Keep the Sabbath Before You Die

Going to Church Prepares You for Death

The goal of every pastor is not merely to help you live well by nourishing you with the Word and Sacraments, but also to help you die well. That might sound jarring in a culture that does everything it can to avoid the subject of death, but every sermon, Baptism, Absolution, and celebration of Holy Communion is ultimately about preparing you for the moment you’ll see God face to face. The Divine Service is not a weekly motivational rally; it’s a rehearsal for eternity. Each Sunday, you learn how to die and rise with Christ again.

Luther’s explanation of the 7th Petition of the Lord’s Prayer captures this beautifully: “But deliver us from evil. What does this mean? Answer: We pray in this petition, in summary, that our Father in Heaven would rescue us from every evil of body and soul, possessions and reputation, and finally, when our last hour comes, give us a blessed end, and graciously take us from this valley of sorrow to Himself in Heaven” (emphasis mine).

The Sabbath, therefore, is not about self-care or spiritual performance; it’s about resting in Christ’s care for you, week after week, so that when your last hour comes, rest won’t be foreign to you. You’ll have practiced it your entire life—weekly dry rehearsals for your final hour on this Earth. The pastor who calls you to church on Sunday isn’t simply trying to fill the pews to meet a marketing quota. He’s teaching you how to die in faith and how to die well.

The Importance of a Liturgical Tradition

When you’re on your deathbed, your mind begins to fade, your memory weakens, and words become hard to find, whether you have dementia or not. But for those who’ve lived their lives in the rhythm of the Church’s liturgy, something profound happens. Even when a person no longer remembers the faces of their children, they can still remember the words of the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, or their favorite lines in a familiar hymn. I cannot tell you—both as a parish pastor and now as a hospice chaplain—how many times I’ve seen patients, even those with advanced dementia, mouth the words, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty,” or join me in saying the “Our Father,” or open their eyes at the familiar words of Psalm 23 and begin to recite along, or even hum or partially sing a hymn. Sometimes, they hum along to What A Friend We Have In Jesus or another hymn with tears in their eyes.

This is the gift of a liturgical tradition, something which I’ve consistently seen contemporary worship fail to provide. The liturgy ingrains the Gospel deep into the memory, even when the intellect fades. It keeps the dying grounded in Christ when nothing else remains stable. Oddly enough, this pastoral care is almost unique to sacramental traditions like Lutheranism, Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. In these traditions, the pastor brings the Church to the homebound and the dying. Such regular pastoral practice is surprisingly rare in evangelical (i.e., sacramentarian) traditions.

The Divine Service follows the dying to their bedside. In the Lutheran Church, we have long made it our regular practice to bring a condensed version of the Divine Service—Confession & Absolution, the Word, prayer, Communion, hymnody, and benediction—to those who can no longer attend. And as a hospice chaplain, I continue this practice. For Lutheran patients, I bring the same liturgy they grew up with; for those of other Christian faiths, I still offer a simple service of hymnody, Scripture, prayer, a brief homily, and the Aaronic benediction. The form may differ, but the heart is the same: Christ for the dying, the Gospel for the fainting, Christ’s promise for those nearing their end.

Let Your Pastor Visit You While You’re Dying

When a person is admitted to hospice, much emphasis is rightly placed on physical comfort. The goal of hospice is not to hasten death but to help people live as comfortably as possible in their remaining days—a large emphasis on the patient’s quality of life. It’s a profoundly holistic form of healthcare, addressing not only the body but also the mind, heart, and spirit. Every hospice team includes a chaplain, but the chaplain may or may not share your faith. Some chaplains are Christian, others aren’t. Even fewer are Lutheran (unless one specifically serves at an institution like Lutheran Senior Services or Wellspring Lutheran Services).

That’s why I encourage every Christian—if you ever find yourself on hospice (or just generally in this hospital)—to let your pastor visit you. You might think you won’t need spiritual care, or you might feel you don’t want to bother anyone, but I’ve seen many patients discover they need a pastor’s presence more than they ever realized, even the family. There’s something uniquely comforting about being reminded, in those final hours or days or months, that you belong to Christ. If you like your chaplain that the hospice service provides, you can accept their visits. They’re not meant to replace whatever your pastor may be providing; they’re simply supplemental to whatever you may already be receiving, or to provide you what you haven’t received already.

I also can’t tell you how many times somebody has told me, “Pastor, you didn’t visit me in the hospital,” to which I had to tell them nobody told me! Your pastors aren’t psychic, so if you belong to a congregation, make sure your pastor knows you’re in the hospital or in hospice care! Let him come to your bedside, bring you Christ’s Word and Sacraments, and speak His Gospel into your ears. Hospice staff can provide comfort for your body, but only your seelsorger—your soul-caregiver—can bring comfort for your soul.

“Precious in the Sight of the LORD Is the Death of His Saints” (Psalm 116:15)

I finally understand this part of the psalm in more than just a theological sense. I began my work in hospice just as autumn arrived this year, and I’ve often thought about how serendipitous that timing was. Autumn is a season of change, when creation itself preaches about death. The trees, clothed in fiery colors, are at their most beautiful when they’re transitioning from life to death, only to grow new life. There’s a bittersweet loveliness to their surrender—a glory in their fading. People joke that autumn lovers must enjoy death, but for the Christian, that’s not a joke at all. We don’t love death because it’s horrible and tragic, but we’re not afraid of it because for us, it’s not the unknown because we know what comes after. In fact, we find beauty in the death of a saint. There’s a reason why every Lutheran funeral ends in an Easter hymn. As 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 says,

But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the Word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.

The trees are at their most beautiful when they’re transitioning from life to death, only to grow more life again. In the same way, I’ve found that a Christian’s faith is at their most beautiful when they’re transitioning from this life to death, only to be risen from the dead. I don’t believe it’s an accident that, in the Church Year, we commemorate All Saints’ Day in the autumn and then celebrate Easter in the spring. In my ministry, I’ve seen many saints die in faith—faces softened with peace, lips whispering prayers, hands clutching the cross. The death of a saint will always be one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.

Thus, to keep the Sabbath before you die means to live each Lord’s Day as a small rehearsal of that final rest—to receive Christ’s Means of Grace while you can, to let His Word and liturgy shape your soul, and to know that when the time comes to depart this life, you’ll already know how to rest in His promises. The Church has been teaching you all along how to die in peace. Do you have ears to hear?

As surely as autumn yields to winter, and winter yields to spring, so too will your life yield to the barrenness of the cold grave, only to yield to the bodily resurrection when Christ returns in glory. The saints who learned to rest in Christ on the Sabbath will awake to an eternal Easter morning.