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Sunday, March 9, 2014

HUNGER: Desiring What’s Right

A sermon based upon Matthew 5: 6; 15: 22-28
By Rev. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
1st Sunday of Lent, March 9th, 2014

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”  (Matthew 5:6)

Frederick Buechner was 10 years old when his father killed himself with car exhaust fumes.   At the insistence of his mother, Buechner and his brother rarely talked about their father and tried to keep his father struggle with alcohol and his suicide a family secret.   

But keeping everything a secret came to haunt him.   Not only did he learn to keep silent about his father, he also came to forget most everything about his father, and when he became a father himself, he suddenly realized that he did not even know how to love his own children. 

Out of such a family tragedy, however, Buechner started to developed a ‘hunger’ for more than a life of keeping secrets.  It was out of those moments of spiritual and emotional darkness, Buechner came to hunger and thirst for the light and to know the deep things of God.   He even became a prolific writer about the spiritual life, learning to “Tell Secrets” (Telling Secrets was the title of one of his many books) and learning how to find his way through the “Hungering Dark” (Another of his book titles). (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1991-02-10/entertainment/9101120763_1_frederick-buechner-secrets-father).

It is not incidental, that the greatest spiritual journey begins with hunger and thirst.  Consider the beginning of Jesus’ own ministry and the unforgettable image of the Spirit leading Jesus into the wilderness where he would develop a great hunger and thirst for more than what the devil could offer (Matt 4.1).   St. Augustine felt that same kind of hunger in his heart, and he wrote in his own Confessions,  "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you."  (Book 1, Confessions of Saint Augustine).  

WHAT ARE YOU HUNGRY FOR?
Right before Christmas, I was going through Public Television’s schedule of programs for the beginning of the New Year to see if there was anything I wanted to record.  As would be expected, there were multiple programs scheduled about dieting, eating right, getting yourself in better physical shape and learning to make better life choices in the year ahead.   But the one program that got my immediate attention was based on a brand new book by popular medical doctor and new age spiritualist, Deepak Chopra.   It got my attention because it wasn’t a diet book that started with recommendations about what you should or shouldn’t eat, but it started with one question: “What are you hungry for”?   Are you hungry for Food?  Love?  Self-Esteem?  Peace?   According to Chopra, if you want you to get your bad eating habits under control, you need to first answer why you overeat---“because”, he says, “many are using food as a substitute for real fulfillment.”  In other words, if you find your hearts ‘true desire’, then you will be lead in the right direction, away from the desires that ‘lead in the wrong direction’. (http://www.chopra.com/ccl/new-book-from-deepak-what-are-you-hungry-for).

Whether or not you fully agree with Chopra’s New Age diet approach, he’s certainly on to something when he suggests that only by solving our hunger for what we rightfully need will give us the ‘satisfaction’ and ‘fulfillment our bodies and souls crave.    Interestingly, in this moment in history, when America’s and their children are facing an epidemic of adult and childhood “obesity”, and the threat of paying out millions more in medical expense and taxes, it’s not only New Age spiritualists who are writing books in this direction, but it’s also mainstream evangelical preachers like Rick Warren and his new book, “The Daniel Plan”.   Dealing with his own struggle with “Food” and “Weight”, the popular preacher’s approach is advertised as a groundbreaking, healthy lifestyle program where people get better, not alone, but together. “With love as the motivation, this ‘plan’ is based on a story of abundance, not deprivation.”   It’s a plan based on Faith, Food, Fitness, Focus and Friends.   Relying on both God’s power and the support and encouragement of friends, this is said to be a ‘plan’ that can help you “be transformed from the inside out” (http://www.danielplan.com/). 

I’m neither suggesting nor knocking either of these brand new ‘Diet Plans’.   But I do take note of them because they are improvements over approaches that merely count calories.   They are better because they attempt to look at the ‘whole person’ and are asking some of the most important questions about life, faith, focus and friendship.   For until you discover what your heart and soul is really hungry for, and what you are made to hunger for---that is, until you find what will bring your heart, soul, and mind contentment, as well as, what will bring nourishment, strength and pleasure to your body----until you begin to answer these ‘greater’ questions, you will not find the physical ‘filling’ nor the sense of spiritual and emotional fulfillment and health you need.

I don’t have to tell you that there are plenty of reasons people suggest as to why America is facing such a dangerous epidemic of obesity these days.   There are just as many who will suggest ‘answers’ to what should be done about it.   Some of the solutions for this ending epidemic range from the outrageous ideas of “taxing” of ‘sodas’ which bring unnecessary weight gain, to raising the price or even taxing other unhealthy food choices, and then using that revenue to subsidize healthier food and lifestyle choices.  Whatever solution will be attempted in the future, I think a very important part of the equation must also be to consider the spiritual, emotional, and ethical choices that people have been making in the past, and need to make in the future.     http://www.dukehealth.org/health_library/news/soda-taxes-weight-loss-benefit-linked-to-household-income.).    My parents taught me, and many of you learned that as well, that there is something sacred and spiritual about eating a healthy meal together, and I suspect that the breakdown of the family and the eroding of spiritual values in our culture does play into our national obesity problemWhen people feel lonely, or live like they are alone, and when they eat alone, without higher values, hopes, dreams and purposes, many will try to ‘fill’ their souls with the ‘right’ thing by feeding their stomachs with too many other things.    

