Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness… Matt 5:6 (NIV)
Love and Belonging – Hunger Series – Part 2
Go to PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6 | PART 7
“Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.” – Mother Teresa.
This kind of inner hunger is what drives all physical hunger. When men and women feed their hungry souls power and money and control and status and titles; when they consume more and more wealth, conquer more and more land, build bigger walls of ‘security’ and store up extra for fear of scarcity, they always end up feeding themselves at the expense of others. From a personal scale to a national one, the hunger remains unsatisfied. So they continue.
Physical poverty begins with spiritual poverty. And the injustice of it is that it's rarely those who are physically impoverished that deserve to be. That’s why you often hear people come back from war-torn parts of the world, or countries of famine and crisis, and say that the people were so beautiful and generous in the midst of their suffering.
Perhaps it's not so much that we are trying to satiate our hunger in all the wrong places, but that we’re trying to numb the ache of it, unsure of what will finally fill the void.
“A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don't function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.” Brene Brown. (1.)
That kind of sickness is the poverty that Mother Teresa was talking about.
Let’s bring back Matt 5:6. Jesus said “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled.”
Many of us have been brought up to think that righteousness is about morality and do-gooding and ticking off boxes on acceptable behavior lists. That’s what it means to be righteous, right? Be in the right?
For the ancient Hebrews, righteousness wasn’t something you achieved, but something you entered into. Visualize it as a force field: an energy-charged sphere of holy presence. For those in Jesus time, to be in the righteousness of God (which was how it was often written and talked about) meant to be directly connected to this sphere of presence, to be anchored within God’s own aliveness. It’s dynamic and electric and fierce. To “hunger and thirst after righteousness,” is to seek this holy presence and find yourself in the middle of it. (2.)
And when you’re anchored in God’s own aliveness, you become alive to yourself, too. It’s a homecoming, a reunion – like sitting down at the table and eating your grandmother's homemade apple pie.
In the sermon on the mount, Jesus was saying that when the hunger arises within you to find your own deepest aliveness within God’s aliveness, it will be satisfied. He wasn't talking about doing virtuous deeds so you’ll be rewarded later; he was talking about being connected with your fundamental yearning.
Money, titles, land, power, reputation, status, achievement, security, fame, fortune, good looks – whatever – won't fill that ache for love and belonging; that desire “which no experience in this world can satisfy” (CS Lewis)… they can’t take the place of righteousness: the electric presence of connection with the divine.
We must fill our lives and the world up with as much love and belonging and care as we can. We must teach people how to listen to their hunger, and follow it all the way home.
We must learn to do it ourselves.
Go to Part 3 – Pigs, The Prodigal and Hunger »
Written by Lizzy Milani
(1.) Brené Brown. The Power of Vulnerability. TedxHouston. June 2010.
(2.) The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind—A New Perspective on Christ and His Message (Shambhala: 2008), 44-45. Cynthia Bourgeault
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