In Pursuit of God
Matthew 5:6
St. John’s United Church of Christ
Greeley, Colorado
October 5, 2025
Rev. Juvenal Cervantes
This week, we bid farewell to Jane Goodall, English primatologist and anthropologist. Goodall was regarded as a pioneer in primate ethology, and described by many publications as "the world's preeminent chimpanzee expert." She was best known for more than six decades of field research on the social and family life of wild chimpanzees in the Kasakela chimpanzee community at Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. In 1965 Goodall was awarded a PhD in ethology from the University of Cambridge. She wrote 32 books, 15 of them for children.
Several years ago, Goodall was interviewed by CNN’s Anderson Cooper. She spoke about her passion in life: “Very early in life, I knew I was going to embark on an adventure of a lifetime. Now, I am preparing for my new adventure. I don’t know if there is something out there when I die, maybe there is nothing out there when I die. But if there is something out there, can you imagine the wonderful and unimaginable adventure that awaits us?”
What drives you today? If you could be anything in the world, what would you be? What should you be? Let’s ask Jesus.
What do you want?
“Blessed are the ones hungering and thirsting,” he begins in the literal Greek. Our Lord assumes that we all hunger and thirst for something. He doesn’t say, “Blessed are you if you hunger and thirst …” He knows that we do. And of course, he’s right.
In his day, people knew physical hunger and thirst every day. People died without food or water. Droughts weren’t a nuisance for the lawn but a threat to life itself. Crop failures didn’t mean debt but death.
While our society is past that place, we’re no less hungry and thirsty for the things that matter to us. We’re all driven by something.
Theologian Paul Tillich was right: we each have an “ultimate concern.” Something or someone that matters more than anything else to us.
There’s something in your life that means success and significance to us. Raising successful children; to others, becoming president of their company; retiring at 55; publishing bestselling books; getting into the right school, making the right grades, having the right friends; becoming a famous artist or doctor or lawyer or scientist or singer or teacher; being “happy.”
What drives you? What should? How can you be sure that when you climb to the top of the ladder, it’s not leaning against the wrong wall? What constitutes success with God? What makes us “blessed” by God? For what should we “hunger and thirst” this morning?
What should you want?
“Hunger and thirst after righteousness,” Jesus continues. The Greek word here reduces to the idea of uprightness, of doing what is right. But there’s more to the word than that. Unpack it with me for a moment.
First, there’s an internal sense here—personal character and morality. Not just what you do, but who you are. Dwight Moody said that your character is what you do in the dark. Another popular pastor said, “What you are when no one is looking is what you are.”
“Righteousness” here requires personal, intimate holiness. A person whose attitudes and motives are just. The word means to be the same thing in private that you are in public, to be godly in character both places, every day.
One reason to value such righteousness is that what we are in the dark is usually exposed in the light. We read daily of business leaders who lied about the bottom line, fabricated profits, misrepresented in shareholder reports, and have to “take the fifth.” But there’s no fifth amendment with God.
This week we learned about the arrest of the superintendent of Iowa's largest school district by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The long-time school administrator who authorities discovered was not authorized to work in the U.S.
Ian Roberts, 54, was the superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools for over two years before his resignation on Sept. 30 days after his arrest. He had previously held leadership positions in school districts across the U.S. for two decades.
Another high-profile case a few years ago involved a congressman from Long Island who was forced to resign and is now in federal prison because he lied about graduating from college, and that his mother was among the victims of the Twin Towers in New York, and he also stole thousands of dollars from campaign funds.
A minister reflected, “happiness depends on circumstances; blessedness depends on character.”
“Righteousness” is first internal, and second horizontal. It points to our actions with others. The word means to practice uprightness and justice with all we know.
Abigail Adams, wife of our second president, once wrote to her sister Elizabeth, “To be good, and do good, is the whole duty of man.”
Such horizontal righteousness is vital to our society. Speaking on corporate dishonesty, President Bush once made this eloquent and perceptive statement: “All investment is an act of faith, and faith is earned by integrity. In the long run, there’s no capitalism without conscience; there is no wealth without character.”
“Righteousness” is internal, then horizontal. And it is vertical as well: being right with God. Righteous in the sense of keeping God’s commandments, living by his word, fulfilling his will. Confessing our sins when we commit them, being sure nothing is wrong between us and our Father, walking close to him.
Jesus makes this the key to character, the attribute for which we must “hunger and thirst” each day, the pathway to “blessing.” If we can be only one thing, let us be righteous.
Nicolo Paganini was in concert with a full orchestra when a string snapped. He continued, improvising his solo. But then a second string snapped, then a third. Three limp strings hanging from Paganini’s violin. He continued and finished the difficult piece with one string. Then he played an encore piece on that one string. And then he held up the violin and said to the crowd, “Paganini and one string!”
What should your “one string” be? Jesus makes the answer clear today. This is the word of the Lord.