"I Saw the Light"

by Robert Hamerton-Kelly

Hank Williams Sr. was one of the creators of modern country music. His debut at the Grand Old Opry on June 11, 1949 is an early milestone on country music’s road to worldwide renown. He was a genius at songwriting and many of his songs are still part of the repertoire. Kris Kristofferson said of him that no one could match him for making misery attractive. I’m reminded here of the following joke. You remember that in the days before CD’s some Christian types claimed that if you played certain records backwards you would hear Satan speaking. So the question is, “What happens when you play a country record backwards?” Answer: “The guy’s wife returns to him, his trucks starts, and his dog comes back to life.” Listen to some of Williams’ titles, “Long Gone Lonesome Blues, My Bucket’s got a Hole in it, My Son calls another man Daddy, and You’re gonna Change (or I’m gonna leave).” His greatest hits however were about the heart: “Cold, Cold Heart, Your Cheating Heart, Take these Chains from my Heart, and Crazy heart.” What then shall we say when we hear that he died of a heart attack at the age of 29, in a car driving him to a gig, and on the day he died, January 1st, 1953, a title of his appeared at the top of the charts? It was “I’ll never get out of this world alive.”

And what shall we say when we read in 2 Corinthians 4:6 that God has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ?” No more “Cold, Cold Heart,” no more “Cheating Heart,” no more “Crazy Heart,” no more “ chains on my heart;” but rather a heart set free, full of warmth, full of light, a heart in love with Jesus in all his beauty and joy. That is the Apostle’s testimony, and Hank Williams discovered this too it seems, for he wrote a song from which I took the title of this sermon, “I saw the Light.” It goes, “I wandered so aimless, life filled with sin/ I wouldn’t let my dear savior in/ Then Jesus came like a stranger in the night/ Praise the Lord, I saw the light.” And the Chorus is: “I saw the light, I saw the light/ No more in darkness no more in night/ Now I’m so happy, no sorrow in sight, / Praise the Lord, I saw the light.” (The other verses are: “Just like a blind man I wandered along, Worries and fears I claimed for my own/ Then like the blind man God gave back his sight, / Praise the Lord I saw the light// I was a fool to wander and stray/ Straight is the gate and narrow the way/ Now I have traded the wrong for the right/ Praise the Lord, I saw the light.”).

Let us look now more closely at some of the similarities and differences between our two readings for today. We have an objective account and a subjective testimony. It is as if Paul writes a sermon on the gospel story to tell us what the event of Jesus’ Transfiguration can mean for us, and Paul is so much nearer to us in this matter than Peter, James and John. Several of us, for instance, can sing with Hank Williams and the Apostle Paul that God shone in my heart to give me the knowledge of his glory in the face of Christ. Peter, James and John, on the other hand, witnessed a mystery of divine revelation in the objective world, before their physical eyes, and thus their experience is beyond our reach, excepting through the written account we have received. Paul’s, however, is within the reach of our experience, and today I want to urge you all to seek it. Let Christ warm your cold heart, quiet your crazy heart, reform your cheating heart, and take the chains from your imprisoned heart. Pray that you may see in your heart the light of the Transfigured Christ.

The chief historical difference between Peter, James and John’s experience on the mountaintop and Paul’s experience on the Damascus road is that the death and resurrection of Christ lies between. During his earthly life Christ could only be present to specific people at specific times and places, while after the resurrection he could be present to all at the same time, and in every place, especially the place of the human heart. This is what he means when in the gospel of John Jesus says that it is to our advantage that he goes away; when he goes he comes again as the Holy Spirit, the form in which he enters our heart and becomes our inner light (John 16:7). Every time and every place is equidistant from God, as long as there is a heart open to receive him.

Peter, James and John saw Jesus transfigured by light, saw Moses and Elijah speaking with him, and heard the voice of God from within a luminous cloud that enfolded them saying, “This is my beloved son, listen to him.” The gospel tells us that this is a glimpse of the Kingdom of God, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power (9:1). “ Those referred to are Peter, James and John, and what is it they see when they see that the Kingdom of God has come with power? They see Jesus suffused with the divine light, and “light,” by the way, is the biblical word for the very being of God, also called God’s glory. What do they hear? They hear that they must listen to Jesus rather than to Moses and Elijah, that Jesus takes absolute precedence over the Law and the prophets, symbolized by Moses and Elijah respectively, because Jesus is God’s Son!

One can hardly exaggerate the importance of this disclosure and this claim. Jesus Christ supersedes all the religious tradition of Israel. From now on if and when we read the legal and prophetic traditions we must read them through a lens ground by the grace of God in Christ and by the light of God’s glory as it shines from his face. This unveiling of Jesus is a disclosure of the kingdom of God. He is the Kingdom of God, therefore faith in Jesus Christ is true faith in God, because in him the sovereign reign of God over all the earth and all the human race becomes real.  This absolute claim is absolutely central; as I said last Sunday we are faced with a simple either/or proposition, either nothing or everything, either our own will and purpose or the sovereign will and purpose of God, either our own spirituality or the divine light, either religion or faith.

When we read Paul’s text in 2 Corinthians 4:3-6 we are reading as it were a sermon on the Transfiguration. Just as I am trying now so Paul was trying then to make time and space for the Transfiguration to happen again in you and in me. When the Transfiguration happens in us Paul says it will be like the first day of creation for us, the day when God said let there be light and there was light in the darkness of the primeval chaos. We are in that chaotic darkness until we hear and believe this divine word, “This Jesus is my beloved son, obey and follow him, not Moses, not Elijah, not reason or general goodwill, not the flag, not the armies, not the politicians, not the sunshine Christians and the summer bigots, not the oily hypocrites and the peddlers of cheap grace, not the optimists, not the pessimists, not…”This is my Son, hear him and shut your ears to the rubbish that the feckless masses feed on! “

The divine light of the sovereign presence of God in Jesus Christ is not to be trifled with. We shall not absorb it automatically, and we shall patronize it at the risk of our soul. We must be utterly serious and totally intentional in seeking to be created anew by the word of God in our hearts, the word that calls light into being in our chaotic darkness, by commanding us to submit to Christ alone, God’s beloved Son. Sometimes I am smitten with dread that we are here at WVC for every reason other than the only serious one, to submit ourselves in faith to the one true God. We are here for social reasons, for aesthetic reasons, for moral reasons, for entertainment, for comfort, for continuity, or even, mirabile dictu, because we like the clergy. Let me remind you of what we read, “For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ (2 Corinthians 4: 5-6).” That light of Christ is the only thing that matters, all else merely serves it, or obscures it. Let us examine our personal and Church life to discover the sin and selfishness that obscures the light of new creation, and commit ourselves to root them out. If we do not do that I do not have a very sanguine view of the future of this church. As for myself, I too shall search my heart for sins that occlude the light and continue to preach Christ as the one and only reason for the existence of this or any church, and to trust him to the end.

Amen.