It's one of the most powerful images in the history of Christianity: Jesus on the cross, flanked on either side by two thieves. Or if you were a first-century gawker at Golgotha, here are three criminals lifted up for humiliation on three crosses.

In the final hours of their lives, these three criminals formed a community of the dying. They entered into relationships with each other, shared intimacies, and conversed with each other about matters of life and death.

If you listen carefully to this dialog of the dying, you will hear the very same issues, even the very same words, being voiced throughout this postmodern culture. The same hungers and hopes, the same fears and infuriation that pervade our world today are vocalized by this community of the dying.

It's the classic postmodern sc…