Aching for a Restored World – Br. Jamie Nelson
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Br. Jamie Nelson
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” (Matthew 5:6)
What does it look like to hunger and thirst for righteousness, and what does Jesus tell us about how those desires will be fulfilled?
Food and water are essential to life. When our bodies demand nourishment, the impulse to eat or to drink comes from deep within, at the very core of what makes us human. In this Beatitude, Jesus invites us to recognize another vital hunger: the longing for belonging and love, as expressed through right relationships. This way of right relating is what scripture calls righteousness.
The English word righteousness may evoke a courtroom image and legal judgement. But in the Hebrew scriptures that shaped Jesus’ life and teaching, the word had a more expansive relational meaning. Righteousness as signified by the Hebrew word tsedaqah expresses right relationship with God, with neighbor, and with creation. It is not only about right and wrong, but about seeking equity, harmony, and the flourishing of all. To hunger and thirst for righteousness is to ache for the world to be restored to its intended order as a networked community of care where all are fed and no one thirsts.
Jesus returns to the image of hunger and thirst several times throughout the gospels. In John 4, Jesus meets a woman of Samaria at a well. She has come to the well to draw up water for her household’s daily needs. Jesus asks her for a drink, then tells her about the living water he has to offer, saying, “those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty” (John 4:14). At first, the woman is eager for literal water, but she then realizes that what Jesus offers will quench her deeper thirst for inner healing and restored relationship with her community and with God. Through Jesus, her longing for righteousness is fulfilled.
Several chapters later in John 6, a hungry crowd finds Jesus, hoping that he will replicate the previous day’s miraculous feeding of 5,000 people with only five barley loaves and two fish. When Jesus tells them about bread from heaven, they ask him to give them this bread, eager for physical nourishment. Jesus responds, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35). Again, Jesus offers something that satiates a deeper hunger, that offers satisfaction beyond the physical.
The Beatitude’s promise, “for they will be filled,” is not the promise of a one-time satiation through a drink of water or a meal of barley loaf and fish. It is an invitation to right relationship with God, with neighbor, and with creation through following Jesus. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for the message of righteousness that Jesus brings to the world.
For Reflection
- When have you experienced physical hunger or thirst? What did that longing feel like in your body and mind?
- Where do you notice a thirst for belonging, healing, or justice in your own life right now?
- What is one small action you could take this week that reflects a hunger for righteousness?
One gift the Brothers give so wonderfully is hospitality. After my mother died, I wondered if I’d ever feel how she greeted me again, or if that was gone with her death.
Then I went to the Monastery…and felt greeted the same.
I closed my heart after a couple events in my life- setting boundaries especially in public. But I have learned from the Brothers how to open to greet people at my door, and how to emulate their gift of hospitality.
I appreciate Bro. Jamie helping me see this is an important way I can be more right either way God, my neighbors and nature…Another Brother once led a retreat to explore our deepest desire(s) to express to God, and appreciate Jamie’s words that hit home how so many people I meet in a day are longing for that, and asking myself how I can be what God wants me to be with this in mind.