Fifth Sunday of Lent: His Secret Disciples

For a summary of Passus IX see Ninth Day of Lent.

Passus IX consists mainly of interpretations of the pardon sent from Truth, the lengthiest and most complex of which involves the various situations of beggars.  After condemning those beggars “whose churches are the tavern,” the poet turns his attention to another sort of beggar:

“And yet there are other beggars, healthy, as it seems,

But lacking reason, men and women both,

The which are lunatic lollers and leapers about

And grow mad with the moon, more and then less.

They take care for no cold nor account for the heat

And are moving after the moon; moneyless they walk

With a good will, witless, many wide countries,

Just as Peter did and Paul, save that they do not preach

Nor accomplish any miracles—and yet, many times it happens

They prophesy of the people, playing, as it were.

And in my eyes, as it seems, since God has the might

To give a sound mind to each person, wealth and health,

And yet allows these to go, it seems in my reflection

They are his apostles, such people, or like his secret disciples,

For he sent them forth silverless in a summer garment,

Without bag and bread, as the book tells us:

When I sent you without purse and scrip…

Barefoot and breadless, they beg of no man,

And though he met the mayor in the middle of the street

He pays him no honor, no more than another

Salute no man by the way.”

I’ve quoted a longer passage here than on some other days because I find these verses among the most powerful and memorable of the whole poem.  In particular that singular line “For he sent them forth silverless in a summer garment” has haunted my soul from the moment I first encountered it.  For me the power of these lines rests in how Langland leads us from a description of these wandering, witless beggars (we have all met people like this) to a description of the apostles’ ministry of itinerant preaching and holy poverty.  In one movement he both elevates this class of the homeless to the rank of apostleship and reveals to us in forceful and unsettling ways that one emblem of the true Christian is, for the most part, what the world calls a poor madman: he pays no honor to important personages, he wanders the country with neither food nor possessions, he is insensate to both heat and cold.

And yet this is not poetry that romanticizes the poor or attributes some fallacy of ‘childlike simplicity’ to the mentally disturbed:  the note of pity and pathos runs just as deep as the note of wonder and religious conviction.  I myself recognize that I am perhaps more susceptible than many to such feelings, but this poetry is a fire to burn off that sentimental dross.  Because what these “lunatic lollers” have in common with the apostles besides their wandering poverty is that they “prophesy of the people.”  God takes them up as his instruments to proclaim his will and judgment to the world.  Do not be so quick to feel sorry for such wanderers in a superior way:  they are often the servants of God’s mighty power, sent into the world to accomplish his purposes.

I shared these lines once with a friend of mine who has many friends among the homeless and indigent of his community and he knew immediately what Langland was talking about.  He thought immediately of a man he knew quite well whose brains were a bit addled both by drug use earlier in his life and other things, but who nonetheless often spoke with startling clarity and truth about those people who were (to use his words) “getting fucked” by the way the world is run.  Indeed there were few subjects closer to the hearts of the prophets of Israel.

I myself encountered one of these secret disciples of God’s this last fall.  A man came by our office who was passing through town.  He was staying in the homeless shelter and wanted to know if we could help him with a bus ticket down to Oklahoma City.  We got some money together for the ticket and I volunteered to drive him out to where the bus makes its stop in Emporia.  He came early to the office in the morning and as I was getting some things finished up he sat down and began to read from the psalms.  As I came out and he finished reading he said to us, “King David, he did many terrible things.  He slept with that man’s wife and then had him killed.  But he confessed his sin to God, and I suppose God forgave him.”  We went on to the bus.  All this happened about the time General Petraeus stepped down from heading the CIA.  I am ashamed to say I do not remember the man’s name.  But then many prophets go unnamed in the scriptures.

“After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go.  He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to sent out laborers into his harvest.  Go on you way.  See, I am sending you out like lambs in the midst of wolves.  Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road.  Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’  And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you.  Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid.  Do not move about from house to house.  Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’  But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you.  Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’  I tell you, on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town.”  (Luke 10:1-12)