Rock Goes the Gospel 5 - The Beatles "Eleanor Rigby"

During an interview with POP CHRONICLES Paul McCartney says that he came up with the melody of "Eleanor Rigby" as he experimented with his piano. However, the original name of the protagonist that he chose was not Eleanor Rigby but Miss Daisy Hawkins. The song Eleanor Rigby is often described as a lament for lonely people or a commentary on post-war life in Britain An actual Eleanor Rigby was born in 1895 and lived in Liverpool, possibly in the suburb of Woolton, where she married a man named Thomas Woods. She died on 10 October 1939 at age 44. The real Eleanor Rigby lived a lonely life similar to that of the person in the song.

Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice 

in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, 

wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?

In June this year the TELEGRAPH reported that "Britain is the loneliness capital of Europe with its inhabitants less likely overall to know their neighbours or have strong friendships than people anywhere else in the EU. Britain is ranked 26th out of the 28 European Union countries by the proportion of the population who say they have someone on whom they feel they could rely if they have a serious problem. The report goes on to say that almost five million people in Britain have no close friends.

In Genesis 2:18 we find the writer of Genesis declaring what God says at the beginning about loneliness. "Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” John Milton comments on this passage and said, “Loneliness was the first thing God’s eye named "NOT GOOD" In a similar way Mother Theresa who devoted all of her life to working with the last, least and lost in Calcutta, India, once said, “The biggest disease today is not leprosy or cancer or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted, uncared for, deserted by everybody. The greatest evil is the lack of love and charity, the terrible indifference toward one’s neighbour.” 

Combating loneliness was one of the issues that confronted the church community in the book of Acts. In Acts 6 we see the social enterprise of the church at work, the social experiment in the embryonic church in the book of Acts, where the church (The people) took care of the widows, in this context those who were overlooked. Their response was to enlist a "waiter's guild" so to speak. "Those who could wait on tables" This helped solve the crisis.

Being overlooked is a real issue in the early church community, especially if you were of a different creed, class, race, etc... The same is true for the church community and the world we live in today. The church is called to engage at the level of a "waiter's guild" to serve the lonely, least, last, lost. Jesus was famous for it. "Look at all the lonely people" says the Beatles song. Jesus lives life right in there among people in communities, towns, villages and cities, so did the early church, and so must we, because it is God who first said "It is not good for man to live alone"