Eber said he is taking steps to ensure that the funeral does not become a media circus.

“We don’t know who will show up,” he said, noting that several national media outlets have been reporting from Tulsa about the killing.

He has hired off-duty city police officers as security, and the church will not allow cameras or recording devices into the service.

“We will avoid all politics,” Eber said. “We will keep demonstrators off of our property.”

He said the service will be a time to reflect on biblical realities of Orthodoxy, that “It is a fallen world, and there have always been tragedies, but God is not the author of evil and never wanted that to happen.

“God is weeping with us, weeping for us.

“We commit these crimes, yet God, in his mercy and love, comes to bail us out, so he became as one of us. ... God has turned the grave into a new being.”

Eber said he has known the Jabara family since just after he took the pastorate of the church in 1981, a year after graduating from Oral Roberts University.