – ’Service’ is no longer ‘Duty’ which is done to give self-satisfaction, it is a means of expressing LOVE.
What is it that Francis Xavier Sings:-
My God I love thee – not because, I hope for heaven thereby
Nor yet because who love Thee not Are lost eternally.
Not with the hope of gaining aught; Not seeking a reward
But as Thyself hast loved me, O ever loving Lord.
The difference is not just in the motive, but in the underlying spirit, and that’s why Jesus talks about Hungering and Thirsting after righteousness.
I can’t control the state of hunger and thirst by will.

So the follower of Christ does not obey a code to satisfy a just God and his own pride – he does what love impels.
And blessed are they say Jesus, that so ‘hunger and thirst for righteousness’

2. Such a hunger is the sign of true life.
We have to be thankful for what men call morality, for standards of duty, and human conventions (they have their roots mostly in Christianity) but Jesus said “Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees ye shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”
This implicates that I am to do my duty, to home and church and society but after tat I must still be hungry to go on as love shall direct.
If I feel that discontent, that hunger for a fuller life – then I’ll be thankful it is the sign of life.
If I’ve settled down to easy ways, no appetite for service, I’ve reason to be concerned for my place in the Kingdom.
We are not made so as to find satisfaction in anything fixed or prescribed but only in creative activity. The only satisfaction we can ever know is to blaze fresh trail, go the extra mile, and press to higher things.

3. The need of our age is to recapture this truth.
Everywhere men are seeking satisfaction, reaching after something bigger and better. The Hunger is there but we have not yet learned where it can be satisfied/ Shop of progress is fast on the sandbank. And why? -
Jesus has shown us the true way of satisfaction – we must give ourselves wholly to it.


Other passages written at top of sermon
Psalm 42.

Preached on the evening of 29th September 1940 at Sydney Street Methodist Church, Burton-on-Trent.

Also evening service on an unknown date
Methodist Church, Horninglow, Burton-on-Trent.