| Well
Done, Good and Faithful Servant |
Today I want to tell you about Father Murphy.
I can’t tell you everything about him. I wish I could, and as a bona-fide
relative, I should be able to tell you more than I can. But the people
who really know everything about him are mourning him this week in California,
and now just seems like the wrong time to start asking questions.
So all I can give you is a snapshot of his life, what I know of him gained
from the family communications that become like osmosis, soaking in the
history of past generations.
He started life in 1920 as Edward E. Murphy, and wanted to be an actor
as a young man. He told me about his days on the stage, and about the time
he toured a Hollywood studio and saw the filming of a movie that starred
Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre. (This means it had to be “The Maltese
Falcon” or “Casablanca,” unless I missed a movie somewhere.)
Peter Lorre came onstage with his usual schtick, nasal voice and
weaselly ways, and Edward Murphy burst out laughing. They had to stop the
taping because the laughter got onto the soundtrack.
He told me this when I was sixteen and informed him that I wanted to be
an actress when I grew up. Then he followed this story by giving me a sterling
silver ring with the comedy and tragedy faces entwined on it. This is what
he did instead of saying, “Are you nuts?” which I clearly was.
But Edward Murphy didn’t stay on the stage. Edward Murphy became U.S. Army
Lt. Edward Murphy, commanding a light reconnaissance tank under Gen. Patton
and fought his way across Europe.
On Aug. 6, 1944, the Germans blew up Lt. Murphy’s tank. He was burned on
his hands and face and leg, and the explosion cost him much of his hearing.
It also gave him a Purple Heart and a ticket home.
But Edward Murphy found more in Europe than a tank and a medal. He found
his calling, and although he never told me so, I believe he heard the voice
of God.
It wasn’t long before Edward Murphy became Father Murphy, a priest of the
Episcopal Church, and pastor to so many sheep. He was the pastor of St.
Luke’s Episcopal Church for more than 20 years, and founded St. Luke’s
Episcopal School. He served as pastor to Camp San Joaquin.
He was the most devout man I have ever known. His was the kind of faith
to which the rest of us would aspire and never attain. It was a blend of
faith and reason that continues to mystify me. It was not the blind fundamentalism
that denies any examination, nor was it the cynicism that calls for solid
proof behind any belief, as if faith were the result of a mathematical
theorem.
Instead, he believed in God and the church, a devotion that did not preclude
reason and intellectual examination, yet recognized that faith is the evidence
of things unseen.
I won’t pretend that we never disagreed. I recall a day when I was about
fifteen and I knew everything, and I got into a theological discussion
with him. I don’t recall the exact issue behind the discussion, but it
had something to do with the factual accuracy of the Bible, whether its
essential truth had been diluted through the years of translations.
I don’t remember how the discussion ended, and I won’t say I might not
still disagree with him. What I do remember is that I was a girl of fifteen
with the theological background of a decade of Sunday School, and he was
a learned theological scholar, but he gave my arguments the same
weight as if they came from the Presiding Bishop himself.
He taught me by example that day; showed me that one makes a bigger impact
in a disagreement by showing others respect and considering their opinions,
because no one can know the whole of any truth.
Not long after, he gave me a copy of G.K. Chesterton's "Orthodoxy." He
said he had a spare copy and it would be a shame to waste it on a non-reader.
I'm afraid I wasn't quite adult enough yet to understand Chesterton; I'm
still not sure I'm adult enough to understand him. But that acknowledgement,
the belief that anyone can learn and is therefore worthy of respect, has
stayed with me.
It would be a mistake to think that Father Murphy was solely a man of the
church. He met and married my grandmother Lorraine, and helped raise Patrice
and Michael Stribling as his own. He was Father and Grandfather to my family,
as devoted as if we were his own flesh and blood.
He was a devout baseball fan as well. He lived and died an Oakland A’s
fan, poor soul, and perhaps where he is now, the A’s are winning.
Decades of summer vacation trips and Christmas gatherings flash before
my mind’s eye, and they would be touching to those who were there and utterly
boring to those who were not.
The Purple Heart he was given in World War II was lost in a flash flood.
Many years later, he received a replacement Heart, part of a Fourth of
July ceremony in 1999. California Gov. Gray Davis presented him with the
medal and declared Father Murphy Day across the state.
I went to visit both the Murphys once while I was in college. It was not
long after an accident that had caused him serious injuries. Always a news
hound - he single-handedly kept CNN afloat in the early days - the news
now seemed to depress him. I asked him why.
He said the world had been getting uglier and uglier, and he felt his work,
the life he had devoted to service, would be unfinished.
That struck me to the bone, because as young and foolish as I was then,
I could see his work for the first time - his church, his community, the
hundreds of families he had counseled, baptized, married and buried.
He was a touchstone for more than my family, you see. He was a touchstone
for literally thousands of people over decades of service. And he still
felt his work was unfinished.
The last time I saw him was December of 1997. I was getting married, and
he had agreed to concelebrate at my wedding. It was the standard pre-wedding
zoo, foolishly planned for New Year’s Eve.
But he seemed calmer than anyone else there. He astounded my sports-fan
husband-to-be with baseball stories through the decades. He was tired,
of course - we all were - but he seemed more at peace with himself than
he had a few years before.
If I had known it would be the last time I would see him, I’d like to think
I could have said something profound. But I didn’t know, and to this day
I can’t think of what I could have said to him.
But perhaps it’s better that I remember him as he was then. He stood before
the altar of God in St. Mary’s Cathedral in Memphis, he bound my hand to
my husband’s in the sacrament of marriage as 1997 became 1998. And he danced
with me for a very brief moment at my wedding.
The tears I have shed since learning of his passing are for me; for my
grandmother Lorraine; for my mother; for all of us. I told you I couldn’t
tell you everything about him. I can only tell you what he was to me, and
the profound impact he had on my life and on the lives of so many, just
the ones I have seen from the distance of miles and years at which I observed
his life.
There’s a lot of holes in this story; decades in between the moments of
my recollection. But maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Maybe
the holes in this story will be filled up with memories, as we who have
lost a little part of our hearts can fill up the emptiness with remembrance.
And we will remember that he has gone on to the place he was supposed to
be; the place where all his questions are answered, where he sees
that his work is finished. Or perhaps the only profound thing one can say
of a missionary of God has already been said: “Well done, good and faithful
servant.”
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