Faith Works 3-27-2026
Jeff Gill
The question of a good death ahead of Good Friday
___
If you were raised in the church, you don't find Good Friday too surprising.
That's simply the name long used in the Christian community for the day Jesus of Nazareth was crucified by Roman authorities in Jerusalem, some two thousand years ago.
Good, though? Good as in "holy," good because of the sacrifice Jesus as the Christ makes by accepting his death on the cross as necessary to our redemption from sin. Good because of our salvation in him.
To those new to religious observance, it can be jarring. Good Friday is crucifixion day? Really? And that's certainly understandable.
Good and death do not go together. Mostly. Basically. But if you have sat at the bedside of a long dying, there is a blessing, a relief, and yes there is a certain measure of guilt at times over the weight that relieved when death comes for someone long suffering. When only death is going to heal the situation, death can be, in a sense, good.
We are in the midst of an ongoing cultural discussion over how and when we can welcome death to the decision making. Sometimes, heroic measures, as the medical folk say, make no sense. Families are asked about "do not resuscitate" orders, or DNR markings on patient files. Harder are questions about feeding tubes, or other interventions. When do we stop pushing life, and when are we withdrawing it?
Recently, a number of deaths have been in the news, people I've not known personally, but whose lives keep intersecting with my own. Four men have stuck with me since their passings, in this order the last couple of weeks: Paul Ehrlich, Jürgen Habermas, Chuck Norris, Robert Mueller.
A scientist, a theologian, an actor, a lawyer. It would take longer than I have in a column to explain the personal ties, the likes and dislikes I might have had around their work, about these four very different public figures who died in a seven day period.
They were old men. They died, respectively, at 93, 96, 86, and 81. The last and youngest just a decade and a half older than I am, and what does that make me? The last two were known to have a faith they practiced, which is surely a comfort to their families, and I trust to them as their end approached. But I doubt any of them, or those they loved, called their last day "good."
Another "old man" who lived four hundred years ago didn't live as long as I am now. His name was John Donne, and he was a clergyman, a preacher, and a poet. Honorable callings, all. He is perhaps best known for a poem of which this is a part, from about 1630:
"Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee."
"Send not to know" refers to how the church bell was the internet of its day, in the Seventeenth Century. When the parish steeple rang out, you knew it meant certain times of day, but when it tolls, you learn the basic information that someone has died. You may well not know more, so you would have someone run into the village to find out: who died?
Rev. Donne said there's no need to ask. The church bell tolls, when the funerary tones ring out, for all of us. "It tolls for thee." We should not mourn more or less for ones we like more or less; each person's death diminishes all of us. Or as the Malian author Amadou Hampâté Bâ wrote not so many years ago in the Twentieth Century: "Whenever an elder dies, a library burns down."
May your Good Friday bring life, as we contemplate death. It comes for us all, but is not the end, and that is the goodness there is in it.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he knows everyone wants to get to Heaven, but nobody wants to die. Tell him what's good in your life at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.
Jeff Gill
The question of a good death ahead of Good Friday
___
If you were raised in the church, you don't find Good Friday too surprising.
That's simply the name long used in the Christian community for the day Jesus of Nazareth was crucified by Roman authorities in Jerusalem, some two thousand years ago.
Good, though? Good as in "holy," good because of the sacrifice Jesus as the Christ makes by accepting his death on the cross as necessary to our redemption from sin. Good because of our salvation in him.
To those new to religious observance, it can be jarring. Good Friday is crucifixion day? Really? And that's certainly understandable.
Good and death do not go together. Mostly. Basically. But if you have sat at the bedside of a long dying, there is a blessing, a relief, and yes there is a certain measure of guilt at times over the weight that relieved when death comes for someone long suffering. When only death is going to heal the situation, death can be, in a sense, good.
We are in the midst of an ongoing cultural discussion over how and when we can welcome death to the decision making. Sometimes, heroic measures, as the medical folk say, make no sense. Families are asked about "do not resuscitate" orders, or DNR markings on patient files. Harder are questions about feeding tubes, or other interventions. When do we stop pushing life, and when are we withdrawing it?
Recently, a number of deaths have been in the news, people I've not known personally, but whose lives keep intersecting with my own. Four men have stuck with me since their passings, in this order the last couple of weeks: Paul Ehrlich, Jürgen Habermas, Chuck Norris, Robert Mueller.
A scientist, a theologian, an actor, a lawyer. It would take longer than I have in a column to explain the personal ties, the likes and dislikes I might have had around their work, about these four very different public figures who died in a seven day period.
They were old men. They died, respectively, at 93, 96, 86, and 81. The last and youngest just a decade and a half older than I am, and what does that make me? The last two were known to have a faith they practiced, which is surely a comfort to their families, and I trust to them as their end approached. But I doubt any of them, or those they loved, called their last day "good."
Another "old man" who lived four hundred years ago didn't live as long as I am now. His name was John Donne, and he was a clergyman, a preacher, and a poet. Honorable callings, all. He is perhaps best known for a poem of which this is a part, from about 1630:
"Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee."
"Send not to know" refers to how the church bell was the internet of its day, in the Seventeenth Century. When the parish steeple rang out, you knew it meant certain times of day, but when it tolls, you learn the basic information that someone has died. You may well not know more, so you would have someone run into the village to find out: who died?
Rev. Donne said there's no need to ask. The church bell tolls, when the funerary tones ring out, for all of us. "It tolls for thee." We should not mourn more or less for ones we like more or less; each person's death diminishes all of us. Or as the Malian author Amadou Hampâté Bâ wrote not so many years ago in the Twentieth Century: "Whenever an elder dies, a library burns down."
May your Good Friday bring life, as we contemplate death. It comes for us all, but is not the end, and that is the goodness there is in it.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he knows everyone wants to get to Heaven, but nobody wants to die. Tell him what's good in your life at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.
