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LCMS 2026 Convention Workbook: Reports and Overtures, PDF page 238

2026 Convention Workbook
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THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS  —COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS
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/T_he principles and considerations laid out in this report provide concrete guidance for faithful end-of-life decisions 
amid the ambiguities of incomplete knowledge and o/f_ten competing values. We all live under what /T_hielicke called that 
“alien dignity” that forbids us to be subjected to the “dictatorial rule” of our own technical capacities. We were created by a 
divine benevolence who bequeathed to us a value and dignity that remains, even this side of the fall. Whatever else we say 
about the value of God’s creation of man and woman, it implies a sanctity that must not be trampled under or made sub-
servient to what human ingenuity and inventiveness can design by way of medical interventions and treatment protocols.  
We do well to seek counsel from physicians and pastors, consider the relative merits of the options, pray to the One who is 
the source and Lord of life, and exercise our duties as the designated surrogates of a dying loved one. But along the way of 
the entire process, we joyfully acknowledge and believe the forgiveness of God in Christ Jesus and His Holy Spirit as our 
real and present Comforter in every circumstance.
B. The Reality of Death and Our Struggle with Helplessness
Christians affirm both the unnatural nature of death as the curse that fell upon a sinful human race and the hope held out 
for us in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ who came that death may die.
153 Luther never /f_linched from dealing 
with the severity of sin’s consequences. His handling of Psalm 90, for example, serves as a “corrective for therapeutic 
pastoral theologies. ”
154 For the reformer, “/T_he entire human race fell so far away from God and is so thoroughly blinded 
by original sin that man knows neither himself nor God. Indeed, he does not even know his own sorry state, although he 
feels it and languishes under it. He neither understands its origin nor does he see its /f_inal outcome. ”
155 In his commentary, 
Luther rejects any minimizing of death as the “worst blindness” in the face of what one certainly knows and experiences to 
be the opposite.
156 Luther comments on Psalm 90: “First, Moses here stresses the tyranny of death and of God’s wrath, since 
he shows that human nature is subject to eternal death; he does this for the purpose of terrifying hardened and unbelieving 
despisers of God. Secondly, Moses prays for a remedy against despair, that men might not succumb to despair. ”
157
We cannot escape God’s wrath and its inevitable consequences in death by wishing them away with /f_lowery eulogies, 
which amount to little more than secular attempts at absolution by works and worthiness, or by exercising our self-de-
termination by choosing when and how we will “die with dignity. ”
158 Self-determination is what got humanity into the 
problem of sin in the /f_irst place! Luther thunders that it “is wicked to invent a new god and in this way to escape God’s 
wrath and so to attempt to avert something which we, because of sin, have justly deserved. ”
159 /T_he law focuses like a laser 
on what death is and remains: our enemy. Werner Elert rightly observed that God’s call deals a “destructive blow” to any 
notions of autonomous self-determination. But looked at “with the eyes of God, ” all of this autonomy shrinks to the “math-
ematical point, ” and we see that “the outer side of our life is death. ”
160
153 /T_he short piece, “What About Death and Dying” by A.L. Barry in the Synod’s “What about … ” series, offers a succinct statement dealing with the types of questions laypersons o/f_ten ask 
regarding death and dying. It can be downloaded online at /T_he Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod’s LCMS Document Library, https:///f_iles.lcms.org//f_ile/preview/4C9b1IpSFPRy18M2tCdDXhzJX-
AEw1Azd.
154 John T. Pless, “Luther’s Reading of Psalm 90: /T_he Eschatology of Pastoral /T_heology, ” in Take Courage: Essays in Honor of Harold Senkbeil (Irvine: New Reformation Publications, 2016), Kindle 
Edition.
155 Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 13: Selected Psalms II, ed. Jaroslav J. Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald and Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 13 (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999), 76.