WHAT SHOULD WE BE HUNGRY FOR?  
So, in this day in our culture, maybe we can begin to hear the importance of this beatitude even better than before, when Jesus says, Blessed are those who hunger… and thirst…. after righteousness, for they…. will be filled”.   But there is something else we need to understand about ‘hunger’ and ‘thirst’.  For Jesus is not only generally asking ‘what are we hungry for’, but he is also telling us what we are supposed to be hungry for---that is, to ‘hunger and thirst after righteousness.   But what is this?  Can we even begin to comprehend what Jesus meant by ‘righteousness’ when we live in a culture where the question of ‘what is right for me’ has been made the ultimate ‘righteousness’?  How can we learn to hunger and thirst for the “righteousness” Jesus requires, when there are so many variations of what it might or should mean?   Can Jesus, or Christian faith, or a preacher like me, even dare to define what ‘righteousness’ should mean for all or for any of us?   

Several years ago, when I was a pastor in East Germany, just after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the people in my congregation were suddenly being exposed to many changes in their way of life.  One of them was shopping for groceries.  When I first arrived in the East, around 1990, there were only a couple of small stores where you could buy groceries.  For example, if you were buying meat, you’d buy whatever they had in one of two bowls.  If you were going to buy cereal, you’d buy either corn flakes or bran flakes.  If you wanted jelly there was strawberry or blackberry.   Everything was like that.  You either had to take what they had that day, or you had a simple choice.   When the first ‘western’ supermarket opened in our town, I’ll never forget how one of the members of the church came to me asking,  “Why do Americans and other people in the west think you need to have 30 different kinds of cereals, or 20 different kinds of jellies, or 15 different cuts of meat?  She said she walked down the aisles of the store and became completely dizzy and confused.  How do you get anything done shopping in such an environment?   And in many ways, she expressed perfect our own situation of living with such much ‘freedom’.   Even though freedom and choice is a wonderful blessing, it becomes a terrible curse when it is unbridled and undisciplined.   Are we not very often confused, not just about what we should eat or wear, but what we should do with our lives?   How do you define what is right about anything, when there are so many alternatives and choices to what I might say is ‘right’?   

Another part of the challenge in defining what is righteous is that righteousness is a word we have lost in our vocabulary.   As Erick Kolbell has rightly said, “Righteousness is one of the ‘Sunday words’ we heard as a child, but seldom use the other 6 days of the week.   It’s like wearing a suit and tie, or a word stored away, like ‘good china’.   We talk about being a ‘hero’, about success or greatness, or getting rich, but who cares about righteousness?   But perhaps the greatest challenge of defining ‘righteousness’ is selfishness.  We might even call it ‘self-righteousness’.  E. Stanley Jones, a great Methodist missionary,  once told a story about a little girl, whose mother asked her to do a certain thing.  She answered: “I don’t want to do that?”   O.K., the mother continued, then do this ‘other thing’.  The little girl answered, “I don’t want to do that either”.  Exasperated, the mother then asked, “All right then, “What is it you do want to do?”  The little girl thought for moment and said:  “I don’t want to do what I want to do either!”  (From John Redhead, Uncommon Common Sense, 65).

To say that ‘self-righteousness’ is our greatest hindrance to defining what righteousness means, probably comes as no surprise, but what if I suggested that it is our ‘spiritual’ or ‘religious’ selfishness that I mean.  Many of us, especially in the church, have defined Jesus’ call to ‘righteousness’ only to mean that we must ‘get’ or “be right with God’ which means something like having a daily devotion of a “personal piety” which hungers to ‘be good’.  But the problem with this kind of righteousness is not that it is wrong, but that it is not enough.  It omits the just-as-important quality of righteousness which Jesus made clear, that requires us to ‘do good’, not just “be good”.  Jesus concluded the sermon on the mount by underscoring the kind of righteousness God requires, “Many will say Lord, Lord,…. But only the one who does the will of my Father, will enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 7.21).   It is the hunger to “do” God’s will, rather than our own will which Jesus blesses.  

To put this in the most practical terms, biblical righteousness means ‘living right’, and to live rightly is to be defined daily by being in a right relationship with God and others.   As Jesus says, it has as much to do with ‘doing right’ and ‘doing good’ as “being good”.   Understanding this could keep all of us from getting wrongly fixated upon ‘being right’.   How can we even ‘be right’ or ‘be good’ since Scriptures clearly teach that ‘there is none who is righteous” and “there is no one good but God” because our “goodness” and our “righteousness” are nothing but ‘filthy rags’?    Has God not already pointed us in the right direction already, since the only true righteousness we are capable of is the kind that seeks to “do good” for others, rather than ‘being good’ for our own sakes?

