This sermon was preached at the Episcopal Church of the Holy Apostles in Hoover, AL on the Fourth Sunday in Lent (Refreshment Sunday). A video on the sermon may be found by clicking here. Thank you for being here!
Holy God, may my words be your words, and when my words are not your words, may your people be wise enough to know the same. Amen.
Have you ever been looking for something—your keys, your glasses, your phone—only to discover it was there the whole time?
Not hidden. Not stolen. Not mysteriously vanished.
Just… there. In your hand. On the counter. On your head. In the very place where you had already looked three times. The frustrating thing is not simply that you missed it. It is that once you see it, you realize it was never really out of sight. You just could not recognize what was right in front of you.
That is funny when it is a phone charger or a pair of sunglasses. It is less funny when it is something more important. When we do not see the hurt in someone we love. When we miss a destructive pattern in our own behavior. When we remain blind to the way fear has been driving us for years. When we stop seeing the humanity of another person because we have grown too used to sorting people into categories.
And sometimes—this is where John 9 takes us—we do not see the work of God because we have already decided what God is allowed to do, how God is allowed to do it, and through whom God is allowed to do it.
On the surface, this is a story about a man born blind. But that is only the top layer. Because the deeper question is not simply, “Can the blind man see?” The deeper question is: “Can anybody else?”
Jesus and his disciples are walking along when they see a man blind from birth. Immediately, the disciples ask, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
And before we are too hard on them, let’s admit that we do this all the time. Whose fault is it? Who caused this? What did they do wrong? How do we explain suffering in a way that keeps the world neat and morally satisfying?
That is the first blindness in the passage. Before the man is healed, he is analyzed. Before he is loved, he is discussed. Before he is treated as a person, he is treated as a theological problem.
We do this too. We may use therapy words, political words, or church words. But we still do it. When someone suffers, we often rush to explanation before compassion. We move toward a theory before a relationship.
But Jesus will not play that game. He says, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned.” That does not answer every question we have about suffering. It does not solve the mystery of pain. But it tells us something crucial about Jesus: he will not reduce this man’s life to blame. He refuses shame as the story line. And that is good news.
Because some of us have spent years living under other people’s explanations. Your suffering is your fault. Your struggle is weakness. Your difference makes you a problem to be solved. Your pain must mean God is trying to teach you something.
But here comes Jesus, refusing to let this man’s life be narrated by shame.
He makes mud. He anoints the man’s eyes. He sends him to wash. The man goes, and he comes back seeing.
That should be the end of the story. A man who has never seen in his life can now see. That should lead to joy. That should lead to wonder. That should lead to praise. But it does not.
The healing is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of the trouble. Because grace disrupts systems that are comfortable with people staying in their assigned places.
The neighbors do not know what to do with him. “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” Some say yes. Some say no. Some say, “Well, he looks like him.” And the man keeps saying, “I am the man.”
He is not only identifying himself. He is reclaiming himself. The one who had been known only by his lack is now speaking in his own voice.
His parents are afraid. The religious authorities are offended. And the people who are supposed to know how to recognize the work of God are the very ones who cannot perceive what is happening.
They interrogate the man. They question his parents. They debate Jesus. They circle around Sabbath law, propriety, and authority. And do you notice what nobody does? Nobody simply rejoices.
A man has been healed, and they cannot celebrate because the healing does not fit their framework. That is the deeper blindness here. Not the blindness the man was born with, but the blindness of people so certain that they can see that they can no longer recognize the Light of the world standing right in front of them. And that kind of blindness is more dangerous.
Because if you know you are blind, you ask for help. If you know you are confused, you seek understanding. If you know you need healing, you can receive care.
But if you are absolutely certain that your categories are complete, your judgments are pure, your tribe is righteous, your religion is tidy, and your framework is final—then how will the light ever get in?
Meanwhile, the man who had been blind becomes the clearest-sighted person in the chapter, other than Jesus himself. He does not know everything. He does not have polished theology, institutional authority, or a seminary degree. But he does have honesty.
“One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”
That is one of the most powerful lines in all of Scripture. Not because it explains everything, but because it does not pretend to. He does not claim more than he knows. He simply tells the truth about what grace has done.
And Holy Apostles, that is often how faith deepens. Not through mastering everything. Not through winning every argument. But through telling the truth: here is who I was, here is what Christ has done, and here is what I now see that I could not see before.
That is witness. Then comes one of the best moments in the whole passage. The religious leaders keep pressing him, and finally he asks, “Do you also want to become his disciples?”
That is holy mischief. Sanctified sass. The one who was being interrogated now exposes the blindness of the interrogators. He sees them more clearly than they see themselves. And that is what grace does: it makes a person harder to control.
But this story is not here so we can smugly point at ancient religious leaders and say, “Look how blind they were.” That would be to miss the point all over again. The story is here so we might ask where this same blindness lives in us.
Because this kind of blindness is not just personal. It can be communal. It can live in the church. It can show up whenever religion gets more interested in control than compassion, more interested in managing people than healing them, more interested in protecting itself than telling the truth.
Public life is not the enemy. Political leaders are not automatically villains. Power itself is not evil. Some have used authority in ways that bend toward justice, mercy, peace, and the common good. Thanks be to God for them.
But when religion becomes obsessed with preserving influence, blessing tribal certainty, or defending its own status, it risks losing its ability to recognize Christ.
Because Jesus is not found flattering the powerful or sanctifying our exclusions. Jesus is found reclaiming the excluded. Dismantling shame. Crossing lines. Telling inconvenient truths. Giving dignity back to people who have been treated as objects, problems, or threats.
Whenever Christianity starts caring more about influence than faithfulness, more about control than compassion, more about access than agape, it starts to go blind. And that is the question this Gospel puts before us: not simply, “Do we believe in Jesus?” but “Do we see as Jesus sees?” Or is our vision obscured by fear, pride, certainty, or the need to keep the world neatly sorted into insiders and outsiders?
Because the final paradox of the story is this: the real problem is not blindness. The real problem is claiming sight while remaining closed off to grace. If you know you are blind, there is hope. If you know you are confused, there is hope. If you know your life has gotten tangled up in fear, pride, status, or tribal identity, there is hope.
But if you insist that you already see just fine—that you have no need to repent, no need to listen, no need to be interrupted, no need to be changed—then even the light can start to feel like a threat.
So maybe that is the prayer for us this Sunday. Not, “Lord, show me who the blind people are.” But, “Lord, where am I still blind?” Where have I treated people as problems instead of neighbors? Where have I mistaken certainty for faith? Where have I wanted Jesus to endorse my world rather than remake it?
Open my eyes, Lord. And until I can see clearly, make me honest enough to say that. For the man born blind becomes a disciple not because he knows everything, but because he tells the truth about what grace has done.
“One thing I do know… though I was blind, now I see.”
May Christ save us from the blindness of false certainty. May Christ open our eyes. And may Christ give us the courage to tell the truth: that by grace, we are beginning to see.
Amen.
