Can Greed be Good?
Lay’s Potato Chips had an advertising campaign in the 1980’s: No one can eat just one. And...it’s true! If you are a potato chip lover, one leads to two, which leads to more. Satisfaction doesn’t happen with one chip. What’s your guilty pleasure that needs more and more to be satisfied?
Today’s gospel reading from Matthew is about the tenants who are leasing a landowner’s vineyard. When harvest time comes, they don’t want to relinquish the crops. They want to keep them. In fact, they not only want to keep the yield, they also want the inheritance of the landowner’s son! They want more! They can’t stop at one chip. They want more. They want what the son will have.
Greed is a hunger, a craving. It takes quite a bit to satisfy it. And, I wonder if the satisfaction point moves out a little further once we reach it? We grab for it, but it is always just a little bit further than our reach.
What I also find interesting about greed is that it seems to always be reaching for something outside of itself. Money. Success. Prestige. What the other person has. What would it be like to be greedy, hungry or craving for oneself? To be hungry for the potential that is inside of us!
What would it be like to reach for satisfaction in ourselves? To be led by God or our higher power to those places in us that possess such richness and value? What would that be like??!! That would certainly be an intriguing journey and paradoxical. As I take this inward journey of exploration, I find food that nourishes me deeply. Yet, leaves me hungry for more! As more and more of my hidden self is revealed, the self that is gifted and has potential, I am satisfied. And I become more curious. Show me, more! Give me another chip, please!
I wonder if that kind of greed leads to greater satisfaction and fulfillment?? We won’t know unless we ask for more chips. My suspicion is that there is a limitless bag of nourishment that is ours for the asking….and will satisfy us quite deeply.
Have a wonderfully satisfying St. Patrick’s Day!
