When Modern Western Society was being formed, there came to be what was called "The Three Estates." In other words - there were three types of people in the world:
The Clergy - the Nobility - The Masses.
You were either, a priest, a prince, or a nobody. Life was that simple.
I think the church at that point had forgotten its roots. It forgot that Jesus was part of the third estate, a nobody, a poor person with a social agenda. I don't think we ever really got it back.
The church has always had an identity problem. It is caused by the fact that Jesus was poor and talked about helping the poor - but the church is almost exclusively made up of middle-class folks, and ruled by the societal elite.
I know we do not want to hear this - I know so many pastors, clergy, priests - who over and over claim they are just common ordinary folk.
Well. No.
Like it or not - we are different.
And I do not mean made holy and set apart by God. That is either a construct of our powerful hierarchy or it is something we say to make ourselves feel better.
I mean we are different in that we are part of the ruling elite - we are just not paid enough for it to be part of the societal elite in our hyper financialized class structure.
Clergy are hyper-educated. Even the minority of people who go straight into the first estate have a minimum of two University Degrees. Many of us have a whole other career we trained for as well, and a huge percentage of us have more than two degrees.
Secondly - we get decision making power in a society that is really out of tune with the average jane. I can talk to the mayor about how I think something should be done - and they will probably consider it. People listen to me for advice on everything from how to bake bread to whether or not to leave their spouse. A clergy person has a scary amount of power when it comes to influencing.
People tell us their secrets. Almost everyone.
All of this, for as long as there have been professional religious leaders, has gotten us into trouble repeatedly. Think about Rasputin in the Russian Court or Richelieu in the French Court. Think about paedophile priests and native residential schools.
I wonder if it causes more problems now than it ever did.
And I wonder if this is because we pretend it is not true.
The current pandemic is changing the social landscape. I no longer think it will last long enough to change it permanently. But something else will probably happen and continue the work the virus began.
Which is the work of rebalancing society?
And what we are discovering is that the third estate, the ones we always discount as being not the elite of society, are the only ones making society function. I mean, if you take away a priest or a politician from a local community - there will still be food, and water, and fire, and shelter... as long as there are farmers, carpenters, labourers... There will still be joy and spiritual depth as long as there are still poets and musicians...
Here is the secret that everyone has always known - the third estate, the huddled masses, the poor... they are the ones who matter the most.
And when we use religious language, when we sing hymns from hymn books, when we make prayers responsive and use words that no one understands - we shut everyone out from experiencing what Religion is all about.
Greta Vosper talked about removing the magical language from religion and stop making it like we are talking to some other "being" like the great Santa Clause in the sky... and this was a good corrective.
But I think there is another step necessary here. We need to strip religion of class. That is the far more dangerous aspect of what we do - maintain a class structure that no longer serves anyone well.
We need to abandon religious trappings and become "plain" in what we do. We need to realize that the Quakers and Mennonites were the ones who best understood Luther and the whole point of the church reformation back in the early 1500's. They were trying to make faith accessible to the common person.
So no more words like epiclesis, exhortation, benediction, or sacrament. No more reading King James Bibles from the pulpit as if those words meant anything to anyone any more. No more robes and collars and ridiculousness.
If these days have taught us anything - it is that the stories of faith, the stories of goodness, the actions and language we need to use to change the world - are not ours, they belong to those who live life every single day from the gutter up.
I have a friend I have never met in Memphis - a guitar player who knows my wife - who was outside of a Walgreen's on the weekend and gave some Gatorade and protein snacks to a homeless guy... A minute later another homeless guy ambled across the street and the first one, now with a bag of groceries, says, "I got ya covered man" and hands him a Gatorade and Lunchable.
See - that is what Jesus was like. And that is what we should be like too. That is religion and those are the stories we need to tell.
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