Some years ago, I attended an ecumenical service which was hosted by an Episcopal church. The preacher was a minister from another denomination, and he began his sermon by telling a joke. The gist of the joke was that a church in his denomination had taken in a homeless family and had helped them get back on their feet, even to the extent of buying them fancy clothes. Then the family stopped going to that church. When asked why, they said, "Well, now we’re well dressed enough to be Episcopalians."

I smiled politely, but I didn’t like that joke. First of all, I didn’t think then, and I don’t think now, that it’s very gracious of a guest to begin a sermon with a joke told at his host’s expense. But etiquette aside, I didn’t like that joke because it hit too close to home. We Episcopalians are often known as the church of the elite. We can rattle off facts about how George Washington was an Episcopalian; in fact, we have had more Presidents than any other denomination; we have a long list of the famous and powerful people who were Episcopalians (some of whom were also "Robber-Barons"), and there is a book proudly documenting the overlap between the Episcopal Church and American aristocrats called The Episcocrats.

At St. John’s, I think we’re better about this than at most Episcopal Churches, but I don’t think we’re immune. And, while I thought it was poor form for that preacher to tell that joke as a guest in an Episcopal church, what really bothered me about it was that, as a denomination, we are too often guilty of the punch line: there is the perception, and, sadly, sometimes the reality, that you have to be of a certain class to be comfortable as an Episcopalian.

As you know, I am the co-chair of the Diocesan Commission on Congregational Growth and Development. We are constantly attempting to start new parishes in the diocese. And we have access to a wealth of information for every area in the diocese: projected growth or decline, average age, percent of people who are already "churched," racial composition, percent of single parent households, average education level, average household income. It’s a little scary, really.

And the note that I keep sounding at our meetings is that, while this information is a very helpful tool, we need to recognize the potential dark side of using it. It is very easy for us to fall into the trap of asking ourselves, "Are the people in this area well educated enough to be Episcopalians? Are they wealthy enough to support an Episcopal church? Do they fit our demographics?" In effect, we can easily slip into asking, "Are they in our class?" After all, we are the "Episcocrats."

I wonder what Jesus would think about that. There were certainly well defined classes in his day. At the top of the food chain were the "Rulers and Governors." In this agrarian society, they comprised one percent of the population, but owned fifty percent of the land. Next came the Priests, who owned about fifteen percent of the land. Below them were the "Retainers" (Military generals and expert bureaucrats), and the Merchants, who had evolved upward from the lower classes.

Below the merchants, and on the wrong side of the tracks, came the "Peasants," the vast majority of the population. They were farmers who lived on a subsistence level and (think of this when you complain about our taxes) had to devote about two-thirds of their annual crop toward supporting the upper classes. They were at the mercy of draught, and disease, and debt and often slid into desperate situations which the upper classes exploited through unjust sharecropping or tenant farming arrangements.

Below the peasants were the "Artisans," who made up about five percent of the population. They were usually families that had been peasants, but had lost their land, been dispossessed.

Below the Artisans, on the lowest rung, were the "Degraded," or the "Expendable" classes. These are the outcasts — beggars, hustlers, prostitutes, tax collectors (who were considered traitors to Israel).

So, where did Jesus fall? As a carpenter, Jesus was a member of the "Artisan" class — that group pushed into the dangerous space between "Peasants" and the "Degraded." But Jesus, of course, didn’t stay home and practice carpentry. As a wandering, penniless, self-appointed prophet — one whom many in his hometown believed had "gone out of his mind" (Mk. 3:21) — Jesus would have been considered socially lower than a speed bump.

And it showed. The writer Philip Yancy talks about a Sunday school class he taught in which they examined the life of Jesus, scene by scene, drawing on all four gospels. "After several months of study," he says, "we noticed a striking pattern in Jesus’ personal interactions: the more unsavory the character, the more comfortable he or she seemed to feel around Jesus." Elsewhere Yancy comments: "The man from Nazareth was a sinless friend to sinners, a pattern that should convict us on both accounts."

We’re not one of those churches that has a marquee out front with the sermon title on it. Most of the time, I’m very glad for that. But, as you know, I enjoy upsetting people a bit, and this Sunday I would have enjoyed having a sign out front that said, "Come worship our low class Savior." My, my, calling Jesus "low class," what fun! How many of you would be embarrassed? What would your friends and neighbors think? What kind of calls and letters would I get? "We love Jesus; don’t call him ‘low class.’"

And I would respond by reading them this, just one example of many examples:

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man [an outcast, a scumbag, traitorous tax collector] called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, "Follow me." And he got up and followed him. And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners [the Greek word translated "sinners" is usually used to indicate prostitutes], many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. When the [scandalized] Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" But when he heard this, he said, "Those who are well have no need for a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." For I have come not to call the righteous, but sinners. [That last line is sometimes translated, "I have come not to call the pious, but the irreligious."]

We churches, especially a Church that is in danger of being known as "The Episcocrats," need to be reminded of this. We need to be careful not to become social clubs, places where the unspoken objective is to be with people who are a lot like us (racially, economically, educationally, politically) so that we can be comfortable socially. Social clubs are not the Body of Christ. It’s harder to be the Body of Christ; it is less comfortable to be the Body of Christ; it is more challenging to be the Body of Christ; it gives a different vision to follow after this scandalous, low class Savior.

At our brunch today, you are going to hear about a new ministry opportunity. I’ve written about it in Eagle Notes. It’s an opportunity for us to become a center for supervised visitations between children and their parents in families in which the courts have removed the children because of neglect or abuse. Now, this is a problem that crosses all socio-economic and class lines, but I’m sure that if we do this, we will have some people around who are quite different than we are. Outcasts. People who have lost their children. People who have been shamed, and are ashamed.

Now, we might be able to pull this new ministry off, and we might not. That will be up to you, and there are lots of questions we need to ask, and we might have some objections. But I hope one of our objections will never be, "We don’t want those kinds of people hanging around here." Because "those kinds of people" were the ones who were most comfortable with our low class Savior, and if we make that objection, I don’t think he’ll be very comfortable with us.

By the way, when I went to a workshop to learn how to interpret all those demographic statistics I told you about, we pulled up the data for each students’ home parish. So there was all the information about zip codes in the Tri-Cities area: average income, average education, racial composition, all of it. And the instructors looked at it for a long while. It turns out that we just aren’t high class enough. Then they said, "There is no way there should be an Episcopal church in this area."

And I looked at them and said, "Well, . . . by God, there is!"