Jesus’s blessing on those who hunger and thirst for righteousness calls for a deep inner desire for justice. It is a desire so strong, so irrepressible, that it acts on this righteous impulse. It engages in merciful action: feeding and clothing the poor, extending hospitality to strangers, and caring for the sick and those in prison.

Jesus’s inaugural address in the Gospel of Matthew is the Sermon on the Mount. In it, He sets forth key characteristics of the future citizens of God’s kingdom, and commences with a series of blessings. These are the so-called “Beatitudes” (from Latin beatus, “happy” or “blessed”). What does an heir to God’s kingdom look like? He has already pronounced three blessings on the spiritually poor, those who mourn over sin, and the meek. Then Jesus adds a fourth: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:4). How can we as pastors exhibit this kingdom trait and encourage people in our congregation to do the same? 

A potent metaphor

Being hungry or thirsty is something we all know from experience. Even those of us who are not poverty-stricken can relate to the literal meaning of Jesus’s metaphor. Interestingly, Matthew records a couple instances where Jesus Himself suffered hunger.

The first such instance took place when Jesus was tempted by the devil prior to starting His public ministry. “After fasting forty days and forty nights,” the reader is told, “he [Jesus] was hungry” (Matthew 4:2). Jesus suffered extreme, almost unimaginable hunger. Yet He didn’t succumb to the devil’s temptation to make bread out of stones in the wilderness. Rather, He stated, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matthew 4:4; quoting Deuteronomy 8:3).

Toward the end of Jesus’s public ministry, after the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Matthew tells us that Jesus, again, experienced literal hunger. “Early in the morning, as Jesus was on His way back to the city, he was hungry” (Matthew 21:18). While being God in the flesh, Jesus nonetheless, in His humanity, knew what it was like to be hungry. Earlier, Jesus’s disciples, when hungry, had picked some grain in the fields on a Sabbath. When the Jewish leaders alleged they broke the law, Jesus defended them (Matthew 12:1–8).

A powerful parable

Jesus’ statement to believers

But the most powerful background passage for this is His final parable in Matthew’s Gospel. There, Jesus envisions an end-time judgment. He will say to believers, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger, and you invited me in, I needed clothes, and you clothed me, I was sick, and you looked after me, I was in prison, and you came to visit me” (Matthew 25:35–36).

Then the believers reply, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?

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