Wake up, you who long deeply for a world of right relationships,
you shall be encircled by the birth of a new society.
(Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied)
“Righteousness” is a loaded word. I look back to the evangelical influences of my youth and remember the championing of this term under the backdrop of good WASPish moralistic rectitude. Later, when I examined the Greek basis of the translation, I discovered it had more to do with “justice”, and I moved from an attitude of feeling I needed to appease some disassociated code of imposed behaviour to one of striving for worthy cause.
In other words, I stopped feeling I had to justify going to the movies on a Sunday and shifted my focus more positively to the core business of discerning what was right and just action for members of the community who were hard done by. The inner shift of motivation was from “fear of doing the wrong (unrighteous) thing” to an awareness, and then a hunger and thirst, for the righting of wrongs in our life together.
I am invigorated further when I consider the nuances of a translation from the Aramaic text. The element of relationship and community is brought into sharper focus. The dangers and risks of “strident crusade” approaches to matters of justice are mitigated and the elements of “shalom” or “salaam”, the gift of the eastern vision of peace through right relationships comes to the fore.
Something to be mindful of in the process as well as the end of some of the causes we fight for.
Related Articles
- Wakeup calls in an ancient tongue (wonderingpilgrim.com)
- There’s muscle in what we yearn for… (wonderingpilgrim.com)
- The might of the meek… (wonderingpilgrim.com)
Wondering Pilgrim 
Now there’s a promise to move mountains, right there in that translation…thanks once again, WP.
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And the scary thing is it begins with the people under the same roof as us 🙂
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Longing for a world of right relationships, though – that just about describes a small band of us who see a dysfunctional world and yearn for everyone to be relating to each other in a different way all together. It reminds me of the knives-and-forks-in-heaven-and-hell parable, you know it? Would that we could make a heaven of hell by reaching out to one another, past the materialism and the time-poor working mums, past the advertising and the deeply wrong and inappropriate assumptions of a world driven by external media.
Lots to ponder.
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Ah yes – the parable of the long handled forks – “hell” for people who starved at the sumptuous banquet through the frustration of not being able to feed themselves, “heaven” for those who discovered the joy of feeding one another. Great metaphor for this translation. Thank you!
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