November is a solemn month. We open it with the commemoration of All Saints and All Souls, and the following week we keep Remembrance Sunday. This year it seems particularly poignant. The last of the First World War veterans have died in the past year, but the names of the fallen continue to increase as young soldiers are brought home in coffins from Afghanistan.
One of the things that priests are charged with at our ordination is to prepare the dying for their death. Believe me, that is a very daunting commission. I am glad I do not have the responsibilities of the military chaplains I met while I was on the Windsor conference last month, trying to help 20-year-olds make sense of lives that might end in a bomb blast the next day.

But of course any of us could die this week by accident or illness. The expectation is concentrated for those on active service, but the truth is that all of us begin the road toward death as soon as we are born. It is a duty of Christians to be prepared to face this fact. We have resources to do this. Remember that the Letter to the Hebrews says, Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.

So when we face death we should be full of hope, not despair. Death is not the end of our story because we have the promise of resurrection to new life. But it is a profound fact, a very important threshold that each of us has to cross one by one, and something we need to think about and prepare for.
November is, I think, a good time to do that. And today I want to focus on a few very practical things that all adult Christians should take responsibility for.
The first is the practical business of making sure that those we leave behind will not have a financial mess to clear up. This means that we should have a will. It is particularly vital for parents of dependent children or people living with partners they are not married to. Provision for naming guardians should be made. Remember that entering a marriage or civil partnership automatically revokes any will you have already made, so be sure your arrangements are up to date. You can include a list of wishes that your executor should take account of, without including them in the body of the will. Many people take the opportunity to leave legacies to charities of their choice.

November is Make a Will Month and there are a number of solicitors who will draw up an uncomplicated will for a donation to a charity rather than charging a professional fee. Their names can be found on the Will Aid website.
There is also the matter of the kind of funeral you want. You need to think about whether you prefer to be buried or cremated and where you want your remains to be laid to rest. Nowadays there are environmentally friendly options to consider – woodland burials in wicker coffins and so forth. Many people pay for a funeral plan to cover all the costs and take away the worry from their families.

It is also important to think about the funeral service. Christians will usually want to have a service in church rather than just a twenty-minute ceremony in a crem chapel. Communicant Christians may well want to request a funeral eucharist. Our communion with those who have gone before us is celebrated at the feast of the Lord where we join with angels, archangels and all the host of heaven. A further option is to have the coffin brought into church on the night before the funeral for a final vigil.
Many families are stuck for ideas when asked what the departed person would have wanted to be said or sung at the funeral service. Why not decide for yourself what hymns and readings you would like? Your choices can be recorded and left both in your own home and in the church safe. There is a website called Lasting Post where they can be recorded online. You may have instructions to give about flowers, donations, arrangements for the reception and so on. I’ve told some of you that my mother planned her own funeral to the extent of writing thank you notes to the caterers – the only task she left to me was posting them!
All of these are the practical side of getting ready to face mortality. But there is of course another side to it, and that is making a spiritual preparation. Perhaps we have a tendency not to think about this, either because it’s an unpleasant thought or because we don’t really believe deep down that we will actually die. There are a number of fundamentalist Americans who don’t expect to die at all because they are sure the Rapture is coming any minute and they will be whisked up alive into the presence of God. So they duck the plain wisdom of the old saying about nothing being certain except death and taxes.
It is safe to say that we can be sure our individual life on earth will come to an end one day. How does that affect the way we live it? There is a famous spiritual exercise – I’ve done it myself – of writing your own obituary. I recommend it to you as a November occupation! It really is very revealing, because it shows us what we really value and want. It may change the way we choose to live now.

We’ve all heard that no one on their deathbed ever said, I wish I’d spent more time at the office. But do we act as if we really agree? We live in an overworked, anxious, tired society. Sometimes it seems that we think we have all the time in the world to make more and more money, or to climb higher and higher on a professional ladder. But of course we can be faced with our own mortality at any time. Other things may be more important than wealth and success, and we need to attend to them while we can.
The other day I had an interesting conversation with a 36-year-old Muslim man, whose concern was how to teach his children how to live in the right way. He was aware that because he had had a serious operation he could not take longevity for granted. This didn’t trouble him because he trusted God to know what was best, but he didn’t want to be found wanting in his parental responsibilities.

It was humbling to have such a conversation with a believer from a different faith. For him it was natural to consider the prospect of death and be always ready to face it. I am afraid that in our western society we are often embarrassed or shy or frightened to discuss what it means that we will die we know not when. The prayer known as the Hail Mary addresses this fact when we say “Pray for us now and at the hour of our death” – words that have helped many people confront their mortality and face their fear.

Some years ago I was ministering to an old lady in her middle 90s who had been born in Monserrat, where she grew up in grinding rural poverty but in a community that was rich in both fellowship and faith. Having come many years ago to this country, worked hard, raised her family, and seen her great-grandchildren growing up, she was extremely worn out and suffered pain every day. She used to say to me that she longed to die but she was afraid Jesus had forgotten her.

She was taken seriously ill just before Christmas and the doctors told her family that she had only a few days or weeks to live. They were terrified of telling her this and wanted to keep in from her. I talked them into letting me break the news. When I said, Jesus is really coming for you this time, she broke into the biggest smile I had ever seen on her face. In fact she lived for a couple of months, reigning from her hospital bed and surrounded by several generations who could now openly talk about her dying and say all the thank yous they needed to say. We had a prayer service of taking leave beside her bed and she died very peacefully with her family around her.

It was a lesson in how a Christian can die well. I have had many such lessons. They have left me firmly believing that it is right to talk openly with people who are dying and to request that our doctors and families will be honest with us when our time comes. The opportunity to round off our earthly life with thanks, apologies, confessions, blessings, reconciliations, or whatever else we need to do is far too precious to be missed. Those who are left behind should be spared the pain of feeling that they could not speak truthfully and had no opportunity to say goodbye – I have seen much of that pain too, and it is very hard to live with.
We need have no fear of death. Death is real and bitter, but it is not the worst thing. The worst thing is to have no hope. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.