Death and Resurrection, the story of Holy Week, is everyone’s story, a universal story. It is a story at all because Jesus, truly God and truly man, died to deliver from their sinfulness all those who would come to believe in him, and win for them eternal life. Our death will probably not be like Jesus’ death; crucifixion is no longer used to impose the death penalty, which, thank God, is now abandoned in Illinois and more and more rarely imposed anywhere. Our resurrection, however, will be very like his, although delayed until he returns in glory to judge the living and the dead.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian ...