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My mother was hungry most of her life. She cooked daily for us, but rarely sat down to eat. Unable to stomach the food she'd prepared for the rest of us, she ate her own meals at odd hours, nourishing herself on a strange combination of the ordinary and the exotic. One day she might eat a baked bean sandwich smothered in ketchup; the next, broiled lobster.

Mother blamed her eating habits on a childhood of poverty. Born six years before the Great Depression, her earliest memories were of hunger. Her family was so poor they often went days without eating. When there was food, it was never enough. Sometimes all they had to share between them was a can of beans.

Mother looked hungry. As thin as a wraith much of her life, weighing an almost skeletal 90 pounds, her erratic diet eventually consumed her, shredding her bowels and leaving her emaciated. Unable to keep down food, she died in a hospital bed connected to tubes that provided nutrients for her weakened shell of a body.

My father, on the other hand, died of thirst. A large man with a hearty appetite, his experience was the polar opposite of my mother's. He was raised in comfort. The son of a medical doctor, he observed the poverty of the Great Depression from a distance, never worrying about his next meal.

He started drinking in his teens, I suspect. By the time he reached adulthood, he was a full-fledged alcoholic. He couldn't start the day without a shot of liquid napalm, which he purchased by the half gallon. Like my mother's strange hunger, his thirst for alcohol was the end of him. He spent the last days of his life waiting to have his dry lips moistened with a damp swab, unable to drink water because of his alcohol-ravaged kidneys.

Their experiences are not lost on me when I read Jesus' blessing in Matthew 5:6. Blessed are those who hunger? Hunger and thirst signal need. They are symptoms of emptiness and unfulfilled desire. How can they be a source of blessing?

The fact that Jesus says he is talking about hunger and thirst for righteousness clarifies little. He seems to have put the emphasis in the wrong place. Why not, "Blessed are the righteous?" Hunger implies a lack of righteousness. Jesus' proposal is so radical, it turns our notions of God and righteousness and blessing on their heads. He blesses what most of us would curse.

According to Jesus, when we draw near to the kingdom, it is better to come empty than full. We are tempted to think that righteousness is the condition we must be in to be blessed. Jesus says the opposite. Righteousness is the blessing; hunger is the precondition.

Eating and drinking play significant roles in Old Testament worship. Indeed, the shedding of blood was at the heart of the Mosaic covenant. As the writer of Hebrews notes: "The law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness" (Heb. 9:22). Where there was shed blood, there was also food. Priest and worshiper alike celebrated God's provision of righteousness with a meal.

Old Testament worship made special note of the prodigal nature of our appetites. The Law of Moses, with its long list of clean and unclean foods, seems obsessively concerned with diet. Some have interpreted these regulations primarily as a regimen for healthy eating, but I think the message is more serious. The list reminds us that we are addicted to an unwholesome diet. Righteousness is not our natural food. As a result, we are being consumed by our appetites. Like our first parents, whose hunger for forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden led to the fall of our race, we too long for food which seems good, pleasing, and desirable, but which will destroy us in the end. Even worse, our efforts to sate our hunger and slake our thirst ruin our taste for a better diet.

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August 2007, Vol. 51, No. 8