Erl Purnell Sermon

b14Pentecost 10~ August 13, 2006 ~ A sermon preached by The Rev’d Erl G. Purnell at Old St. Andrew’s Church, Bloomfield, CT

Deuteronomy 8.1-10; Psalm 34.1-8; Ephesians 4.25-5.2; John 6.37-51

With the events in London this week, don’t you feel accosted again? I do. Granted no planes were destroyed mid-flight and the bad guys have been apprehended. But I hate this feeling of vulnerability, fright, and uncertainty. The fear-mongers know exactly how to rattle the innocent. They want us to cower. They hope we’ll stop flying and be frozen like the characters in Narnia are when the nasty snow Queen zaps them.

How innocent we were just a few years ago. The weekend of September 8, 2001 was one of the most beautiful ever. My son was married that Saturday. It was a wonderful, celebratory day. Then, ka-bam—911.

My wish for my grandchildren is that the present horrors cease so their young lives can flourish in the light. The which brings me to say two things this morning.

The first is that evil does exist. It festers in the hearts of some human beings and darkens their souls to the point where life and light have no value. Fanatical people can and do try to impose their will on the rest of us. They are willing to waste their lives in order to kill indiscriminately for a hollow hope of heaven as they do the bidding of misguided zealots.

We deny evil at our peril. In the course of history the brave have always needed to stand against the evil-doers. As the specter of evil has lurked, the good have braced themselves, protected their children, and prohibited the toehold of evil from becoming a foothold. Each time, and over time, goodness has prevailed. Goodness will prevail again.

And goodness always prevails because goodness is light, and life, and love.

Here’s an interesting news piece from last week. Work is being done in earnest to invent something like Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak. I’m not kidding. This is true. The physics has to do with bending light by using nanotechnology at the atomic level. We should expect results within, perhaps, twenty years. How cool, right? We all want to be invisible. Just imagine what we could do. Sneak right into meetings where the bad guys are planning their attacks and get the whole scoop without ever being seen. There is, of course, the concern that the nasties get hold of their own invisibility cloak and use it for nefarious purposes.

But before we go too far down the science fiction highway, consider this: If you were actually able to knit together an invisibility cloak, something that really does bend light so an object—let’s say a person—doesn’t appear where it actually is, the person wouldn’t be able to see a thing. Behind the invisibility cloak, you’re blind as a bat! Total darkness. Nothingness, because there would be no light. Hum. Kind of calls the whole project into question, doesn’t it?

You see, it’s light that gives shape to the universe. It’s light that contains the spectrum of colors we see in the rainbow or on your pc’s color pallet. It’s light that plays in our eyes and signals the mind to see form and distance. It’s light waves—a holy and sacred vibration—that marks the creation from the moment of the Big Bang right up to this present instant.

And so, the second thing I want to say this morning is that there is also goodness and light.

“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness” (Genesis 1.1-5a).

The Genesis story powerfully explains to an unenlightened people the gift of light on the formless void and darkness. “God saw that the light was good.” We now understand all of this scientifically.

In these days of our lives, we do recognize the darkness and evil imposed upon us by some, but we need not let it over come us. The light that is Creation beams, and it especially beams as the light of Christ.

Paradoxically, when we wrap ourselves in the visibility cloak of light, and life, and love, we see everything through the eyes of God. We know God’s goodness in myriad ways. No matter how much the forces of evil try to darken the world, the light shines in suns and stars to foster life and it’s most magnificent manifestation—Love.

The Psalmist writes, “I sought the Lord…and the Lord delivered me out of all my terror.” So in our own day and to summarize, let’s continue to stand together as a family in the light of God’s abiding love. Let’s BE light. Let’s BE Love.

Amen.