(A) It is great to have a good appetite

Today I prepared for dinner curried turkey breast and mixed vegetables to be followed by red cherry tart and cream. It was great! - but it was only great because I had an excellent appetite. My neighbour wouldn't have said, 'Thank you', for such a meal. He hasn't eaten for a week because his ulcer has been playing up. Yesterday I watched him totter across the road gaunt and weak. If he doesn't eat soon he will have no strength left. If he doesn't recover his appetite he could die.

Those who have no appetite for righteousness are sick and getting worse. Theirs is a killing complaint.

(B) No bliss for the starving soul

It is a grand thing to be hungry and thirsty when there is plenty to eat and drink. It is almost an obscenity to speak of the bliss of the starving soul. We have seen them in their millions in Africa, haunting images on our TV screens - emaciated, listless and finally apathetic about food. Starvation puts an end to hunger before it puts to death.

Chronic, unrelieved, hunger is well described by Alexander Solzhenitsen in his book, 'The Gulag Archipelago'. He writes,
'Hunger rules every hungry human being.
Hunger which darkens the brain and refuses to allow it to think about any thing else at all, or to speak about anything else at all except food, food and food.
Hunger, from which it is impossible to escape even in dreams - dreams are about food......
Hunger, after which one cannot even eat up.'

What is the point of being so hungry that when the food eventually arrives you cannot eat it?

There are starving souls in plenty and they are not happy: women starved of a man's love and children's affection because of physical deformity; societies misfits starved of respect and recognition; the hopelessly inadequate starved of success. It is foolish to pretend that all can be good at something. There are some poor wretches who are good at nothing although, thank God, they are not good for nothing.

I read of a starving soul: denied affection as a child, rejected by girls in his adolescence, ridiculed by his fellow Marines because he was small, scrawny and spoke with a squeaky voice and, finally, despised by the wife who regretted marrying him. This unlovable failure on November 22nd 1963 sent two bullets crashing into the head of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Lee Harvey Oswald was not happy.

Jesus is not referring in this Beatitude to starvation - far from it. He is highlighting the happiness of the man who is hungry for food and drink that is readily available - not the misery of the man who starves for what he cannot get.

(C) That lingering empty feeling

To be hungry, to eat a good meal, and to be well and truly satisfied is a concrete experience. You are not left in any doubt about it. You know that you are satisfied for the hunger has gone.

Now are those that hunger to be good satisfied in this way; satisfied in the sense of being replete and thus content? Of all hungers, the hunger to be good can be the most terrible. In the Middle Ages many in Europe longed to be good because only the good enough could escape the fires of hell. When the murdered Thomas Becket's body was prepared for burial by his monks they discovered beneath his splendid robes a shirt of the coarsest haircloth and beneath this a grey but writhing undergarment of lice! The lice had been cultivated to mortify the flesh; as an antidote to pride.

Conviction of sin does not inevitably lead to salvation. It is by faith that we look to Jesus for forgiveness. It was at the cross that the burden of sin fell from Christian's back and rolled away. Does this mean that Christians no longer worry about sin? For many there is an ongoing desire to be better. No longer does the Christian desire to be good to merit salvation rather he longs after holiness as evidence of salvation. Expositors of the fourth beatitude generally argue that Jesus is promising holiness to those that yearn for it. Well I want to be free from my temper, lust, inertia, sloth, pride and the spirit of retaliation. What Christian wouldn't! I haven't noticed any significant improvement during the last twenty years and nor, probably, has anybody else. I have also noticed in other Christians the persistence of obvious weaknesses rooted in their temperaments and dispositions: vanity, meanness, a critical or unforgiving spirit, touchiness, lack of integrity.... These failings persist from year to year. This is a serious problem and it is infrequently addressed. There is a great temptation to pretend that Christians are better than they are. I can understand this because if Christians are demonstrably more righteous than non-Christians it is good evidence for a new birth. The great danger of this approach is the effect it has upon those Christians whose longing to be good remains unfulfilled. They may conclude, either that they are not Christians at all, or that Christianity does not work.

It doesn't pay to worry too much about being good because, in my experience, it doesn't help you to get a lot better. In this life there is no ultimate satisfaction for the hunger after holiness because there is no final freedom from the old nature. I think that such improvement as we manage to achieve is often the result of a passage of Scripture being applied with power by the Holy Spirit. However many that hunger and thirst after righteousness, in the sense of wanting to be good, remain unsatisfied and conscious of a lingering empty feeling. Perhaps Jesus wasn't referring to this sort of hunger at all.

(D) Filling food

It is most likely that Jesus was commending the hunger to DO good. The Greek word translated, 'righteousness', certainly carries this meaning. Although this may not be such a popular version amongst Puritans, who generally prefer longing to be good to urgings to do good, it has one great merit: it is true experimentally.

If you hunger to do good the food is plentiful. There are literally hundreds of charities all of which need money. There is no shortage of old, sick and lonely people to visit - our community is full of them. There are Christian workers at home and abroad who would value a letter of appreciation and encouragement. The prisons are full. Injustices remain to be righted. Old and incompetent widowers abound who are just waiting to be baked a cake. When my mother was a pastor's wife in Suffolk she used to say, "There is someone I could visit every day...... if only I had the time." The food is wonderfully abundant - it is like the manna in the wilderness.

The food is remarkably filling. Have you ever noticed that you don't have to do much good to be full right up. We are easily satisfied. Peter thought he would be surfeited to the point of sickness if he forgave his offending brother seven times in one day. Jesus rebuked him for his poor appetite.

I visit on a regular basis the elderly at home and in hospital. Unless they are particular friends I find that six visits per person, per year, more than satisfies my appetite. I don't have to give much more than a few hundred pounds away to deserving causes before I am pretty full! My mother in the last years of her life used to enjoy entertaining. She had a few old ladies she was kind to. Even my hospitable mother who loved the elderly would say after a busy session, "I've done enough entertaining for one week." She was replete with good works - almost uncomfortably full!

(E) The Bliss of being full

Many years ago, during a Geography field trip to North Wales, I arrived with my students at the end of a raw, wet, day at the cheerless Bryn Hall Youth Hostel. By the time the bell sounded for the evening meal I was ready for it; faint with hunger, still damp, cold and almost ill with exhaustion. The soup was served - and I wasn't satisfied. The main course that followed was insubstantial and forgettable. And then..... the warden set before us the largest rice pudding I have ever seen. It was hot and steaming, sweet and milky, and stuffed with fat sultanas. That rice pudding wrought a dramatic transformation. At last I was filled, warm, content and at peace. For the first time that day I was overwhelmed by a sense of well-being. I exuded good will to all. I felt sleepy, dreamy and slightly euphoric. There is bliss in being filled.

After we have done good there frequently follows a feeling of euphoria, a warm glow, a sense of utter well-being and true peace. We are filled and the satisfaction is a concrete experience. I can honestly say that when I leave hospital after making a visit that Satan has tried hard to prevent I am almost singing for joy. No, it is not for relief that the visit is over - but for joy. I am satisfied and it is wonderful; it is bliss.

What is even more marvellous is that the satisfaction and contentment is short lived for the hunger returns. There is the recurring pleasure of satisfying it. There are many fillings. Surely Jesus is dealing with the bliss of the man who has a good appetite and gets his meals regularly.

If we hunger to do good we shall get our meals regular. However much we hunger we shall be filled. The fiercer the hunger the keener the joy at being satisfied. Jesus commends to us the bliss of the much maligned, 'do gooder'.