How many of you are planning to watch the Super Bowl this evening? Now for the real test - everyone who’s rooting for the Giants, please raise your hands. Okay, hands down. Now, who’s for the Ravens? Who doesn’t much care one way or another?
By the end of the day, half of you will be ecstatic and the other half will be miserable. How long will it take you to get over the disappointment if your team loses? How often will you relive the excitement if your team wins? And yet nothing will have happened that actually matters, in the whole grand scheme of things. Yes, really.
A lot of people - sociologists, psychologists - have speculated on what’s behind this human obsession with sports. Because it’s universal. Virtually every society in the world has some kind of ritualized play in which skills are exercised and winners are rewarded. The most widely accepted explanation is that sports sublimate our instinct for group aggression. It’s a form of tribalism. And tribalism is a way to elevate the self by belonging to a group that has more power - in this
context, wins more games - than the other group.
Now in this context it’s relatively harmless, isn’t it. We don’t actively dehumanize or destroy the non-member, the outsider, the less-than-human... Although in recent years we’ve seen some post-game revelries turn into pitched battles, that’s the exception, rather than the rule.
But there is one aspect of competition that is so clear and so obvious that we don’t even think about it... and that is, we don’t think about the pain of the loser. We don’t empathize with them or care about them because, after all, “it’s only a game.” It is sanitized war. We get the pleasure of winning without having to deal with the moral burden of actually hurting someone.
Well, that’s pretty deep for a Super Bowl Sunday, isn’t it. But it really brings to the fore, doesn’t it, how large a part of our lives is eaten up by competition of one sort or another. And it also shows us that even relatively benign competition means winners and losers, and either giving or receiving pain.
Two weeks ago, when we were looking at the second Beatitude, “blessed are those who mourn,” we pointed out that the Buddha concluded that life consists of suffering, that suffering is caused by loss, and therefore the only solution to suffering is to stop wanting anything so you won’t suffer when you lose it. Well, it certainly works at the sports level. I assure you that I am not going to suffer today no matter who wins, the Ravens or the Giants. I have managed to conquer desire - in that one arena. But it’s no virtue to give up something you don’t care about. The real test is to let go of something you DO care about. Buddha’s followers spend a great deal of time and effort disciplining themselves to not want anything - to become completely detached. In effect, they are trying to squash, by their own efforts, a very strong and central part of what it means to be a human being.
Some succeed. But that’s not the Biblical way of dealing with it.
Last week we were looking at what it means to be meek. We learned that meekness is not the same thing as weakness. To be meek in the Biblical sense is not to squash yourself into a doormat, but to surrender your strengths to God so that he can use them for his purposes.
So how do we put these two concepts together, the reality of suffering and God’s call for meekness, and what does it have to do with sports?
Well, competition involves wanting to prove yourself better than someone else, and leads to loss, that is, it leads to suffering for the losers. The stronger you are the likelier it is that you will be the winner, and the pain of loss will be born by someone else. And at the same time the stronger you are, the more useful you will be to God - IF you surrender yourself. It’s not a matter of conquering desire - but of allowing God through the Holy Spirit to turn your desires into harmony with his.
Let me say that again: The proper response to mourning over the reality of suffering, and the key to meekness, is not conquering desire, but learning to desire the right things.
The marvelous thing about desiring righteousness, rather than victory or fame or wealth or any of the other common objects of our desire, is that when we win, no one loses. This is the ultimate win-win situation.
But let’s look at this idea of hungering and thirsting after righteousness a little more closely.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones points out that “if every man and woman in the world knew what it was to hunger and thirst after righteousness,there would be no danger of war.”
Please note that the Bible doesn’t say, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for blessedness.” We aren’t to search for the rewards of righteousness, but for righteousness itself. Remember the hedonistic paradox, the more you search for happiness, the less likely you are to find it. So if you hunger for blessedness, like happiness, it will be forever beyond your reach.
It’s as if a person suffering from some painful disease were to go to a doctor seeking only for the pain to go away but not wanting the disease to be cured. You wouldn’t think very highly of a doctor who left it at that, would you, prescribing ever more potent pain-killers while the underlying condition rages away unabated.
So, what is this righteousness? It isn’t just being good, although a change in behavior is certainly a side effect. It isn’t even just being made right with God, although that’s how it begins.
Ultimately, what righteousness means is complete freedom from sin. And so a hunger for righteousness means an intense desire to get out from under the influence of sin both internally and externally.