156 LW 13:77.
157 LW 13:78. /T_he old Henry Cole translation of Luther’s devotional thoughts on the Psalms, A Manual on the Book of Psalms (London: Seeley and Burnside, 1837), offers a wonderful summary 
of Luther’s view of Psalm 90. “/T_his Psalm contains a very great and important doctrine; in which Moses teaches what is the origin and cause of that death to which the whole human race is 
subject, and the reason why so horrible a punishment was in/f_licted on the whole race of mortals: the Psalmist saith, it was on account of sin: and the guilt and desert of sin are greater than can be 
conceived by the human mind, unless God touch the heart with a knowledge of it; and yet, in this sin and guilt, and under this wrath, all the sons of Adam are born. ”
158 Pless, “Luther’s Reading of Psalm 90, ” Kindle Edition.
159 LW 13:96
160 Werner Elert, /T_he Structure of Lutheranism, electronic ed. (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2000), 26.
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Re/f_lecting upon Luther’s handling of Psalm 90, Pless sees it as establishing both a foundation and a framework for 
pastoral care in the face of death.161 With Luther, the pastor is called to face death squarely and name it for what it is. Death, 
the alien work of God’s wrath, remains the last enemy and may only be overcome by the death and resurrection of the one 
“who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justi/f_ication” (ROM. 4:25). Secular notions of death as “natural” 
seek to keep it in the biology lab and treat it as merely another part of the “circle of life, ” and a rather natural one at that. 
Paul, like Luther much later, had a much more realistic view of death as our true enemy. “/T_he sting of death is sin, and the 
power of sin is the law, ” Paul declares in 1 Corinthians 15:56. /T_he trio of death, sin and the law are the unholy trinity of 
Luther’s exposition of Psalm 90.
But just as Easter follows Good Friday, the resurrection comes a/f_ter the cross. /T_he same Christ who gave His life as 
a propitiatory sacri/f_ice for our sins guarantees us a /f_inal victory. Our words to the dying and their grieving families does 
not end with a grave or with the months of wrenching grieving that may follow. We offer the promise and hope of God in 
Christ. Pless states it well:
/T_he one who died in our place gives us his indestructible life. /T_he end of life’s story is not the obituary; the /f_inal 
destination is not the cemetery. /T_he end of the story is Christ Jesus cruci/f_ied and risen from the dead. /T_he end of 
the story is your resurrection. In light of this truth, we are set free to face the questions of mercy and care at life’s 
end with the full con/f_idence that the Lord who gives us life and who will one day recall this life to himself always 
has more to give. We will neither take our own lives or those of others, nor will we hold on to them sel/f_ishly 
when the Lord, who has already called us from death to life in Holy Baptism, calls us to die for that /f_inal time.
162
Pastoral preparation for the various stages of life should involve at the very least an orientation to the joys and rewards 
of each season of life, including the /f_inal one, despite the discomfort with helplessness and loss of control as we await union 
with Christ in glory. Meilaender offers insight into the wisdom of aging and the notion of a complete life: “No longer imag-
ining, if he ever did, that he goes to meet God on his own terms, it is the old person’s ‘special opportunity’ to discover that 
the initiative always lies with God — and in this discovery to be an example for all who are younger. ”
163
/T_houghtful Christian leaders may consider the complexity of the issues that surround end-of-life care and despair of 
having a sure word from the Lord. Richard C. Eyer helpfully cuts through the clutter and affirms three key ideas: 1) /T_he 
problem comes because we are afraid of being helpless and without control over our lives in a time of great ethical and re-
lational crisis; 2) “It is only when we /f_ind ourselves helpless due to suffering and do NOT take matters into our own hands 
that we come to see God at work in our lives redeeming and remaking us through ‘death and resurrection’ of the spiritual 
self ”; and 3) Part of the obedience of faith means that we use our sense of helplessness and inadequacy to learn to submit to 
God and trust Him despite the speci/f_ic conditions and circumstances.164 We may take each of these points in order.
1. Fear of Helplessness and Lack of Control
We fear helplessness and seek to project our own self-determination into the future’s uncertainties. God, the Creator, makes 
us His creatures. Creaturely existence must, by de/f_inition, be receptive and dependent. Finding ourselves afraid of dying, 
unable to control the outcome of the medical care we receive, can never be a comfortable place to be. But it is precisely in 
extreme situations like these that we become the instruments of God for our family and caregivers. And in their care, they 
become God’s instruments to us. We cannot forget that Jesus selected a helpless child to be emblematic of those who enter 
161 Pless, “Luther’s Reading of Psalm 90, ” Kindle Edition.
162 Pless, “Luther’s Reading of Psalm 90, ” Kindle Edition.
163 Gilbert Meilaender, Should We Live Forever? /T_he Ethical Ambiguities of Aging (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), Kindle Edition, location 1543.
