This fall I taught a four-week series in the parish hall at Christ Episcopal Church in Anacortes. I taught it as a seminarian, not as a lawyer. These are the notes, readings and questions from those Sundays, for anyone who wants to work through them at home.
A word before you start: nothing here is legal advice, and reading it does not make me your lawyer. For your own situation, talk with a lawyer you choose.
Week 1: What we believe happens
Christians do not face death with a shrug or with panic. The Prayer Book calls the burial service an Easter liturgy (BCP p. 507), and it also says grief is not unchristian. Jesus wept at Lazarus’s tomb. The Creeds say we believe in “the resurrection of the body,” and the word that matters is body. We are raised whole.
Read this week: John 11:21-27, Romans 8:31-39, 1 Corinthians 15:20-26, Revelation 21:2-7. Then read the Burial Office (Rite Two, BCP pp. 491-505) slowly, once, as if it were a creed.
Week 2: The church at the bedside
The rule is simple: call. Hospitals and care homes will not call your church for you. The Prayer Book offers the Ministration to the Sick, with anointing for healing and not only for the dying (pp. 453-461), the Reconciliation of a Penitent (pp. 446-452), and the Ministration at the Time of Death (pp. 462-467). Families can pray those last prayers themselves. You do not have to wait for clergy.
Week 3: The documents that carry your wishes
The Prayer Book tells clergy to teach people to make wills “while they are in health” (BCP p. 445). Every family faces two questions. Who decides for you while you are alive but can’t speak? And who receives what you leave, and who settles it, after you die? The answers live in a few documents: a health care directive, a power of attorney for health care, a POLST for the seriously ill, a power of attorney for finances, a will and your beneficiary forms. When they are missing, families lose time, money and peace, and sometimes the funeral you wanted.
Week 4: Your funeral, and your last gift
We filled out the parish funeral planning record together: the kind of service, Rite One or Rite Two, readings, hymns, burial or columbarium, and military honors for veterans (know where your DD-214 is). A partial record is still a gift to your family. Your will and beneficiary forms are your last decisions as a steward, and many people leave something to the church that fed them.
A prayer to end with
Lord Jesus Christ, by your death you took away the sting of death: Grant to us your servants so to follow in faith where you have led the way, that we may at length fall asleep peacefully in you and wake up in your likeness; for your tender mercies’ sake. Amen. (BCP, Burial of the Dead: Rite Two)
If you need a lawyer
The Washington State Bar Association’s Legal Directory at mywsba.org lists lawyers by practice area and city. People 60 and older can call CLEAR*Sr at the Northwest Justice Project, 1-888-387-7111, for free civil legal help.