So Tell Me What you Want, What you Really Really Want

Sermon for the Second Sunday of Lent – 16 March 2025 – St Mary’s, Playford

Text:  Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.   (Luke 13v34)

God give you peace my Sisters and Brothers.

So, tell me what you want, what you really really want…

‘Want’ a small word with a lot of meaning behind it.  

It can mean desire or need, greed for more than we can use or lack of the basic necessities of life.  Some ‘wants’ are urgent and immediate; the cry of a baby, the hunger of those caught up in war.  Other wants are less urgent and can even be selfish; what I ‘want’ for Christmas, or Veruca Salt in Willy Wonka screaming ‘I want it now!’ And in the end she gets what she deserves if not what she wants….

The Greek word for ‘want’ (θ?λω, thelo, may be translated as ‘wish,’ ‘will,’ ‘would,’ or ‘desire’) is used three times in today’s Gospel reading:

• Herod wants to kill Jesus (v. 31).
• Jesus wants to gather Jerusalem under his wings (v. 34).
• Jerusalem is a city that did not want God’s protection (v. 34).^[1]

Herod wants to kill

If Herod were a character in a contemporary tale I would cast him as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings.  Having once been like the gentle Sméagol, allowed to rule over his own people by the occupying Roman’s, Herod becomes seduced by power and greed and, to gather even more power to himself, becomes corrupted by his desires.  Herod’s song in the movie Jesus Christ Superstar (even more camp than the music video of the song by Queen I might play at the end of the sermon…) is overflowing with him making demands of Jesus and, if Jesus satisfy his wants he might just let Jesus walk free… 

He is no longer a gentle ruler of his people.  Herod has become a tyrant consumed by lust and his life motto is ‘We wants it’.

Jesus wants to Protect

Jesus, on the other hand wants to protect those around even if it costs Him His life.  Like a mother hen gathering her chicks under the safety of her wings Jesus calls us away from the storms and dangers of life in this naughty world^[2] to find shelter and comfort.  Like a mother hen protecting her chicks, Jesus is the One who faces the greed of foxes like Herod and offers His own life to protect those who have come to Him for shelter.

Some want to be self-centred

Jerusalem, the place where dreams and dreamers go to die.  ‘…how often I have longed to gather your children together… and you were not willing.’  Can there be a more damning accusation by a God to those who profess worship and claim privilege than this?  Over-used to being the home of God’s chosen people and presuming that God will always protect them (having learnt nothing from one exile and two destructions of the Temple with more to come) they turn their backs on the prophets and the Son of God. Choosing a destructive and deadly hubris they put selfish want above common good.  Offered salvation they do not want to come to the God who formed them, called them, and has protected them down the centuries.  The words of Jerusalem to Jesus is ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’

What do we want?

So What do we want? Are we like Herod?  People obsessed with possessing all that we can gather around us.  Are we always seeking more power and more control over those next to us?  Has ‘We wants it’ become our life motto?

Are we like the residents of Jerusalem?  So self-assured that God is on our side (when really it is we who should be on God’s side) that we feel free to ignore the voice of the prophets and don’t see any reason why we should change our ways when the Son of God comes amongst us, ‘driving out demons and healing people?’

Or are we like little chicks?  Knowing that what we really need is not to satisfy our wants or presume that we don’t need God in our lives, but to learn that we can only be safe under the protection of God who is our Mother and Father, our Saviour and our Friend.

Lent is a time of learning to give up on our wants and selfish desires and transform them into a seeking after the loving care and protection of the One Who Loves us Best.  Perhaps, instead of living lives of ‘We wants it!’ or of saying with Jerusalem  ‘Blow you, I’m alright Jack!’ we could make these words from Freddie Mercury and Queen, which can so easily be about our relationship with our old selfish selves, our theme song?

I want to break free, I want to break free
I want to break free from your lies
You’re so self-satisfied I don’t need you
I’ve got to break free
God knows, God knows I want to break free

[This blog ‘So Tell Me What you Want, What you Really Really Want’ is copyright © Andrew Dotchin 2025 and may be reproduced without charge on condition that the source is acknowledged.]

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Jesus’ Sorrow for Jerusalem

At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, ‘Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.’

³² He replied, ‘Go and tell that fox, “I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.” ³³ In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day – for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!

³⁴ ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. ³⁵ Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”’     (Luke 13:31-35)

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^[1] Thanks to Ruth Ann Reese at ‘Working Preacher’ for this insight.

^[2] From the prayer for those being given Extreme Unction in the Book of Common Prayer:

O ALMIGHTY God, with whom do live the spirits of just men made perfect, after they are delivered from their earthly prisons: We humbly commend the soul of this thy servant, our dear brother, into thy hands, as into the hands of a faithful Creator, and most merciful Saviour; most humbly beseeching thee that it may be precious in thy sight. Wash it, we pray thee, in the blood of that immaculate Lamb, that was slain to take away the sins of the world; that whatsoever defilements it may have contracted in the midst of this miserable and naughty world, through the lusts of the flesh or the wiles of Satan, being purged and done away, it may be presented pure and without spot before thee. And teach us who survive, in this and other like daily spectacles of mortality, to see how frail and uncertain our own condition is; and so to number our days, that we may seriously apply our hearts to that holy and heavenly wisdom, whilst we live here, which may in the end bring us to life everlasting, through the merits of Jesus Christ, thine only Son our Lord. Amen.