Luther’s little catechism has been called many things by many people. Our Formula of Concord names it the “bible of the laity” in which is contained all scripture and everything needed for salvation. Kirsi Stjerna names it the “compass” of the Christian, a faithful guide through Holy Writ. Charles Arand calls it a “theological swiss army knife” for its endless uses and applications. John Pless recognizes it as the “prayerbook” of the Christian and a “field manual” for discipleship. But one aspect that, to my knowledge, hasn’t received as much attention is the catechism as an Ars Moriendi, as a manual on the art of dying well. This was certainly how Luther conceived of it.
In 1531, reflecting on the success and perseverance of the Reformation, he writes, “But now—praise be to God— it has come to pass that man and woman, young and old, know the catechism; they know how to believe, to live, to pray, to suffer, and to die…” (AE 47:52). This is significant because it shows that Luther believed that the catechism teaches people not only how to live according to the ten commandments, what to believe in the Apostles’ Creed, how to pray from the Lord’s Prayer, and how to suffer according to one’s Baptism, but finally and especially, how to die from the Sacrament of the Altar. “The summons of death come to us all…” as Luther says famously in his first Invocavit sermon (AE 51:70) and the catechism teaches us how to answer that call.
As such, though almost 500 years old, it is precisely the manual that we need in our day and age. If anything has been made manifest by the first quarter of the twenty-first century, it is that we are not only scared to death, but scared of death. We fundamentally do not know what death is or what our relationship is to it, and in the darkness of the unknown we find only fear. What little we do know doesn’t help much, unfortunately. We know, of course, that death is both certain and that it is a certain end of our life. But we also know that death is not content to arrive at the end of our lives; it is present all our life long. Just as walking is really the interruption of falling, living is likewise a sort of interruption of dying. With every breath of air, bite of food, and drink of water we are spinning and whirling round and round, dancing with death, delaying the inevitable. But one day soon our bodies will fail, our breath falter, and we will die. Natural life will end. Thus death is not merely a threat for the future, but one that I’m forced to confront in the present.
How people respond to this fact varies widely in form, but the function is always to find some way to defy, dodge, or defeat death. One approach would be the scientific approach which assesses death with its empirical apparatus. Through scientific inquiry, Darwin, for instance, learned that death is true, it is a fact of human life. Everything that has ever lived has died. But more than this, he theorized that death was good. Natural selection, often summarized as the “survival of the fittest,” is an engine powered by death. The mechanism of biological life is, in fact, death. But more than this, Darwin postulated that death was beautiful. From death, “the most exalted object” we can conceive of, the production of a higher species, directly follows. From the simplest of beginnings, “endless forms most beautiful” evolve because of death. Darwin defied death by crafting it into the image of the divine, the thing which gives life— a thing to be adored, not feared.
Beyond the scientific community, the philosophic community has also tried its hand at defying death. Plato was the one to craft the pagan theory of the “immortality of the soul” which has sadly infected Christianity as well. By this theory of immortality Plato secured the self from death by prescribing a theoretical limit to death. He reasoned that only a body can die, but a soul, where the true form of the self lies, can never die. Thus, though the body of a man might perish, his soul is ever secure. This we might dub a defeat of death through theory. Later philosophers like Nietzche would take a different philosophical approach. Nietzsche’s great contribution to philosophy came not with an immortality of the soul, but with the “will to power” which comes to grips with death through an exercise of will. Death is not allowed to choose my end for me, rather, I choose and determine the when, where, why, and how of my own death. I defeat death by choosing it. This we might call a defeat of death through will. Yet another approach would be taken by the politically minded philosophers behind the national socialist worker movement that captivated Europe in the 20th century. These denied death uniquely by locating life outside the individual and in blood and soil, “Blut und Boden.” Thus, even though an individual may die, he lives on in the blood of his people, in the soil of his nation, and in the legacy of his labors. The individual is assumed into the national. This we might call a defeat of death through work.
But through the experience of death we come to know that death is not merely the cessation of usual bodily, life-sustaining function and that our relationship to it is far more perilous. Death is a greedy dinner guest who takes not only our earthly life, but everything in it. Death robs us of the mind with which we try to think away death. He steals and saps the will by which we try to master death. He robs us of all our labor, family, legacy, and even the very memory of us by which we try to outmaneuver death. From this we begin to come to grips with the reality that death is not a merely natural phenomena to be studied or a metaphysical concept to be thought, willed, or worked away. It is more.
This is most manifest to us in the death of God, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, as placed before our eyes in the Sacrament of the Altar. Death as it is applied to the Son of God does not permit the natural explanation of science or the ideological explanation of philosophy. Jesus died for one reason and one reason only. My sin. At the sacrament of the Altar we kneel not merely as spectators remembering the betrayal and death of Jesus, but precisely as his betrayers and murderers, as Judas and Peter. By my fault, my own fault, my own most grievous fault, I killed the Son of God. In the words of Paul Gerhardt, “I caused your grief and sighing// by evils multiplying// as countless as the sand. // I caused the woes unnumbered// with which your soul is cumbered// Your sorrows raised by wicked hands.” Jesus’ death forces us to confess that death is not beautiful or good, but the wages of sin, the consummation of the wrath of God, and the absolute goal and end of the law. Against these great and terrible lords— sin, wrath, and the law— all the props of science and philosophy falter. All of my thinking, willing, and doing utterly crumble under the terrible weight of my own sin and God’s wrath.
And yet it is precisely “for me,” a sinner, that Jesus gives his Body and Blood in the sacrament. And this Body and Blood are not given idly, but “for the forgiveness of sins.” It is given as an antidote against my sin and as the medicine of immortality against my death for “where there is forgiveness of sins there is also life and salvation.” By looking upon the death of Jesus I see not only my sin and death; I receive what Jesus has done with my sin and death in his flesh and blood. He has taken the litany of my sins and nailed it to the cross. He has taken captive greedy death and thrown him into the tomb. By his cross and resurrection death is truly swallowed up in victory. And this great victory, the true defeat of death, I receive not by my thinking, willing, or working, but simply by believing. Thus am I truly worthy and well prepared to receive the Supper, and thus am I also worthy and well prepared for death: by having faith in these words, “given and shed for you.” In faith we go to the Lord’s Supper as to death, so that when we go to death, we go as to the Lord’s Supper—without fear and forgiven. The Christian who dies thus dies well.
