Dead or Alive

A Reflection on the Second Reading for Sunday, July 2nd, 2023:
The Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Romans
6.3-4, 8-11

Brothers and sisters: 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.

But 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. 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.

Pause. Pray. Reflect.

I remember watching old fashioned spaghetti westerns when I was a kid. Black and white movies set in the dusty towns of early America. Gunslingers – sheriffs and outlaws – made up the main cast of these films. One common feature was the wanted poster. These posters usually had a picture of the outlaw in question with the words “Wanted – Dead or Alive” printed with some manner of reward incentivizing friend or foe to turn him in.

All of this talk of being dead and alive in Paul’s letter to the Romans reminds me of those movies. Paul’s repetition of the themes of death and life over and over makes the words stand out. Paul keeps pointing out those words because they’re essential descriptions of us before and after Christ.

Before Christ, we are alive on the outside. Moving through the world like a fish following the current, sure that we are the rulers of our life through our own efforts. The rush of being alive, even in a broken world, feels refreshing. But spiritually, we are dead. While the outside thrives and grows, inside the rot of death grows at the same time. Alive and Dead.

The current that is drawing us along, giving us a false sense of control, is drawing us out into a big, wide, bottomless ocean. An ocean that will swallow us up and drag us down into unfathomable depths. 

In Christ, however, our world is turned upside down. He has chosen to rescue us, dead to eternity and alive to our sin. 

By transforming the water that would drown us into the gate to life, he makes life of our death and death of our life. The control we thought we had is surrendered for freedom. The sin we accounted as a life well lived is revealed as shackles, shackles broken by Christ.

Our sin is drowned in that deep ocean. And we rise up from the water truly alive.

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Stephanie Potter

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