Eighth Day of Lent: The Plowing of the Half-Acre

Enthusiasm for the pilgrimage to Truth having ebbed by the end of Passus VII, Piers takes a new tack at the beginning of Passus VIII:

            “Then said Piers the Plowman, “By Saint Peter of Rome!

            I have a half-acre by the highway to plow;

            Once I have plowed this half-acre and sown it afterward,

            I will go with you all and teach you the way.”

The women ask Piers what they should do while he is plowing and he tells them to make sacks to hold the grain and vestments for the clergy.  The knights he orders to protect the community from wild beasts and to treat those under them with justice.  Then Piers himself begins to take up the plow, and declares this work, to provide food to all who live faithfully, will be like his own pilgrimage to gain pardon.  He makes up his will (as was traditionally done before setting out on a pilgrimage) and then sets himself to the work.  A great many of the pilgrims eagerly help him in his plowing, but soon it becomes clear not all are contributing:

            “And then some sat there and sang at their ale

            And helped plow this half-acre with ‘hey trollilolly!””

Enraged with these idlers and wasters, as he calls them, Piers calls in Sir Hunger to get them in line, which he quickly does through his own harsh but convincing methods.  With the whole community buzzing along with coordinated industry, Piers asks Sir Hunger’s advice on how to maintain the community, especially how to deal with those beg.

            “Truth taught me once to love them each one,

            And to help them in everything as often as they needed.

            Now I would know, before you leave, what is best,

            How I might convince them to love and to labor

            For their sustenance—teach me this, Sir Hunger.”

Hunger replies that any who are capable of working but refuse to should be given diminished rations till they come around but that, on the other hand, no one should overeat either (“Let not Sir Surfeit sit at your table”) so that they always have something to give to those who ask of them.  Having rendered his services, Hunger demands to be fed, and all the people bring their food to him: he is not truly sated till the harvest comes in, at which point, with Hunger’s presence no longer felt, the idlers and wasters return to their old ways, as Piers feared they would.

The story of the plowing of the half-acre is an allegory of the communal life of Christians on earth, where everyone has their part to play in sustaining the community.  This simple work of providing for the community is described as Piers’ pilgrimage.  All the complex machinations of Meed and her lawyers have disappeared from the scene, and it seems that a truly Christian community is about to come into being, founded on the bearing of each other’s burdens and mutual love and care.  The repentance that began with Reason’s preaching is beginning to bear great fruit in Piers’ “pilgrimage at the plow”.

Soon enough, however, it becomes clear that not everyone will work, and furthermore, that it is difficult to tell who is not working because they can’t work, and who is not working because they don’t want to work.  Though Sir Hunger proves something of a solution to this, Piers’ impressive organizing of the community is clearly not a final answer to the problems around him.  And we should note that this is not because Piers fails to “eliminate poverty,” which is how we might think.  Piers has something more radical in mind: he wants to get people to love as well as to labor, but simply better organizing how they labor is not accomplishing this.

Piers sees that a society in which no one goes hungry but everyone is independent and no one can care for one another is just as much in need of repentance and reform as one in which people go hungry.  As Christians we can often lose sight of this truth in our mission work.  Too often our goal is to grant people self-sustaining independence rather than trying to strengthen the bonds of interdependence and common life so that we can all more truly bear one another’s burdens as Christ enjoins us to.  As Christians, our work is not so much to end difficulties as to share them, not to make people independent of our help, but to make all of us dependent on one another.  All this goes against much of how the world around us thinks and probably much of how we instinctively think.  But that is not a problem.  That is simply why repentance and renewal must come first.

“With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.  There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold.  They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each of them as any had need.”  (Acts 4:33-35)