Happy, Happy, Happy: Happy & Passionate
Matthew 5:1-2, 6
You gotta’ love grandmothers, right? My grandmother, we called her Mama Kit, lived in Chatham, LA. It just so happened that I worked in Chatham, as did my older brother. I worked for the Sheriff’s Office and my brother worked for the phone company. I would often get a call in the morning at work from her announcing that she was fixing lunch. Her announcement was “Got dinner cooking. Having fried chicken.” The earlier the call came, the longer the morning would be because it only made me hungrier longing for a piece of that good fried chicken fried in a black cast iron skillet. Yum! Yum! I could hardly wait to get that fried chicken. Pull up in the yard and literally, I could smell the chicken frying from the yard. Thinking about that all morning could make a guy real hungry.
Jesus talked about hunger and thirst on the hillside that day with his disciples gathered round. We don’t really know what it means to hunger and thirst as Jesus spoke of it that day, but his crowd did. See, we curb our hunger pangs and thirsts with candy bars and Coca-Cola or bottled water. The closest I’ve ever come to knowing anything akin to what Jesus and his hearers understood was back in 2002. I had some kind of bug and no matter what I put in my body, it refused to stay in my body (and like Forrest Gump—that’s all I got to say about that!). I became dehydrated and I longed for something, anything that would satisfy that longing. I found it in the end of an IV bad hanging from a pole at the end of the hospital bed in which I found myself.
Jesus’ hearers knew this feeling, though. Most of the people sitting around listening to Jesus lived from day-to-day. They only had meat once per week, and were likely well-acquainted with those gnawings in the belly that meant hunger. If you’ve ever been to Palestine, then you know the swirling winds of the desert can begin to blow and the parched air and sand can fill the nostrils and mouth until one longs for a drink. They knew that feeling. Jesus said to them, “So should be your desire for righteousness.” Jesus said, “You’ll be happy if you hunger and thirst after righteousness, for you shall be filled.”
Happy and hungry. Not really very appealing to us. Let’s use another word that does have a little more meaning for us—passion. Happy and passionate. We like passion. We like to be known as passionate people. Passion is a positive characteristic, well, if that passion is focused on the right things. Passion is about desire, and what Jesus is saying to his disciples is that their desire should be rightly focused. Notice I said “rightly” focused. That gives us a glimpse of what Jesus means in this beatitude.
Jesus says, as his disciples, our desire, our passion should be for righteousness. Where does this passion or desire come from? I think it comes from the first three beatitudes. See, none of these exist in a vacuum. They build upon each other and are intimately related. We see our need for God, mourn our sins and surrender our power into his control, all of which lead us to a deep hungering and thirsting after righteousness. Let’s be honest, though. Righteousness rarely gets top billing on our desire list. That’s most probably because we don’t know what it means.
We’re too often tempted to view it in the negative, as though righteousness is defined by a set of rules for things we don’t do: we don’t play cards, we don’t gamble, we don’t drink, we don’t smoke—not doing those things makes for a righteous person. Or, we might see righteousness as doing things a certain way, like the Pharisees did—wash my hands a certain way, drink out of certain cups, eat certain foods, observe certain holidays in certain ways. Righteousness can be all about doing or not doing something. It’s all about the rules. I like what Mark Twain said about these kinds of people: “Having spent considerable time with good people, I can see why Jesus liked to be with tax collectors and sinners.” There really is something about righteous people that turns us off.
Let’s break down the word, though, and see if we can get to the heart of what Jesus means. Drop the “ness,” and we’re left with righteous. We don’t care much for that word, either. We too closely associate it with “self-righteous” people, and we know no one likes them. Drop the “eous” and we’re left with right. Righteousness is the desire (the passion) to do and be right.
When we see our need before God, falling short of what we ought to be and what we want to be, what God has made us to be, our desires change. We desire to be the kind of person God wants us to be.
