The Visibility Cloak -- FPC sermon excerpt

Harry Potter has his Cloak of Invisibility, which he throws on to make himself disappear at critical points in his magical adventures. It shields him completely from being seen by other people, and it cannot be worn out by time or spells. It becomes such a prized possession that Harry decides to keep it at the end of the seven-book series, and pass it on to his descendents.

Don’t you wish that you were a member of Harry’s family?

There are times when we’d all like to disappear. I do, when I try to say something funny in a sermon, and nobody laughs. Maybe you do, when you work up your courage to ask someone out, and they respond with, “Let’s just be friends.” How about when your mind goes blank in the middle of an oral report at school, or a sales pitch to a client? Or when the ball is passed to you at a critical point in a game, and it goes right through your fingers?

If only we had that Cloak of Invisibility!

At other times, we want to be shielded because we are ashamed of our actions. We don’t want people to see what we are doing. We prefer our privacy, where we can hide our activities from others. In the words of Paul to the Ephesians, we are “following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient” (2:2).

This is strange and supernatural language, like something out of the magical world of Harry Potter. But we know what Paul is trying to communicate — we are well aware that we often behave in a very worldly way, under the influence of powers and spirits that lead us away from God. We live in “the passions of our flesh,” we follow “the desires of flesh and senses,” we let our ambition, greed, jealously, and anger get the best of us (v. 3). We know that we are heading in the wrong direction, and that we ought to turn around.

But changing direction is tough. We would rather just vanish. Poof! Become invisible.

For those who really want to disappear, science is in the process of providing some help. Researchers have demonstrated that they are now able to cloak three-dimensional objects using artificially-engineered materials that redirect light around an object (FOXNews.com, August 11, 2008). These materials deflect light-waves around a body, like water flowing around a smooth rock in a stream. The key is to keep the light from bouncing back, because if the light is reflected then the object can be seen. This research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and U.S. Army Research Office — the Army, of course, is very interested in gaining a fighting advantage by making its people and equipment invisible.

The bottom line is this: If you want to be invisible, you have to find a way to bend light around yourself. If light is reflected, then you are going to be seen.

It is clear from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians that God wants his divine light to bounce off us, instead of bend around us. Paul says that “God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” (v. 4). We become alive with Christ when we are baptized into the Christian community — in the words of Paul, “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ” (Galatians 3:27). As Christians, we are invited to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provisions for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Romans 13:14).

So we are “clothed” with Christ, writes Paul, and we “put on” the Lord Jesus Christ — this is what it means to be a properly dressed disciple of Christ. Jesus becomes for us a Visibility Cloak, one that reflects the light of God and makes us visible to the world.