BLESSED HUNGER: WHEN WILL YOU GET HUNGRY?
Finally, we come to ask the most important question about righteousness.  It is the kind of question that will help us to fully and finally to answer what righteousness means for us, for now, for this moment, and in our own world and for our own lives.   Because before you or I can fully or finally formulate any definition of what God means by righteousness, we must determine whether or not we are ‘hungry’ and ‘thirsty’ for the kind of righteousness God requires.   As Jesus rightly says, the ‘blessing’ begins in the hunger itself, not just when we are in the final state of being filled.    Thus, before you can be or do righteously, you must become hungry for the kind of righteousness God requires.  

An ancient story goes that the Buddha was down at the river’s edge when a young man approached him and asked him what he needed to do to attain a state of enlightenment or spiritual understanding?  Without saying a word, Buddha took the man by the hand, thrust his head under the water, and held it there until just before he was ready to pass out.  He then lifted the man out of the water, and said to him, “In those last few moments, what were you thinking about?”  “I was thinking about air,” the man said, still gasping for breath.  “Anything else?”  the Buddha asked.  “No,” the man answered, “I was just thinking about air; my life depended on it.”  Precisely.  When you can turn you attention only to the eternal truth, as if you life depended on it, “ Buddha told him, “you will be on the path to enlightenment and spiritual understanding.”  

The most important question a counselor ever asked someone seeking advice is simply:  What do you want?  What is your greatest desire, right now?   If we are honest with ourselves, the answer of our ‘desire’ is a moving target, isn’t it?  When we are sick, we want health.  When we are poor, we want wealth.  When we are lonely, we want love.  When we are troubled, we want peace, and when we are hungry and thirsty, we will want food and drink.  But what Buddha was answering, and what Jesus was blessing, was a different kind of target, altogether.   The greatest spiritual traditions of this world are different, but they are united when it comes to most important assumption: Our lives are guided by the greatest desire or hunger we have.  “When you know what your greatest desire, then you will know what your god looks like” (Richard Niebuhr).  Do you know what your God looks like?

Back in the 1980’s, the stock market was on a bull rampage and many young gunners were fresh out of business school and were riding that wave for huge six-figure incomes.  One of them was a man by the name of Dennis Levine.   But on his way to the top in one of the most prestigious financial firms, he was caught for ‘insider trading’; that is by trading stocks based on ‘inside information’ which allowed him to know whether a stock would rise before it became public knowledge.  Levine was busted for it, and the price he paid was a steep one.  He lost his broker’s license, his reputation, and two years of his life to a federal penitentiary.  When he was released, he was asked by a reporter why he took such a risk.   This thirty-five year old man, who had already earned 300,000 dollars answered, “I’ll tell you why.  I did it because I wanted to get at the REAL money.”  But, the real money was not simply Levine’s desire, it was his god, his idol, his AIR.  This was what he was hungry and thirsty for.   “Then, the devil took him on a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me” (Matt. 4.8-9).  The devil offered it, and Levine went after it as if his ‘life depended on it’.  And of course, it did  (This story is from  “What Jesus Meant”, Erik Kolbell, p.76).

So what does your life depend on?  That’s how you start to figure out what righteousness is supposed to mean.  Let me give you another example of hunger from REAL life?   All of us have seen those terrible, horrible pictures of starving, hungry children.  We often carry images of ‘hungry children’ in our heads to remind us what is wrong about our world, which makes it very difficult for any of us to ever think of ‘hunger’ as anything good.   But another picture to put in our heads is the kind of hunger we have when we come to the table someone has just prepared for us, when the food on the table is still steaming and warm, our favorite people are around us, and we are ready to dig in and eat because we feel like we are ‘starving’.   That’s certainly a good kind of ‘hunger’, isn’t it?   It’s the kind of “blessed hunger” we all want to feel because we know that it is an emptiness that is about to be filled.  
Most of us know the meaning of “UPPER CASE”  “lower case” letters.  We use the “shift key” to make that distinction on our computers, tablets, and cell phones.   With this in mind, Raymond Gibson has said that the most wonderful feeling of fullness comes when we are ‘emptied of our strivings for what could be called “our lower-case” gods (the many things that we desire and want) to be filled with the greater, ‘upper case’ strivings (for what we should seek and desire).  God wants us to live lives that end with satisfaction and fullness, instead of ending up empty, shallow or hollow.   A hunger, thirst and desire for righteousness, that is, living our lives “for God” and “for others” keeps life from becoming empty, void, hollow and invalid.  It is this this “blessed hunger” that leads to fulfillment, which is what Jesus meant when he said, “I came that they might have life, and have it more abundantly” (John 10.10). 

Today, most of us live our lives in a state of ‘abundance’ but that does not mean that we have lives that are full of meaning.  Is anybody hungry for that?   It’s almost 12:00 noon, and all I know right now is that I’m starved.  How about you?  Amen.

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