Wanting what God wants

When I was young, I used to love collecting things. Some of my earliest memories are of trading football stickers in the school playground. Shuffling through piles and piles of stickers in my friends’ ‘swap piles’ hunting for the one I needed to fill my own album and complete my collection.

‘Shinies’ — stickers with a metal or foil finish were particularly rare, and very much sought after. To get hold of a particularly rare shiny, you might have to be willing to part with the very best of your own stickers — or perhaps even a whole pile of them.

In today’s Gospel, amongst a collection of parables about the kingdom, we find two which remind me of those days trading football stickers. In the first, the kingdom is likened to buried treasure and, in the second, to a pearl of great price. In both cases, the one who desires them must sell all they have — must give up their whole pile of ‘swaps’ — in order to acquire it.

At face value, these parables point to the great cost of following Jesus. But there is also a deeper meaning underlying — something about the power of our desires, our wants, our affections.

‘Follow your heart,’ is the great mantra of our age. And — as much as we’d like to think of ourselves as modern and rational beings, who make decisions based on carefully weighed up pros and cons — the reality is that human beings are fundamentally heart-driven. Our choices are guided by what we want and desire. This is hard-wired into our human identity, part of the way we were created to be.

We are created to love, because we are made in the image of a God of love. God, who is the greatest lover of all.

What does all this mean when it comes to following Jesus? And seeking God’s kingdom?

‘Discipleship is more a matter of hungering and thirsting than of knowing and believing,’ writes the US philosopher and theologian, Jamie Smith. ‘Jesus’ command to follow him is a command to align our love and longings with his.’1

This means ‘to want what God wants, to desire what God desires, to hunger and thirst after God and crave a world where he is all in all.’ — in short, the kingdom of heaven.

This begins with turning our affections towards Christ himself. Jesus is the pearl of great price. Knowing God’s presence in our lives — enjoying a personal, intimate relationship with him — is the hidden treasure our hearts are seeking.

St Augustine of Hippo famously put it another way: ‘O Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.’

Christ himself is the goal of the restless heart. Knowing Jesus is the central piece that makes everything else click into place. Turning our hearts towards him is what brings purpose and meaning to everything else.

And so all our human love is a response to, and a reflection of, God’s great love.

A love which has given itself for us. A love which is stronger than evil, stronger than hatred, stronger than death. A love that offers itself to us, Sunday by Sunday, in the bread and wine of the altar.

‘For I am convinced,’ writes St Paul in one of the most wonderful passages in scripture, ‘that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’

In God we find true, unfailing love. A faithful, steadfast companion, who will never forsake us. Who promises to be alongside us, no matter what. Who, through the Holy Spirit’s presence, is constantly interceding for us even when words fail us. Beckoning us towards God’s grace, even when we stumble and falter.

And empowering us to share God’s love with others.

It was while praying on a train across India in 1946, that a young woman had such a powerful sense of Christ’s love overflowing into her, that it completely re-oriented her life towards serving the poor.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta, as she went on to be known, later spoke about how, on that train, Jesus was ‘revealing his heart to her: his pain, his love, his compassion, his thirst for those who suffer most. And also ‘revealed his plan to send her as a carrier of his love.’2

Closer to home, a wealthy young student in Cambridge in 1792, despairing of his selfish, hedonistic lifestyle, wrote in his diary an earnest prayer: ‘Oh how unavailing is all but the grace of God to change the heart! Here I am earthly-minded — O change my heart, thou who alone canst effect this mighty transformation.’3

His prayer answered, William Wilberforce went on to become the main force behind the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.

Throughout the Church’s history, the world has been changed by people who allow themselves to be changed by Christ’s love. Those who, as Smith suggests, align their hearts with God’s heart.

‘O change my heart, thou who alone canst affect this mighty transformation.’

Today, may Christ orient our hearts towards him and his kingdom, that we might know more truly the greatness of his love. A love that truly is ‘so amazing, so divine’ that it demands our soul, our life, our all.

Amen.

Sermon preached at St Mary’s Nash in the Netherwent Ministry Area on Sunday 26 July 2026.