Dying Christianly?
Posted on 22 February 2010
Table of contents for On Death: Lenten Reflections
What does it mean to die in a way that is faithful to Christ? How do we prepare ourselves for that kind of death? What practices are necessary, what habits required, if we intend to ready ourselves to die in a way that evidences our confidence in the God who raised Jesus from the dead as the guarantee that he will put all things right?
It seems to me (a) we must give serious attention to these questions, and many others like them, and (b) that the best way to find good answers to them, is to read the Scriptures with these concerns in our hearts, to listen with simple and quiet respect to the saints, and especially the martyrs, and to the elderly in our communities as they talk of what it means to die.
Additionally, we must find ways to pray rightly in preparation for death, to preach and even to sing (!) rightly about it. This will entail, as Hauerwas is always insisting, the disavowal of any sentimentality that would blunt the edge of the reality of dying, as well as the refutation of any doctrine of the immortality of the soul that would make death a friend. We must, at the same time, remember that not even death and dying lie outside Christ’s reign, and that even God’s enemies serve God’s good purposes - at least ultimately.
We Protestants, especially those of us in the low-church tradition, are not in a good position to do this kind of work because our liturgical and spiritual resources – rich as they are in other ways – are insufficient for this task. We have to begin the work of changing that.
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