Jesus has encounters with people “who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else.” In today’s Gospel he tells of a Pharisee who is praying near a humble tax collector, despised by others, who “stood off at a distance … and prayed” for “mercy.” The Pharisee’s prayer is, “O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity – greedy, dishonest, adulterous – or even like this tax collector.” Jesus both loved the Pharisees and regularly took them to task as fools. He did so because of their folly in choosing not to love.
A man who knew such unloving Pharisees all too well in his own life was Desiderius Erasmus, whose birthday we celebrate today (1466-1536). Erasmus was born under both scandalous and loving circumstances, to a priest and his housekeeper who loved their boy very much until their early deaths in a plague. In part, Erasmus can be likened to the humble tax collector, despised by others and kept “at a distance,” reminded of his lower status. As Erasmus matured, he held off the attraction of status and worked against its prejudices. He had learned the folly of external status, “Anyone who looks closely at the inward nature and essence will find that nobody is further from true wisdom than those people with their grand titles, learned bonnets, splendid sashes and bejeweled rings.” Erasmus was generally describing institutional church officials in such criticisms who he, like Jesus, both loved and took to task, often in humorous ways (e.g. In Praise of Folly 1509). Erasmus was a humanist who was respected as a scholar, for example, spending many years translating a Latin New Testament with accompanying Greek. In a way, he contributed to a new sect that would also criticize the institutional church, Protestantism, but, as Erasmus believed, without much love. Erasmus thought this was especially true of his contemporary Martin Luther, whom he eventually likened to the foolish Pharisee in the Gospel, self-righteous and despising, with Luther being incessantly crude in his criticisms of others. Luther used Erasmus’ translations but in a manner Erasmus thought unwise. Luther and other Protestants began to mandate conformity to the Bible making it a false God. They did this while Catholics had priests mandating conformity to their decrees making ‘the Church’ a false god. Believing strongly in education as a means out of this or any morass, Erasmus proposed instead a “philosophy of Christ.” It was centered around Jesus’ loving witness best articulated in his Sermon on the Mount.
Erasmus thought people were being dissuaded from Jesus’ message of love so beautifully expressed in his Sermon, in his dealings with Pharisees, and in his life. Erasmus understood the vital core of Jesus’ loving way leads beyond the foolishness of status, “the whole of Jesus’ doctrine recommended forbearance and love, so his life taught nothing but mildness, gentleness, and kind affection.” Erasmus encouraged Jesus’ loving way for individual persons and for society as a whole. He especially promoted such love after initially feeling disgust at seeing the triumphal entry of the fool Pope Julius II leading a conquering army home from a Crusade. For Erasmus, Jesus’ peacemaking was always the most loving of endeavors and never a folly as warriors would have us believe, “The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.”
Prayer: Spirit, deepen our love and our peacemaking.
Question: How would I answer Erasmus’ query: “I am a fool for Christ, whose fool are you?
October 27, 2019 Gospel Luke 18:9-14 Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time