A Baptist Joke about Golfing on Sunday

Click to enlarge: Pastor Kenneth L Andrus in 1982, then pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in Erie, PA.

Pastor Andrus told this joke at the men's venison banquet back when I was a boy, perhaps 12 or 14 years old. This was at Bethel Baptist Church back when it was at 737 E 26th Street in Erie, PA. Pastor Andrus was not a joke teller; I recall watching him wait for the laughter and expressing relief with a small smile when those honest laughs came from Baptist men who enjoyed clean humor, good food, and fellowship.

This was in the basement of old Bethel East, a large cinder block room with high, small, barred windows (not to prevent break-ins but to prevent children from falling into the window wells outside).

Pastor Andrus stood on a wooden stairway in front of a solid metal pneumatic door that closed off a hallway where the boiler and water equipment was located.

(I think George Nicewonger was the janitor for a bit when I was at Bethel Christian School in that building; George looked a lot like William Bendix. I remember him taking me back to a room I wasn't allowed to be in and finding a replacement nut for my skate board).

Click to enlarge: Moon Mouse, by Adelaide Holl (Author) and Cyndy Szekeres (Illustrator), 1969

On the other side of that hallway, past the equipment rooms, was another metal door, and on the other side of that, rooms with windows where we held Sunday school and where, during the week, I had music and art classes, and where I drew a picture of Moon Mouse, the mouse who mistook a wheel of cheese for the moon.

That hallway could be very scary if both doors were closed. It had only one bare light bulb to illuminate it, and if the light was off and both doors closed, all you had for company was the hum of the electricity and water.

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This is the joke Pastor Andrus told that evening:

One Sunday a deacon decides to go golfing but tells everyone at church he's not feeling well. St Peter and Jesus are watching this unfold from Heaven and St Peter says, "Lord, are you going to let him get away with this?" Jesus just nods and says nothing.

The deacon gets a hole in one on his first hole. St Peter says, "Did you see that? A hole in one! And he's supposed to be in church." Jesus just nods and says nothing. The deacon gets another hole in one, and another, and another, until he's golfed a perfect game.

St Peter looks to Jesus and says, "Lord, I just don't understand it, he skipped church, lied about being sick, and you let him golf a perfect game. Why?"

Jesus looked at St Peter and said, "Who's he gonna tell?"

 

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It was traditional each year at the Men's Venison Banquet for the hunters to donate some of their take. The women also prepared beef for those that didn't like venison.

There was always an award each year for the youngest hunter to bag a buck, and that year it went to a girl, Peanut Bierer (real name Lynda, but everyone called her Peanut). I think she was 16 at the time.

It was no longer the "Men's" venison banquet.

I only attended one year. My dad was not a hunter and neither was I, but we were getting close to families that were, like the Bierers. Dana Bierer married my cousin, Susan Andrews.


[7/9/2013]

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