164 Richard C. Eyer, “ A Christian Guide to End-of-Life Decisions” (Nevada, Iowa: Lutherans for Life), n.d.
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into His kingdom (MATT. 18:3). We revel in the grace of infant Baptism partly because it reminds us that God gives His gi/f_t of 
faith precisely when we are unable to obtain it on our own. /T_he Baptism of an infant reminds us that God rewards only the 
helpless with heaven; those seeking to control the outcomes of life spend eternity separated from Him.
2. Facing Helplessness Due to Suffering
St. Paul reminds us that God specializes in manifesting Himself at exactly the point of our deepest need and showing 
Himself sufficient for our every need. Romans 5:6 declares that “while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for 
the ungodly. ” Luther similarly observes that “through persecution the Gospel and God’s Word only advance and become 
stronger, and faith increases. /T_his contradicts the way things work with worldly possessions, which decrease in misfortune 
and adversity and increase in prosperity and peace. Christ’s kingdom increases in affliction and decreases in peace and 
luxury, as St. Paul says, ‘My power is made stronger in weakness, ’ etc. (
2 COR. 12/bracketleft.case:9/bracketright.case) .”165
Our sinful nature ever seeks to become a theologian of glory rather than a theologian of the cross. Luther’s words in 
his Heidelberg Disputation (1518) show our problem in stark relief when he writes, “/T_his is clear: /T_he person who does not 
know Christ does not know God hidden in suffering. /T_herefore, this person prefers works to suffering, glory to the cross, 
strength to weakness, wisdom to folly, and, in general, good to evil … However, God can be found only in suffering and the 
cross, as has already been said. ”
166
3. Facing Helplessness as a School for Learning to Trust God
Part of the o/f_ten painful pedagogy of discipleship involves learning to submit to God in the muddle of our helplessness 
and feelings of futility. /T_his is not the same as the famous “stiff upper lip, ” nor is it a compliance through clenched teeth as 
would be unbe/f_itting the Christian, “but a childlike, willing, glorious submission to God; even as the Christian in his entire 
life submits to God’s ways and permits God to guide him. ”
167 We follow the Christ who is truly God but also truly one of 
us. His entire life was a life of faith, but His approach to His own end-of-life experience informs our understanding. In the 
Garden of Gethsemane, facing imminent death, He submitted to God’s will and committed His life into the hands of the 
Father (
LUKE 22:42; LUKE 23:46; CF. 1 PETER 4:19).168 Now He intercedes for us in heaven and invites us to approach the “throne of 
grace, that we may receive mercy and /f_ind grace to help in time of need” (HEB. 4:14/endash.case16). Of all the discipleship challenges we 
face, none is more existentially pressing than our own death or that of a loved one.
In the last century, Dietrich Bonhoeffer similarly comprehended the uncertainties that faced him living as a follower 
of Christ, needing to learn the painful lessons of discipleship. For him those lessons came under the Nazi regime. Near the 
end of the war, Bonhoeffer wrote:
“Having patience in days of trouble” — this has been the focus recently of nearly our entire inner concentration. 
How do we accomplish it? By submitting to God’s blows and God’s law and saying, Happy are those who experi-
ence this! /T_his is what those who call God “dear Father” must say. /T_hose whom God disciplines through diffi-
cult life experiences, through war and deprivation, learn that they can insist on nothing from God; so they wait 
patiently and humbly until God again turns toward them kindly, and they know that this hour is coming.
169
165 LW 76: 288.
166 Dennis Bielfeldt, “Heidelberg Disputation, ” in /T_he Roots of Reform, ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand, Kirsi I. Stjerna and Timothy J. Wengert, vol. 1, /T_he Annotated Luther (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 
2015), 99–100.
167 Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, vol. 1 (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1953), 138.
168 Samuel H. Nafzger et al., eds., Confessing the Gospel: A Lutheran Approach to Systematic /T_heology, vol. 1 (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2017), 182.
169 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Conspiracy and Imprisonment: 1940–1945, ed. Jørgen Glenthøj et al., trans. Lisa E. Dahill and Douglas W . Stott, vol. 16 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006), 627–628.
