Sunday, October 4, 2026: Apodosis of the Exaltation of the Cross
GALATIANS 2:16-20
MARK 8:34-9:1; MATTHEW 18:23-35
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is in our midst. In the Gospel today, we have a generous king. We have a generous king who is filled with riches. And true, he’s filled with the riches of mercy and compassion, but he’s also filled with monetary riches. He is able to sustain the loss, if you will, of this debt. And he’s able to sustain the loss of the debt not so much because he has an abundance of wealth, but because he understands the value, the true value of monetary wealth, if you will.
And you also have a wicked servant, a wicked servant who is poor. He’s poor not simply in the fact that he is lacking money and therefore was in debt to a king. He’s poor in compassion. He’s poor in mercy. He is unable, he’s unwilling, I rather should say, to provide an abundance. To provide, shall we say, in the same way the king provided for him, with this abundant – overabundance is a better word actually.
And so this wicked servant, we look and we say to ourselves, what could be the cause by which he would just turn around and be just as, if not more so cruel than what the king should have been to him, to his fellow man.
There’s lots of things we could say and they would all be true. We could say he was being a hypocrite. We could say obviously he was unmerciful. But I want to pay attention to something. I want to point your attention to the fact that he was greedy. He had avarice. Avarice is something that we don’t talk much about in our society because greed is a virtue, actually. To be greedy in our society is to be a person who can get ahead. To be greedy in our society is to be a person who’s wise. A person who knows how to keep money, how to make it. We, in our society, we see greed as a value. It’s a means to get power. It’s a means to get prestige. It’s definitely a means to get over on people.
There are many problems with greed, but one problem, especially with greed, with avarice, is that it can harden the heart. And when someone is greedy, truly, with material things. When someone is greedy, the next step for their heart is to become hardened and without mercy. And so we see with this man, what moved him to be so lacking in mercy is his avarice.
Now you may say to yourself, this is a bit of a stretch. Let me point to someone we’re all familiar with, at least most of us older people: Ebenezer Scrooge. I’m a bit early, but we’re about to hit Nativity season soon, right? Ebenezer Scrooge. Ebenezer Scrooge. His very name is synonymous with greed. His very name is synonymous with avarice. His very name is synonymous with cruelty, with bitterness. Definitely lacking mercy.
But his name is also synonymous with repentance. His name is synonymous with abundance of compassion once he realized the fear. You see, the way to deal with avarice is the fear of God. The way to deal with avarice is to understand that your unwillingness to share is going to lead to your unwillingness to have mercy. And your unwillingness to have mercy is going to lead you to a terrifying, terrifying place. Your greed will bring you to a place of being cruel and irritable to others.
Your greed will lead you to a place of terrible hypocrisy. Of being guilty of the very thing that you’ve been upset with others about. Such terrible hypocrisy. The kind of hypocrisy that God is wrathful against. The kind of lack of mercy that God is wrathful against. This is the fruit of greed, of avarice.
It should not be. Avarice leads to this type of demented state. In which we leave off being human beings, recognizing that our brothers and sisters are also made in the image of God, our Father. And instead of imitating our Father, we imitate the cruel jailhouse, those tollhouse collectors. We begin to imitate them. We begin to take pleasure in inflicting what we think is justice. It should not be.
In the Epistle today, St. Paul speaks about sowing abundantly. Giving abundantly. How can we not give abundantly? Has God not given you everything? And woe to us, shame on us. When we sit and we are listening to the lies of the devil in the world, and to say we don’t have anything. Everyone who can hear my voice has something, and I mean materially.
We must be careful. Because we can often think that the judgment of God is going to be based upon these, you know, acts of immorality. But this Gospel, as Deacon was saying, is terrifying. Because it shows us something. It shows us that really the truest of judgments comes from our hearts. Avarice has nothing to do with how many zeros are in your bank account. It has everything to do with how you see God, how you see the world. And if you are tempted, as we all can be, with avarice – which also, by the way, a little bonus prize, envy, can also be a way in which avarice is expressed. We can become envious of what others have. And what that’s doing is highlighting this avarice that’s underneath us. Underneath our hearts, hidden in there.
My brothers and my sisters, my sons and my daughters, we are the people of God. We’re His people. God has called us out in this nation to be with Him, to know Him, and to represent Him. And in this time of so many people coming in from the culture, I would say to you this is an important lesson for those of us who are in the church to really get this. Because we have to have our hospitality, we have to have our charity, we have to have our generosity be the thing that shows that we’re Christians. Because hospitality, generosity, these things are an expression of love.
And if we don’t have love, then we don’t have Orthodoxy. We don’t have Christ. If we don’t have love, then there’s no compassion. There’s no abundance. There’s no kingdom. Let us leave off this world.
Remember Ebenezer. Remember the joy he has. And being awakened and giving generously. But also remember the terror of God and what He’ll say to you if you do not learn the value of abundance and mercy. Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us. Amen.