By way of contrast, St. Paul, in the sixth chapter of his letter to the Romans, makes it clear that while we might aptly be described as "the living dead," we are far from zombies. (I'm sure this comes as reassuring news to all of you.) For while zombies populate the night of the living dead, Christians populate the day of the living dead.

And so here we are, the living dead, on the first day of the week, the day of the resurrection, the day of the living dead. And how did we die? Paul writes, "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life."

It is through baptism that we are buried and raised with Christ. Unfortunately, the Episcopal liturgy doesn't make as full use of this image as those who practice baptism by immersion. We Episcopalians tend to sprinkle judiciously. We're not dunkers. But let me tell you, immersion is a powerful sacramental sign of being buried and raised with Christ. I know because I was baptized at the age of eight by full immersion.

And lest you think this practice is reserved only for older children and adults in certain protestant churches, you should know that in many Orthodox churches, the baptismal fonts are large enough so that a naked baby may be fully immersed three times. I've seen it. (They blow on the infant's face so that the child reflexively holds its breath-after the first dunk, the kid is usually too busy screaming to notice the other two immersions.) It's messy. It's wet. It's glorious.

In the 60s and 70s, some Roman Catholic and Episcopal churches were built with jacuzi-sized baptisteries, some with ever-flowing waterfalls like a park fountain, symbolic of "living water." Adults and children alike are baptized in these modern buildings by immersion-and all of this to underscore that powerful image from Romans six. As the celebrant says at the thanksgiving over the water at every baptismal liturgy: "We thank you, Father, for the water of Baptism. In it we are buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit." (BCP 306) But aside from the sheer power of imagery, why does Paul make such a fuss about considering ourselves "dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus" in Romans six? Well, if we look a little further down in that chapter, we find two reasons.

The first is that "if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his." That is, any hope that Christians have of eternal life with God is bound up with the fact that Christ Jesus has eternal life with his Father. It is through faith in Christ's resurrection that we have hope in our own resurrections-as Paul writes, "if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him."

Thus, to say that Jesus was just a great guy who told a lot of confusing stories and who did some things that ticked off the religious and secular authorities of his day, which got him killed, isn't enough. If that's all there is to it, then there's nothing salvific to Jesus' life or death. He'd be a moral example in the great and venerable tradition of the Buddha, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Gandhi, to be sure, but last time I checked, Buddhists, Baptists, and Hindus don't claim that Siddhartha, Martin, or Mohandas saved them. Only Christianity claims that this one man's death unites us to God, both here and now, and in the world to come.

So, that's the first reason Paul makes a fuss over our being "dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus." The second reason Paul gives is because "our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin." To walk in the day of the living dead means to live with the knowledge that God forgives sins, and to feel the joy of release from sin, both past sins that have held us in bondage and continue to weigh on our consciences, and present sins that threaten to cause us to forget that in Christ, we can find newness of life. So it's not just about going to heaven, it's about experiencing God's forgiving love in the here and now. "The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus."

Let's review, shall we? Through baptism, which is a dying and rising with Christ, we have become the living dead, but we aren't zombies. That's because zombies walk in the darkness, while we are called to walk in the light. In our walking in newness of life, we see two things: first, that we have hope of eternal life with God through Christ, and second, that we can experience the joy of forgiveness in the here and now. Thus, even on those days when we feel like we're walking not in the light, but in the night of the living dead, when we feel either that we have become zombies ourselves, or that we are being pursued by the zombies of guilt, depression, anxiety, despair, grief, loss-if we can but remember "that our old self was crucified with Christ so that the body of sin might be destroyed," then we can perhaps tap into that hope and that joy that the Gospel proclaims is available to us. Mind you, it's no panacea-we will still sin, and if we're clinically depressed, we may still need prozac and the like, but we can remember that even when we can't feel joy, we can live in hope. And that is reason enough to live as the living dead, not of the night, but of the day.

On a final note, I'd like to point out that in order for zombies to remain in their in-between state of the living dead of the night, they must feast on the flesh of real, live humans-a form of cannibalism. In some versions of the zombie legend, just as being snacked on by a vampire will make you a vampire, serving as a zombie's Happy Meal™ has the same effect, in that whatever's left over then becomes a zombie, too.

But for those who walk in the day of the living dead, we have no need to feed on our unwitting neighbors, though we are encouraged to bring them to our feasts. And I'm not just talking about potlucks, either. I mean a particular meal involving flesh and blood: the Eucharist. Interestingly, while the body eaten by a zombie becomes a zombie, a baptized person who eats the Body of Christ becomes more fully a part of the Body of Christ. Let us prepare therefore to continue our journey of newness of life by drawing near to the Body and Blood of the Resurrected One, who saves us from the night of the living dead.