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C. Christ’s Comfort for the Dying 
/T_he comfort Christians offer those who are at the end of their earthly pilgrimage begins not in the hospital or hospice 
room, but at the cross.
170 /T_he root for the English “comfort” comes from the Latin com fortis, with strength. While the 
farthest thing from the existential reality of a dying person may be said to be strength, that is exactly what Christian 
caregiving offers. We strengthen them because our God is the ultimate strength. Paul declares to the Corinthians, “Blessed 
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our 
affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are 
comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort 
too” (
2 COR. 1:3/endash.case5). 
But since this is no “whistling past the graveyard” kind of comfort, it does not ignore the ugly realities of the actual 
situation the person faces in the midst of suffering. Just as Jesus quoted the words of abandonment from Psalm 22 while 
He suffered on the cross, sometimes we may expect to hear words of bitter loneliness and even abandonment from those 
we minister to at their most dire moment. Our task does not involve looking the other way from their pain, their negative 
emotions or even their real doubts no matter how uncomfortable it makes us. As ministers of Christ, we represent the 
ultimate Suffering One. Hebrews reminds us that “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weak-
nesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with con/f_idence draw near to 
the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and /f_ind grace to help in time of need” (
HEB. 4:15/endash.case16). As one veteran chaplain 
put it a/f_ter meeting with a struggling patient: “She was sustained by God and God’s care-giver. She was comforted with the 
comfort of God. ”
171
/T_his was Luther’s pastoral approach, pointing to Christ and His saving work and promises as our source of comfort in 
the face of death. Luther rejected much of the ars moriendi (“the art of dying”) tradition of his times.172 Unlike those who 
focused their attention on the works that a Christian should perform in order to ensure a “blessed death, ” Luther stead-
fastly held forth the promises of God in the Gospel. Re/f_lecting on the /f_inished work of his catechism, he observed, “Now it 
has come, praise God, to this: men and women, young and old, know the catechism. /T_hey know how to believe, live, pray, 
suffer, and die. ”
173 Luther began a 1522 Invocavit Sunday sermon with these words: 
/T_he summons of death comes to us all, and no one can die for another. All must /f_ight their own battle with death 
by themselves, alone. We can shout into one another’s ears but everyone must individually be prepared for the 
time of death, for I will not be with you then nor you with me. /T_herefore each person must personally know and 
be armed with the chief things that concern a Christian.
174
In May 1519, while Luther was engaged in preparing to debate John Eck, he received a request from Mark Schart, a 
counselor in Elector Frederick’s court, to write on the topic of death and dying. Luther demurred due to the press of his 
debate preparation and other duties. Within weeks, Luther relented and promised to produce something on the topic if 
Schart would be patient. On Nov. 1, 1519, Luther’s “ A Sermon on Preparing to Die” was published.
175 He took aim against 
170 Steinke, “Comfort in the Face of Death, ” 126.
171 Steinke, 126. 
172 Robert Kolb, “/T_he Reformation of Dying and Burial: Preaching, Pastoral Care, and Ritual at Committal in Luther’s Reform, ” Concordia /T_heological Quarterly 81 (2017): 77–93, especially 
81–82.
173 “Luther’s Warning to His Dear German People, ” LW 47:52; quoted in Robert Kolb, “Introduction, ” A Booklet of Comfort for the Sick & On the Christian Knight by Johann Spangenberg, trans. 
Robert Kolb (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2007), 9. “In contrast to Jean Gerson’s ars moriendi and other forms of late-medieval death literature, Martin Luther found in his theological 
breakthrough a means of approaching death through what Oswald Bayer called promissio,” Jones, Promissio and Death, ii. 
174 Martin J. Lohrmann, “/T_he Invocavit Sermons, ” in Pastoral Writings, ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand et al., vol. 4, /T_he Annotated Luther (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1522), 14–15. /T_he “chief things” 
Luther has in mind are that we are “children of wrath” under God’s judgment, that God has given His Son so that whoever believes in Him is a child of God, and that we must love as God has 
loved us since true faith results in love. 
175 Martin Luther, “ A Sermon on Preparing to Die, ” LW 42.