My heart bleeds

"It's an overwhelming sadness. My heart bleeds," the Rev. Jesse Jackson said in a phone interview Monday. "I knew him as a very conscientious freedom fighter who sought racial justice and reconciliation."

Murphy, 62, was preparing to deliver his Sunday sermon at People's Congregational Church in Washington, D.C., where he has been pastor since 2009, when he collapsed. He was taken to the hospital, but could not be revived.

A memorial service in Lansing is being planned, but no date has ben set.

The outpouring of grief over Murphy's death stretched from Chicago, where Murphy and Jackson grew up and first met each other, to Lansing, where Murphy served as city councilman, state representative and self-described "pastor preacher," to the shores of Ghana in west Africa, where he often traveled as part of Lansing's Sister Cities program.

Jackson said he had known Murphy for over 30 years. Murphy was treasurer of Jackson's 1984 and 1988 Democratic presidential primary campaigns in Michigan.

Jackson's bid for the nomination failed in 1984, but he swept the state in 1988. It was one of the most stunning political upsets in Michigan history.

Jackson praised Murphy for his "very strong positions on matters of domestic legislation as regards poor and working poor people, but also as regards peace."

"Whether it was the misadventure into Iraq, standing for [Nelson] Mandela's release, the fight for Dr. King's holiday — he's in that tradition of ministers who fought for a sense of justice within and beyond the walls of the church," Jackson said.

MSU Board of Trustees President Joel Ferguson, a close friend of Murphy's, managed the Jackson campaigns in 1984 and 1988.

A rare combination of qualities, Ferguson said, made Murphy an effective leader.

"He cared about people, plus he was smart," Ferguson said. "Some people have ambition without talent. He had both plus commitment — plus vision."

Murphy was elected to Michigan's Legislature in 2000, serving three terms until he was term limited in 2006. Before that, he served on the Lansing City Council.

He founded St. Stephen's Community Church in Lansing in 1987, where he was pastor until he became senior minister at the People's UCC Church in Washington, D.C. in 2009.

Murphy's community-building skills mixed inspiration with perspiration. Political consultant and former Ingham County Commissioner Mark Grebner recalled Murphy's painstaking legwork in the 1980s as he assembled a congregation for St. Stephen's.

"He's the only minister I've ever known who thought of religion as a matter of direct mail and demographics, rather than doctrine and salvation," Grebner said, but backtracked slightly: "I'm sure the latter figured in also."

Barbara Roberts Mason, president of Lansing's Regional Sister City Commission, traveled to Ghana with Murphy several times as part of a sister city delegation to the Akuapim South Municipal District.

In series of annual visits in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Murphy and the Lansing delegation built a church and started a pineapple and mango farm to help a village school become self-sufficient.

"I called people in Ghana [Sunday] and we cried," Mason said Monday. "Yesterday was a tearful day."

Murphy's eloquence and empathy impressed Mason in his sermons.

In the 1980s, not long after Murphy went into the ministry, Mason's neighbor, a member of Murphy's church, had an infant son who died of SIDS. Murphy gave the eulogy.

"I don't remember the exact words, but I remember the feeling," Mason said. "You'd get a feeling he understands what people are going through, for the mother and father to have this child taken away. That's what made him a good minster. He could get into people's minds, understand their very being and help them get the strength to face tomorrow."

Murphy is survived by two adult children.