DATE: Monday, April 7, 1997                 TAG: 9704070038

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: COLUMN 

SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER

                                            LENGTH:   67 lines

FUN IN CHURCH BRINGS FORTH SPRIGHTLY ECCLESIASTICAL TALES

Holy Humor Month, sponsored every April by the Fellowship of Merry Christians of Portage, Mich., gives me an ideal opportunity to trot out a few of my favorite ecclesiastically oriented anecdotes for today's column.

For a starter, take this yarn concerning a long-departed Virginia Episcopal bishop. Toward the end of his life, the prelate was conducting a confirmation service in a church where the altar rail was punctuated at regular intervals with large, round, oaken finials. By then, the bishop was not only old, he had also become extremely absent-minded.

As he moved down the line, his eyes gazing heavenward while he laid his hands on the heads of those being confirmed, he unwittingly bestowed the rite on the golden oak communion rail knobs at the same time. Later, when he was disrobing in the vestry, the church rector commented, ``Bishop, that was a most impressive service, but I hate to tell you that in performing your office you also extended the rite to the finials on the altar rail.''

``Well,'' the bishop replied with a wry smile, ``I have confirmed many a human blockhead in my time, but apparently this is the first time I ever confirmed the real thing.''

There is also this tale concerning the Rev. Scervant Jones, Williamsburg's first Baptist minister, who used the town's historic, pre-Revolutionary Powder Horn during the early 19th century as his meeting house. One hot Sunday morning when Jones was holding forth from his pulpit on sin and the devil, he stopped suddenly and listened attentively. Before resuming his attack on the evils of this world and the punishment to follow in the next, he paused to explain his action.

``Brothers and sisters,'' he said, ``I trust you will pardon my interruption of the Lord's business, but I thought I heard a pack of mad dogs howling outside.''

Then, after a moment he added, ``However, there is no cause of alarm. For I find it is only our Methodist brethren across the way praising God.''

Then there is this yarn my maternal grandfather used to tell that had Baltimore as its locale. On one occasion, during a revival meeting in a prominent Monumental City Methodist church, the minister was holding forth on the Day of Judgment. As he waxed increasingly eloquent, his clarion tones could easily be heard on the street outside.

These attracted the attention of a tipsy reveler who was staggering home from a bout at a nearby saloon. His curiosity aroused, the toper walked into the church and took a seat in a back pew. At the climax of the sermon, the preacher cried out: ``And on that dreadful day the sheep will be on the right hand and the goats on the left.'' Then, raising his voice to an evangelical crescendo, he demanded, ``Who will be the goats?''

Receiving no response to his plea for the unregenerated to receive Salvation, he repeated the question. At that point the tippler rose from his seat and ambled down the aisle. Arriving at the mourner's bench, he looked up at the preacher and announced, ``You're putting on a damned good show. So, rather than see it flop, I'll be one of the goats.''

To ring down the curtain, I'd like to close with this sprightly anecdote dating from the period immediately following the Civil War when the congregation of a lower Virginia Peninsula church held a meeting to try to raise funds to repair its war-ravaged sanctuary.

After an eloquent plea for money had been made by the pastor, both he and his flock were taken aback when the stingiest member of the congregation rose and offered to start the fund with a $5 contribution. He had hardly taken his seat, however, when a chunk of plaster fell from the ruined ceiling and hit him on the head. A trifle dazed, he rose again.

``I suppose I'd better raise that offer to $50,'' he said.

At that point, someone from the rear of the church called out, ``Lord, hit him again! Amen!''

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