A Long Christmas List…
One of the Christmas stories in Kruschwitz family lore that generates shudders from my parents and laughter from my brother and me, has to do with when my brother Curt was a young child. Apparently he would write a note each year to send to the North Pole. And each year he received what he’d asked for. The story goes that his first few requests were modest. One year he asked for a soccer ball. The next he asked for a book series. But as each wish was fulfilled, the little gears started turning in little Curt’s head. Everything he asked for, he got. Why settle for one or two gifts? Why not ask for more? And so the next time Christmas came around, little Curt shot the moon…and sent my parents into a veritable state of panic! The latest game console, a collection of soccer gear, toys, clothes—anything my brother could think of, went onto that list. I won’t go into the details of how that Christmas ended, other than to say that my parents had to sit my brother down for an honest little chat about Santa Claus and the virtue of modesty. After all, Santa has millions of children to take care of.
My family can laugh at that memory because the desire for more things is relatable. And in little children, it’s cute and comical. It has not yet grown into a voracious, destructive habit of the heart. It’s nothing like what we see in today’s scripture.
Choosing Things over Relationships
The story that Jesus tells is known today as the parable of the prodigal son. But we could just as easily call it the parable of the greedy son, because the son’s brash demand for his inheritance boils greed down to its essence. Greed is choosing things over relationships. It is choosing wealth, possessions, materials, over people. It is nothing like a little child asking for toys, a little child who takes it for granted that what is most important is his loving family. The prodigal son—the greedy son—is making a clear choice. He wants his inheritance, not his father. Some scholars have suggested that the son’s demand for inheritance is equivalent to telling his father, “You are dead to me.”
But as the son leaves with his sudden fortune, he is not happy. Greed is never satisfied; it always wants more. And so we find the greedy son squandering his fortune, pursuing pleasure and seeking the best money can buy. Later in the story, his older brother will accuse him of squandering his money on prostitutes, in which case his greed would have been exchanged for lust. If greed is the deadly thought that things will make us happy and whole, then lust is its close cousin, the deadly thought that people are things. Lust sees bodies but not hearts. Like greed, lust seeks personal gratification rather than an interpersonal relationship.
Degrading Thoughts
But lust leaves the greedy son just as unsatisfied as before. So, as his circumstances get worse, he finds himself thinking about home. He hatches the idea of returning. But listen closely to his idea and you will see the tragic consequences of greed and lust. He plans to tell his father, “I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands” (Luke 15:19). I’ve heard greed and lust described as degrading, but rarely have I thought about what that actually means. Greed and lust both devalue us. Greed locates value in things, not in people. Naturally, the greedy son has long lost any sense of his own value or worthiness. Lust does the same thing, as it drains the world of relationship and any sense of the heart’s value. The novelist Alan Paton gives a heartrending depiction of how lust can leave a person feeling worthless. Listen to this short excerpt that shares the feelings of a man who has committed adultery with a young woman late at night in a vacant lot outside town:
His body and clothes stank with the smell of weeds, and the stinking was a symbol of his corruption…. And he thought…of his children with special agony, for what kind of man would destroy what he had created, and hurt what he had loved? … What madness makes a man pursue something so unspeakable, deaf to the cries of his wife and children and mother and friends and blind to their danger, to grasp one unspeakable pleasure that brought no joy, ten thousand of which pleasures were not worth one of the hairs on his children’s heads? Such desire could not surely be a desire of the flesh, but some mad desire of a sick and twisted soul. And why should I have this desire? he asked himself. Where did it come from? And how did one cure it? But he had no answers to these questions….[1]
“Son of Mine!”
Christian tradition does offer a couple of answers: generosity as a cure for greed, and chastity as a cure for lust. But I like Jesus’ parable even more than these answers, because it shows us that the real remedy is not just something we work out on our own, but something that God is working on our behalf.
Imagine with me our lost son, covered in shame and regret, trudging home. He walks past a puddle and winces at the sight of his muddy reflection. A history of fevered daydreams and half-remembered nights haunts him, and he feels worthless. With his head pointed down, he doesn’t even see his father running toward him. When he looks up, he can barely believe his eyes. He finds himself fully embraced and kissed by his tearful father. He blubbers out his apology and his own unworthiness, only to hear his father calling out for a celebratory feast—“for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” (Luke 15:24). His father does not chastise him for how badly he messed up. He does not instruct him to make amends. He embraces him and calls him, “Son of mine!”
What this story suggests to me is that the first step to repenting from greed or lust, the first step in thinking differently, is simply to learn that we are loved. We are worthy of love. Not because of what we’ve done, but because of who we are: God’s beloved children.
A Teacher Learns the Most Important Lesson
How do we learn that we are loved?
Recently a Harvard research project published a book called The Good Life. The project had studied the same individuals and families for over 80 years, trying to determine how happy they were and why. Their primary conclusion is that happiness has one key predictor: relationships. The authors tell the story of two men: one was a very successful lawyer, and the other took a second-choice career as a high school teacher. The lawyer made tons of money, was respected widely, and had the means to do just about anything he wanted. The teacher, on the other hand, was more strapped for cash but had a network of close friendships through his students and their families and his role in the community. What fascinated me most were these two men’s answers to a series of true/false questions when they were 55 years old, at the height of their professional lives. The lawyer indicated by his answers that life has more pain than pleasure, and that he often felt starved for affection. The teacher indicated the opposite: life has more pleasure than pain, and he did not often feel starved for affection.
Somehow, the teacher had learned the most important lesson. He had learned that he was loved. How? I can’t help but think it was because he had chosen relationships over things. Not all at once, of course. But over time he came to see that his many friendships—with his wife, his family, his students, his colleagues—these were what made his life good.
I’m sure that, like anyone else, he was visited by thoughts of greed and lust. But he could say “No.” Because he was already “home,” so to speak, surrounded by family. He was already sitting at his father’s banquet table, where he knew himself to be worthy of love.
Prayer
Who calls us his own—
Help us, like the wayward son,
To wake up to the futility
Of our pursuit of things
…
Lift our eyes from shame to grace,
To see your feast prepared for us.
May your love be our joy and our salvation.
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