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How Common Worship Forms Us for Our Encounter with Death
John D. Witvliet

Christianity is nothing if not a way of thinking about death. At the heart of the Christian religion is the history of a Jewish prophet from Nazareth who died and then, by the power of God's Spirit, conquered death. Everything in the Christian Scriptures either leads up to the account of this death and resurrection or reflects back on it. A good portion of the Christian Scriptures concerns the mystery that the death and resurrection of this Jewish prophet have everything to do with our own dying and living. The Christian tradition provides rich resources for facing death, for coming to understand what it might mean to "die well."

This essay was written for a colloquium sponsored by the Valparaiso Center for the Education and Formation of People in Faith led by Dorothy Bass and Thomas G. Long. The full text appears as the concluding chapter of the collection Worship Seeking Understanding: Windows into Christian Practice by John Witvliet.

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