The church need not be morbid. It does, however, need to be honest. Death is not an occasional pastoral problem. It is a fact of ordinary ministry. Every pastor who remains in the ministry long enough will stand beside hospital beds, counsel grieving spouses, pray with frightened saints, visit the weak, bury the dead, and speak to families trying to make sense of loss. He will also preach week after week to dying people, even though they may not yet feel it.

This means that the Christian art of dying well cannot be limited to private meditation or individual preparation. It must become part of the church’s pastoral practice. Christians need to be taught how to pray in the face of death. They need funerals that tell the truth. They need preaching that neither hides death nor lets death have the last word. They need pastors who can speak with theological clarity, spiritual tenderness, and resurrection hope.

The Puritan tradition is useful here not because every Puritan practice should be copied, but because the Puritans took death seriously as a pastoral matter. They prayed about death. They preached about death. They addressed the dying, the grieving, the careless, and the fearful. They did not treat death as an interruption of Christian ministry but as one of the places where Christian ministry must be most clear.

Praying About Death

Matthew Henry gives us a place to begin: The church must learn to pray about death. Henry’s Method for Prayer, originally published in 1712, was intended as a help to the whole church. Henry describes prayer as “our drawing near to God, lifting up our souls to him, pouring out our hearts before him.”¹ His work helped generations of ministers learn to pray. Terry Johnson notes that ministers in the Scottish Presbyterian and free church tradition learned to pray by consulting works such as Henry’s Method for Prayer and Isaac Watts’s Guide to Prayer.²

For our purposes, what is striking is that Henry includes several sections dealing directly with death. He provides prayers for the sick and weak, prayers connected to funerals, prayers for those condemned to die, and prayers for grace to die well. This alone reveals something about an older Protestant instinct: Death was not merely something to be dealt with when it arrived. It was something to be brought regularly before God.

Henry’s section on dying well begins with the need to pray for grace “to deliver us from death” and to carry us well through our dying moments.³ The wording could be misunderstood. Henry does not mean that Christians should expect to avoid death altogether, unless they are alive at the return of Christ. Rather, he is praying for deliverance from death’s fear, power, and final sting. Christians pray not as those who deny mortality but as those who ask God to shepherd them through it.

The prayers are woven almost entirely from Scripture. Henry prays that God would “make us know our end and the measure of our days” (Ps 39:4), that “He would teach us to number our days” (Ps 90:12), that “He would make us ready with loins girded and lamps burning” (Luke 12:35), that “He would keep us waiting until our change comes” (Job 14:14), that “He would bring us to the grave like a shock of corn in its season” (Job 5:26), and that “He would be with us when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death” (Ps 23:4).⁴ That such references are in abundance reminds us just how thoroughly the Scriptures focus on death.

This is one of the simplest and most useful lessons the modern church can recover: Pray Scripture in the face of death. When a believer is dying, sentimental language is too thin. Speculation is dangerous. Vague optimism is cruel. But Scripture gives the church words strong enough for the valley. The Psalms teach us to lament and hope. Job teaches us to wait for our change. Luke teaches us to be ready for the coming Son of Man. The whole Bible teaches us that death is real, God is sovereign, Christ is risen, and the grave will not have the last word.

Henry’s prayers also remind us that praying about death should not be reserved for the dying. The congregation should learn this language before a crisis comes. Children should hear the church pray about frailty. Adults should hear prayers that number our days. The elderly should hear prayers that speak honestly about weakness and hope. The sick should hear prayers that neither flatter nor despair. If a congregation never prays about death, it should not be surprised when its people are unprepared to face it. Prayer, however, is only one part of pastoral care at the edge of death. The church must also recover a more faithful practice of funeral preaching.

Funeral Preaching

Modern funerals are often called a “celebration of life.” There is an understandable instinct here. Christians should give thanks for the life of one who has died. They should remember evidence of grace. They should honor what may rightly be honored. The problem occurs when the funeral becomes man-centered rather than God-centered, when the life of the deceased displaces the work of Christ, and when the congregation is comforted with memories rather than resurrection.

