Though I sang last week, I will not try to sing Rolling Stones without a full band behind me.  In 1969, Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones launched one of their iconic songs: “You can’t always get what you want.”  Though a careful reading of the lyrics will not add much insight to what the verses are all about, the refrain chants a clear message three times.  In a bit of a frustrated way, he sings: You can’t always get what you want.  And there are many things that we want.  We wish for many things – the winning powerball ticket, the perfect spouse, the perfect job, the corner office.  If we just had that one shiny thing MORE – then life would be richer, more fulfilled, more meaningful.   And here’s the kicker.  Someone else wants what we want too, and we compete for that job, that corner office.  Or we desire what someone else has, and we covet.  We become, in our ‘can’t get what we want’ status, like contestants on Survivor – Outwit, Outlast, Outplay. 

God intended so much more for us.  He wants us to become a community of faith, a family of souls where the common good was the primary ‘want’ rather than individual desires.  In this game, no one gets voted off the island.  All work together, laugh together, pray together and serve together.  That is the vision of the gospel and the early church community to whom James writes.  James was the ‘Bishop’ of the community (though the term bishop was not around in his time) that Luke described in Acts as “sharing all things in common; they would sell their property and possessions and divided them among all according to each one’s need.”  James has seen this way of living WORK.   

And James, that eminently practical epistle, speaks a word of warning to the attitudes that will kill this vision/experience of the common good.  When we value possessions more than people, riches more than relationships and conquests more than community, we have slipped into a trap of our own desires.  “Be careful what you ask for.”  Many have discovered that the road to ‘financial security’ became a never ending Midas search for an illusive reality that would never come to be.  The ‘all you can eat buffets’ are now lining the arteries of our bodies with cholesterol.  For our sakes, and for the sake of others, we do need to be careful what we ask for. 

James warns us: “You ask but you do not receive because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your own passions.”   If our desires are primarily driven by our own passions to satisfy OUR wants – then we’re in trouble.  The needful, but difficult question to ask our psyche – “Does this desire, this want, truly server anyone’s interest but mine?  Does it build up others, and draw me closer to them?  Does it serve the common good or just my personal good? 

As an aside, I wonder if at the root of a lot of the debate in congress on health care or immigration reform is this attitude – not a difference of opinion on HOW to go about reform, but an unwillingness to give up MY POSITION of privilege for the common good?  I don’t know, but I wonder.  And I think James would wonder as well.  Jesus, when he realizes his disciples had fallen into that same rut, puts a helpless child in front of them, and says – HERE is the one who needs to be the center – the one who has no power, authority, status – but rather needs to receive everything from others.  That is what life is to be – tasking care of the most vulnerable… 

The right heart to guide our wanting and wishing, is shaped, as James tells us, “by wisdom from above, which is first of all pure, then peaceable, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits…”  Such wisdom will not lead us astray, but back to the community that God provided for us in the first place.   

Mick and the Rolling Stones were so close to having it right.  Really, they were just one pronoun off.  Instead of YOU – it should have been WE.    WE can’t always get what WE want - But if WE try sometime, WE just might find, WE get what we need…” So the next time that green eyed look of envy comes across our hearts, take a lesson from Mick Jagger and the apostle James.  Take that deep breath, sing the revised refrain – and ask the spirit to fill you with that wisdom that seeks to serve only the common good…