Palm Sunday: the Pastors and the People

For a summary of Passus XVI, see Fifteenth Day of Lent.

In Passus XVI, our travelers encounter Liberum Arbitrium, who engages Will on many interconnected subjects, not least of them the need of reform in the church:

            “Lo, hear what Holy Writ witnesses of wicked teachers:

            As holiness and honesty out of Holy Church

            Spring up and spread and inspire the people

            Through perfect priests and prelates of Holy Church,

            So indeed out of Holy Church all evil spreads

            Where an imperfect priesthood is, preachers and teachers.

            You may see it by example in summertime on trees

            Where some boughs bear leaves and some bear none at all:

            Those boughs that nothing bear and are not green of leaf,

            There is a mischief in the root of such a trunk.

            So indeed parsons and priests and preachers of Holy Church

            Are the root of right faith to rule the people;

            But where the root is rotten, reason knows it well,

            There shall grow never flower nor fruit nor the fair leaf be green.”

The subject of the clergy is a recurrent theme in Piers Plowman and the words of Liberum Arbitrium here, thought forcefully exemplified by the figure of a diseased tree, are not much different from many other such passages in the poem.  The point is clear and often repeated:  the holiness and honesty of virtuous pastors produces a virtuous flowering among the people, while a sinful and rotten priesthood yields a flowerless and sterile people.

These are not words we pastors like to hear and we usually have a number of quick answers to them.  We might say that it is God who gives the growth (1 Corinthians 3:6) and that he is capable of giving growth to the flocks of good and wicked pastors alike.  We might dig into our knowledge of church history and recall that it was the heretical sect of the Donatists who believed that the sacraments had to be performed by virtuous ministers to be legitimate, and take that for our shield.  We might remember that there is a priesthood of all believers, so that pastors shouldn’t be singled out.  Laziest of all, we might just shrug and say “We’re all sinners, right?  Why should we expect pastors to be any different?”

Perhaps more subtly, we try to make the pastor some kind of professional, so that competence and skill become more important that holiness and honesty.  If you’re a relatable communicator, a confident leader, a prudent counselor, the branch of your congregation will flourish with green leaves on the strength of those professional aptitudes alone.  And what’s more, we can travel to conferences and seminars, read How-To’s and take on coaches to acquire these prized techniques and learn new strategies for them.

How easily we deceive even ourselves!  Professional competence may be able to tidy up a rotten branch, but it cannot make it put forth healthy leaves; the techniques of a shrewd husbandman may force some growth from a diseased bough, but it cannot last.  Likewise the fees for a thousand experts cannot empower a heart shut to the free gift of the Holy Spirit, anymore that it will avail the mouth of your intellect to devour all helpful advice while the mouth of your prayer is unused to making the confession of your sins.  From the holiness of a pastor God gives growth, and from a pastor’s wickedness even what grows grows weak and rotten.

This is a truth given dramatic form in the great irony of Palm Sunday, that the crowds which praised and recognized God in the presence of the good priest, Jesus, would just a few short days later be swayed by the presence of Caiaphas and the other wicked priests and grow so caught up in the webs of sin and rebellion as to put to death the one they once rightly hailed as king.  Caiaphas and his fellows possessed every legitimacy and no doubt possessed the highest credentials in all the skills of priestcraft.  Yet such was their wickedness that for all that professional excellence the people of God rejected the one who chose them and crucified the Lord of Glory.

Pray for your pastors.

“In the prophets of Samaria
I saw a disgusting thing:
they prophesied by Baal
and led my people Israel astray.
But in the prophets of Jerusalem
I have seen a more shocking thing:
they commit adultery and walk in lies;
they strengthen the hands of evildoers,
so that no one turns from wickedness;
all of them have become like Sodom to me,
and its inhabitants like Gomorrah.
Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts concerning the prophets:
“I am going to make them eat wormwood,
and give them poisoned water to drink;
for from the prophets of Jerusalem
ungodliness has spread throughout the land.”” (Jeremiah 23:13-15)