Jesus didn’t say, “Happy are the righteous.” What he said was, “Happy are the ones who desire, or have a hungering passion for, righteousness.” The passion is “to be right,” and the way in which Jesus uses the word in verse 6 indicates that it has as much to do with right relationship as with right doing. It is about being in a right relationship, with him and with each other. We are to be intensely longing for a relationship with Him. The verb form of the word means "to justify." It means to recognize that God has justified us, or accepted us into a relationship with Him even though we do not deserve such a relationship. This new relationship was offered at the cross, where Jesus sacrificed himself for our sin. You see, as long as we see our relationship to Jesus as an obligation, as just doing the right thing, living a life of duty, we will never find the happiness Jesus promises here. Jesus doesn’t just want right living, He desires a right relationship. The problem with only looking at doing the right thing is when we fail, we see God as a stern law giver and as long as we think of God as the stern law giver, there can be nothing between us but distance, estrangement and fear. But once we know God is ready to accept us and to love us and forgive us just as we are, the distance is replaced by intimacy, the estrangement by love and the fear by grateful trust. Do we long, passionately, desperately, intensely for a right relationship with Jesus? Are we like the Psalmist David in Psalm 42:1-2—“As the deer pants after the water, so my soul longs for you, O Lord”?
Hunger and thirst are signs of life. Passion is a good sign that we’re alive. So it is spiritually, too. When we stop hungering or thirsting we are dead! But, we seek to satisfy the hunger and thirst with candy bars and soda. We seek happiness in the wrong things. We look for the expedient or the simple. There may not necessarily be any harm in the expedient or the simple, but they’re ultimately not helpful. Neither the expedient nor the simple can measure the fullness of doing the right thing or being in a right relationship because the “right” thing most often requires sacrifice. Jesus could have done the expedient thing by calling 10,000 angels from heaven to deliver him from the cross, or he could have done the simple thing of simply walking away from the will of the Father, but he did the “right” thing. He was obedient unto death, even the death of a cross. So, to be righteous is to be like Christ. To hunger and thirst after righteousness, to pursue righteousness, is to pursue Christ. Christ is our passion!
The promise is that we will be filled. Yet, we know that we don’t stay filled, do we? Thanksgiving is right around the corner. It will be here before we know it. We’ll sit down to a sumptuous feast of turkey and dressing, and sweet potatoes and corn and home-made rolls, and pumpkin pie and pecan pie and chocolate cake. The table will be filled with the bounty of God’s goodness to us and our families, and we’ll eat until we can’t eat any more. After all, it’s Thanksgiving and we do this only once a year. We push away from the table proclaiming we can’t eat another bite. But, after we’ve taken that afternoon nap and watched some football we find ourselves back at the table nibbling on the leftover turkey, or ready for another piece of pie. So it is with God’s table. Once we’ve tasted the goodness of God in Jesus Christ, we never lose our passion for more, and God fills us, and fills us again and again.
It’s like sitting down at Mama Kit’s table to eat that fantastic lunch of fried chicken or pork chops. We didn’t earn it nor did we deserve it, but she loved us and wanted the best for us. That’s the way it is with God. To want Christ as much as he wants us is a gift from God—a measure of His grace in our lives. Happiness comes, not from developing this passion on our own, but simply receiving it willingly from God as He pours out His Holy Spirit in our hearts.
If happiness is a gift from God, if passion for Christ is a gift from God, how do I open myself to receive it? It’s simple:
• Prayer—the Apostle James says, “We have not because we ask not.” Jesus says in this same Sermon on the Mount, “Ask and you shall receive.” Ask him for the passion to pursue that which is right.
• Worship—worship opens us to the power and presence of God. The more we experience his presence, the more we want to experience his presence. Worship opens that door.
• Bible Study—reading God’s Word gives us a deeper longing. Oswald Chambers has wisely commented on the transforming power of even 5 minutes in the presence of the Lord. Indeed, even a short time spent in intercession and the Word still has great value: “It is not the thing on which we spend the most time that moulds us, but the thing that exerts the greatest power. Five minutes with God and His Word is worth more than all the rest of the day.”
• Accountability—the best way to cultivate a passion for Christ is in an accountable relationship with another Christian. Ask each other the hard questions. This is Wesleyan to the core. Listen to questions Wesley designed to be asked in band meetings: 1. What known sins have you committed since our last meeting?
2. What temptations have you met with?
3. How were you delivered?
4. What have you thought, said, or done, of which you doubt whether it be sin or not?
5. Have you nothing you desire to keep secret?
It would be nice if it were easier. Nothing worth having is ever easy, including the passion for knowing Christ.
Happy are the ones who have an abiding passion for Jesus Christ, for God will satisfy them…over and over and over again!