The older Protestant tradition did not avoid personal remembrance. J. I. Packer notes that Puritan funeral sermons often concluded with reference to the dead person’s final hours because people frequently died at home, in company, and often in full consciousness to the end. Their dying behavior and last words were understood to have significance for those left behind.⁵ But even when personal material was included, it was not meant to replace the sermon’s Godward aim.

Robert Bolton (1572–1631) captured the right instinct when he wrote that he did not “condemn funeral sermons” but wished that, “since the death of God’s saints is precious in His sight, it might also be glorious in the eyes of men.”⁶ This is the right word: glorious. But the glory of a Christian funeral is not finally the glory of the deceased person’s earthly life. It is the glory of Christ’s victory, Christ’s mercy, Christ’s resurrection, and Christ’s reception of his people.

A Christian funeral should not pretend that death is harmless. It should not preach the deceased into heaven by vague benevolence. It should not turn every death into an occasion for automatic reassurance. But neither should it speak as though death is sovereign. The Christian funeral stands between the grief of the grave and the triumph of the empty tomb. It tells the truth about sin, death, judgment, mercy, resurrection, and hope.

Andrew Gray (1634–1656) helps us see how ordinary preaching can prepare a congregation for death. Gray was one of the youngest Puritan ministers, ordained around age nineteen and dying around twenty-two. Yet he preached with remarkable seriousness. His sermon “Concerning Death” was drawn from Psalm 89:48: “What man can live and never see death?”⁷

Gray begins by pressing the nearness of death on his hearers. “It is hard to determine,” he says, “where all who are present will be within thirty years; indeed, many may have already taken up their everlasting lodging.” He urges them to hear the sermon as if it were the “last they would ever hear,” and he desires to preach it “as if it were the last he would ever preach.”⁸

This might sound extreme to modern ears. But Gray is simply taking Psalm 89 seriously. No one escapes death. The congregation gathered before the preacher is not an audience of stable earthly residents. It is an assembly of mortal men and women moving toward eternity. The preacher who forgets this will speak too lightly. The congregation that forgets this will listen too casually.

Gray’s counsel is not merely negative. He urges believers to mind “the excellent things of heaven” and “to labor to keep a good conscience before God and man.”⁹ This is a practical theology of dying well. Think often of heaven. Keep short accounts with God and neighbor. Do not wait until the end to pursue reconciliation, repentance, and faithfulness. The life directed toward death is not gloomy; it is ordered.

Gray also understands that preaching on death must include evangelistic urgency. He warns that if people do not embrace Christ now, death will be very unpleasant to them. But he also holds out comfort: If they take Christ now, he will be their “guide through the valley of the shadow of death.”¹⁰ This is how Christian preaching should address death. It should warn the unconverted without embarrassment and comfort believers without sentimentality. The same Christ who exposes the terror of death outside of him also promises to shepherd his people through it.

Pastoring

Cotton Mather (1663–1728) shows another side of pastoral care: the need to speak carefully and firmly in deep grief. Mather knew death personally. He lost his first and second wives and several children.¹¹ His sermon “Right Thoughts in Sad Hours” was preached in the context of the untimely death of children.¹² That setting matters. It is one thing to speak of death in general. It is another to speak when parents are grieving children.

Mather’s pastoral burden is to help believers resist the conclusion that affliction means God is against them. Drawing on Jacob’s lament (Gen 42:36) that all things were against him, Mather argues that Jacob was mistaken. The providence that seemed to be against him was, in fact, part of God’s deliverance.¹³ Mather applies this to Christian affliction generally and to the death of children particularly. Believers should not conclude under any affliction that God is utterly against them.¹⁴

This is delicate pastoral ground. Such a point can be spoken crudely, as if grief were irrational or parents should quickly rise above sorrow. Mather does not do that. He acknowledges that the death of a child is like tearing off a limb.¹⁵ That is honest grief. The death of a child is not small. It is not a puzzle piece calmly placed into a theological system. It wounds in a way that feels more permanent than any other— a wound that will only be healed by resurrection.

