"Popeye"

My first appointment was in central Illinois, where I served three smaller churches who had each seen their best days long ago (see “Requiem for a Church” elsewhere in this Blog). Their populations were simultaneously declining and aging, what with the majority of their young people heading off to college and not coming back, and so I had quite a few funerals during my three years there. I’d have to go back and count to be sure, but I believe the number was around fifty. They started during my second full month there with back to back to back funerals, three weeks in a row. One of those was Henrietta. If my memory serves me correctly, she was right around 100 years old.
By all accounts Henrietta was pretty deaf by the time I arrived, and our sound system didn’t work particularly well, so I doubt she heard much of what I said during worship. But she was from a time and generation when folks went to church, and so she was with us every Sunday, including the Sunday before she died. When she went it was sudden, despite her age. Her son found her, at home in bed. It appeared that she’d gone to sleep and just not woken up. And so we gathered for her funeral, and the ladies of the church prepared a fine meal for her friends and family, the latter of which included a bachelor son who was seventy years old. Everyone called him Popeye, because, well, he bore an uncanny resemblance to the cartoon character of the same name. Popeye had never really done too much with his life. If I recall correctly, he may have had a slight learning disability. He spent most of his time downtown at the bar where he earned a few dollars sweeping the floor. And unlike his elderly mother, he didn’t come to church. But during the lunch that followed the funeral one of the older ladies of the congregation suggested to him that with his mother gone now it was time for him to claim her pew.
Now, this was a town where the older church ladies commanded respect, and this friend of his mothers may have even been his Sunday School teacher sometime in the past. Whatever the reason, Popeye was in worship the next Sunday, sitting right there in his mother’s pew. Unfortunately, over the years Popeye’s clothing had become somewhat worn, and you didn’t really need to dress particularly well for the town bars, and so Popeye wore what he had available. This set a few tongues wagging, and Popeye, unlike his mother, was able to hear every word. That was his last Sunday in worship with us. He never came back, unwilling to subject himself to the judgment of the ladies of the church.
We do that sometimes in the Church - drive away the very people that Jesus would send us out to find and bring back home. Oh, we’ve relaxed our dress code substantially since this happened, but we can still be mighty quick to judge and reject the folks who’s lives bear silent witness to a lifetime of poor choices, or those who really don’t fit well within our social circles. Jesus once reminded the Pharisees that it was the sick who required a Physician, and not those who were well, but we too often forget that, expecting folks to have their lives all in order when they first come to the church, as if somehow that could be possible.
I’ve often thought about Popeye over the years, even though he died in 1992, five years and a few months after we had moved on to Minnesota. The obituary stated that he was survived by a nephew. I still grieve that it couldn’t add the words “and a loving church family.”