Let’s break it down a little more. We desire to get rid of sin itself, because sin separates us from God. But as we begin that struggle we become aware of how powerful sin is... it’s more than just a bad habit, or wrong thinking. It’s in the air we breathe, the strong pull of the culture on us, as we try to break away from “following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient.” [Eph 2:2] And then as we journey further into in the spiritual life we discover that the desire to sin doesn’t come only from outside ourselves, or even primarily from outside ourselves. We can’t blame it on the people around us. The desire to sin is part of our very being. And so at last what it boils down to is that to hunger and thirst after righteousness is to long to be freed from the tyranny of our own selves, our own egos.
The bondage to self leads to pride, boasting, self-protection, holding grudges, hyper-sensitivity, insecurity and anxiety. It leads to quarrels between people, and quarrels between nations. It leads to injustice of all kinds, betrayals, crime, and war. And the only way to be free of our selves without destroying ourselves is by giving our selves to God.
That’s sort of a negative view of hungering and thirsting after righteousness, isn’t it. I’ve been focusing on the hunger pangs, rather than on the banquet.
What is this righteousness that we are to hunger for?
Negatively stated, it is freedom from sin. Positively stated, it is to be like Jesus Christ.
Someone who hungers and thirsts after righteousness wants to know God, to get closer and closer to God, to spend serious quality time with God, to have God’s characteristics rub off on him. As that wonderful song from Godspell says, “to see the more clearly, to love the more dearly, to follow thee more nearly, day by day by day by day...”
It’s not a part-time job. This hunger isn’t a passing fancy, an occasional flirtation with the idea of holiness that evaporates when more pressing concerns come along.
Most Christians say they want to be righteous, but they don’t actively pursue it. It’s like the difference between the person who looks at the lithe, strong athlete and says, “I wish I were in that good condition,” but doesn’t do anything about it... the person who wants the results of a disciplined life, but not the actual living of it. A great example of this is the prophet Balaam, back in Numbers, who cried
out on being shown the greatness of Israel, “Let me die the death of the upright, and let my end be like his!" [Num 23:20] He wanted to die the death of the righteous, but didn’t want the bother of living righteously. The great 4th century theologian St. Augustine captured that feeling very well in his Confessions when he said, “O Lord, make me chaste, but not yet!”
What does it take, then, to become righteous? What do you need to do if you are serious about hungering after righteousness?
Is it something we can do for ourselves? I shouldn’t even have to ask that question... and yet many people still do seem to think that it’s something they CAN get for themselves, by straining and striving to remember and obey every possible rule and regulation they can ferret out of the Scriptures. It’s not that easy. Or perhaps I should say, it’s not that hard. Because the first step, and the first test is, have we seen through our own false righteousness yet? That is, have we recognized our poverty of spirit?
We have to do the Beatitudes in order, you see. Before anything else can happen, we have to recognize that what we can do on our own is not enough. In fact, as Paul says, we can’t really do anything on our own. “For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.” [Rom 7:18] And then we have to go to where righteousness can be found.
We don’t become righteousness by sitting back and waiting for God to turn on the sprinkler; we have to go where we are likely to find it. When you are hungry, and there’s nothing in the house, don’t you go to the store? Or at the very least call out for a pizza? We can’t attain righteousness on our own, but we need to hang around where it is likely to appear - or at least make some kind of contact. And we have to do it all the time - because hungering and thirsting after righteousness is a lifetime condition. Because the more we become filled,
the more we realize how much more there is to be filled with. The more righteous we are, the more righteousness we desire.
These are the things that a person who is hungry and thirsty for righteousness does: Attend worship with fellow Christians. Read Scripture. Pray. Hang around with people who remind you of Jesus - either by their own righteousness or because they, too, are seeking righteousness.
And last - or maybe first AND last - don’t spoil your appetite by filling up on junk food. There are a lot of things out there in the world that are harmless in themselves, from jigsaw puzzles to painting your nails - but if you fill up on them, you take the edge off your spiritual appetite. And none of those pastimes will fill you. The only thing that will fill you, that will fill me, that nourishes us to eternal life, is the holiness of Jesus Christ. That is what he meant when he said, "Who
ever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty." [John 6:35]
Even if your team wins today, the thrill of victory won’t last... and they may not win. But if you turn that competitive instinct over to God, and get actively involved on his team, the thrill of victory is not only certain - it is eternal.
