We have a faith that does not shrink from death. The fundamental concern of our faith is both to reveal with fearsome accuracy the nature of death, and to draw the sting from it by the victory of the resurrected Christ. We, of all people, need to deny nothing true, the bad and the good. Of all people, we are most able to confess the grand proportions of death: so terrible as to defeat us all!—but defeated, rather, in Jesus.

—Author Walter Wangerin, Jr.