This morning at our men’s prayer meeting, I mentioned a story I had recently read (somewhere) about N.T. Wright and death-beds. I didn’t buy the story, but it came up somehow and we were talking about it. One of the men there tracked this down, and because I read the story somewhere in email or on the Internet, repository of all truth, I thought that I should post this response to it here. This is N.T. Wright at the 2005 Auburn Avenue (all rise!) Pastors Conference.
“The second thing I want to say is quite different. It has been brought to my attention—the way these things happen—that there is a story going around, circulated by a theologian some distance from here, that he once asked me a question as to what I would say to somebody who was on their death-bed, and that according to the story that has come back to me, I said to him that I did not know what I would say to someone on their death-bed. Since I have no memory of the conversation, I cannot possibly tell you what the context was, what I actually said, why he thought I said what I did, whatever, but that is quite bizarre. As a pastor, as an ordained priest for the last nearly 30 years—fact, it will be 30 years fairly soon—I cannot imagine going to somebody’s death-bed and scratching my head and thinking, I’m not actually sure what to say. And it would depend on so many factors, to do with who the person was, whether they were a member of the Church, or whether it was somebody who was outside the faith entirely. I would want—as I hope, a sensitive and prayerful pastor—to go to that death-bed in prayer, as I would and do, and that through that prayer I would trust that God would give me whichever aspect of the gospel was necessary for that person.
I remember some years ago being beside the bed of an elderly relative, an elderly cousin of my father’s, and she was—I actually thought she was in a coma—and because I thought that she was in a coma she wasn’t responding to anything that anyone was saying to her. And she had been like that for some while and nobody knew whether she was going to live another day, or a week, or a month. All I did was, I put my hand very gently on her hand and I said the prayer which in the Anglican Prayer Book is the closing-off prayer of evening prayer, and which seems to me a wonderfully appropriate prayer to pray with somebody who is going into the land of the dead and needs to go with the light of Christ. And the prayer goes, ‘Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee, O Lord. And by Thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night. For the love of Thy only Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.’
And that seems to me a wonderful prayer to pray every evening. But every evening is a preparation, a little death, as it were, a preparation for that greater evening. And as I said that prayer—as I say, I thought she was in a coma—but she reached out and she squeezed my hand. And I thought, well, clearly, I had to pray that prayer and that is what I needed to pray with her right now. And I left and I hadn’t a chance to see her again and a week or so later she died. I don’t know if anyone else had ministered to her in that period. But that is one answer among many. I would have given many different responses.”
Differing with N.T. Wright is one thing, and in some areas, a most necessary thing. But misrepresenting him is quite another. If any of you have read that report to which he refers, please pass this one on.