Yet Mather also insists that the children counted lost are not lost. They are “given back,” not lost; “sent before,” not destroyed.¹⁶ However one handles the particular theological questions surrounding children who die, the pastoral instinct is important: Grief must be allowed to grieve, but it must be brought under the government of God’s fatherly providence. The Christian does not say, “This does not hurt.” He says, “This hurts under the hand of the God who is not against me in Christ.”

Charles Chauncy (1705–1787) gives us still another model. His sermon “Man’s Life Considered Under the Similitude of a Vapour” was preached in Boston in 1730 after the death of Mrs. Sarah Byfield.¹⁷ His text was James 4:14: “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” Chauncy develops the image of life as vapor in four directions: Life is short, uncertain, inconstant, and irrevocable once gone.¹⁸

Chauncy’s sermon is useful because he does not let life’s brevity lead to despair. He directs his hearers beyond the grave to “the unseen unutterable glories of the heavenly state.”¹⁹ Life is short but not meaningless. Its brevity is to be understood in relation to eternity. Earthly life is a trial for entrance into the life to come.

He then presses the practical implications. Because life is short and uncertain, Christians should “wean their affections from the world, submit to whatever condition God orders for them, make good use of time, examine their spiritual state, and prepare immediately for life’s expiration.”²⁰ This is not ascetic withdrawal from earthly life. It is sober engagement with earthly life under the shadow of eternity.

Chauncy’s counsel remains needed. We live as though time is abundant. We postpone repentance, delay reconciliation, neglect prayer, and presume upon future usefulness. James rebukes such presumption. Life is a vapor. The Christian response is not panic but faithfulness. Redeem the time. Examine yourself. Hold the world loosely. Prepare to meet God.

Taken together, Henry, Bolton, Gray, Mather, and Chauncy suggest several practical recoveries for the church. First, pastors should pray about death with biblical language. The church needs prayers that teach people how to live as mortals. The pastor who prays only for healing but never for readiness to die has left something unsaid. We may and should pray for recovery. But we must also pray for grace to suffer, grace to trust, grace to die, and grace to hope in resurrection.

Second, pastors should preach death before funerals. If the only sermons on death are funeral sermons, the congregation will be poorly prepared. Death appears throughout Scripture: in Adam, in the flood, in Egypt’s firstborn, in wilderness graves, in the Psalms, in Ecclesiastes, in the Prophets, at Lazarus’s tomb, at the cross, in Paul’s letters, and in Revelation’s lake of fire and final abolition of death. Faithful preaching will not obsess over death, but neither will it avoid it.

Third, funerals should be Godward. A Christian funeral may include personal remembrance, but it must not become a mere tribute. The central question is not, How can we celebrate this person’s life? but What has God said about death, judgment, Christ, resurrection, and hope? The deceased may be honored, but Christ must be preached.

Fourth, grief should be treated honestly. The Puritans could speak strongly of providence, but their better moments did not minimize sorrow. Mather’s image of child loss as tearing off a limb is exactly the kind of honesty needed. Christian hope does not require the suppression of grief. It requires grief to be carried to God.

Fifth, pastoral care at death must address both believers and unbelievers. Gray’s sermon is a useful example. He comforts those who take Christ, but he also warns those who do not. Modern funerals often assume everyone is safe. That may feel kind, but it is not faithful. The minister must speak with tact and compassion, but he must not erase the difference between dying in Christ and dying without him.

The church does not need a theatrical relationship with death. It does not need gloomy pastors or morbid congregations. But it does need a recovered seriousness. To pastor people faithfully is to prepare them for the day when their strength fails, their breath shortens, their family gathers, and their earthly course ends.

The final service a pastor gives his people is not the funeral. It is years of preaching, praying, visiting, catechizing, comforting, warning, and feeding them with Christ so that death does not arrive as a stranger. The pastor prepares them for death every Lord’s Day, every time he teaches them to confess sin, hear pardon, sing hope, receive Christ, and lift their eyes for a glimpse of the world to come.

And when the edge of death finally comes, the church should not be empty-handed. It should have Scripture to pray, promises to speak, psalms to sing, doctrine to steady the soul, tears to share, and Christ to proclaim. For the Christian, death is still an enemy. But it is not an undefeated enemy. The pastor may stand at the graveside and say with full honesty, “This is grievous.” He may also say with full confidence, “Christ is risen.” And because Christ is risen, the church can pray, preach, grieve, and bury its dead in hope.

Notes

1. Matthew Henry, A Method for Prayer and Directions for Daily Communion with God (Eremitical Press, 2009), 8.
2. Terry L. Johnson, “Liturgical Studies,” Westminster Theological Journal 60, no. 2 (1998): 298.
3. Henry, Method for Prayer, 64.
4. Henry, Method for Prayer, 64–65.
5. J. I. Packer, “A Man for All Ministries,” Reformation and Revival 1, no. 1 (1992): 72.
6. Robert Bolton, A Discourse about the State of True Happinesse Delivered in Certaine Sermons in Oxford, and at Pauls Crosse (London, 1611), 63.
7. Andrew Gray, “Concerning Death,” A Puritan’s Mind, http://www.apuritansmind.com/puritan-favorites/andrew-gray-1634-1656/concerning-death-by-andrew-gray-1634-1656/.
8. Gray, “Concerning Death.”
9. Gray, “Concerning Death.”
10. Gray, “Concerning Death.”
11. Joel R. Beeke and Randall J. Pederson, Meet the Puritans: With a Guide to Modern Reprints (Reformation Heritage Books, 2006), 705–6; and R. L. Troutman, “Mather, Cotton,” in Who’s Who in Christian History, ed. J. D. Douglas and Philip W. Comfort (Tyndale House, 1992), 461.
12. Cotton Mather, “Right Thoughts in Sad Hours Representing the Comforts and the Duties of Good Men under All Their Afflictions; and Particularly, That One, the Untimely Death of Children: In a Sermon Delivered at Charls-town, New England; under a Fresh Experience of That Calamity,” January 1, 1689, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A50157.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext.
13. Mather, “Right Thoughts in Sad Hours,” 4–5.
14. Mather, “Right Thoughts in Sad Hours,” 19, 25.
15. Mather, “Right Thoughts in Sad Hours,” 48.
16. Mather, “Right Thoughts in Sad Hours,” 46–47.
17. Charles Chauncy, “Man’s Life Considered Under the Similitude of a Vapour, That Appeareth for a Little Time, and Then Vanisheth Away,” in Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God and Other Puritan Sermons, ed. David Dutkanicz (Dover Publications, 2005), 185–204; and James Pillsbury Lane, Historical Sketches of the First Congregational Church, Bristol, R.I., 1689–1872 (Providence, 1872), 38–39.
18. Chauncy, “Man’s Life Considered,” 187.
19. Chauncy, “Man’s Life Considered,” 188.
20. Chauncy, “Man’s Life Considered,” 193–98.

©Everett Henes. All Rights Reserved.

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Post authored by:

• Everett Henes

  

  Everett Henes (MDiv, ThM, DMin) is pastor of Hillsdale Orthodox Presbyterian Church, where he has served since 2008. He is husband to Kimberly and father of five children and grandfather of five (and counting!). He teaches US History and Philosophy of History for Jackson College in Michigan. He is currently working towards a PhD in Humanities with a focus in US Religious History from Faulkner University. In his spare time, he enjoys competing in powerlifting and strongman and teaching homeschoolers Taekwondo.

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