Sermon for March 15, 2026
Lent 4 A
John 9:1-41
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
When I lived in Pennsylvania, sometimes you’d ask for directions and you’d get instructions like this: “drive down such and such a road, then turn left where the old barn used to be.” That was fine if you had lived there long enough to remember the old barn, but if you were a newcomer to the county, a different landmark might have been more helpful. The human mind often works this way, though; we hold onto things, lodging them in our memory, so the old barn is “still there” even if it was torn down years ago. Maybe the barn conjures up memories of your friends who used to live on that farm. Maybe you don’t even notice what they’ve put in its place—or maybe you don’t like what they put in its place.
In any event, the things we notice and emphasize affect how we perceive reality. Many people have observed over the centuries that “we don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.” A person who lived near the old barn for decades will, in a sense, always see that old barn there. A person who moved there the day after the barn was torn down will only see an open field where perhaps something new can be built or planted.
Today’s gospel opens with Jesus walking through the streets of Jerusalem, when he sees “a man blind from birth”. Right away the disciples jump to the question of “who is at fault” for him to have been born blind? “Did this man sin, or did his parents?” That’s a common kind of question to ask, especially when you come across something that seems unfair. You think, “there has to be some kind of reason for it, right?” And maybe the reason is that God is punishing him or his parents for some evil deed they had committed. Jesus puts a stop to this way of thinking right away: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned.” And as the story unfolds, we actually find that this man who was born blind was closer to God than anyone else in the story. Unlike the disciples, Jesus himself is not interested in assigning blame—what Jesus is interested in is caring about the man as a person. That is the real work of God; not some obsession about fault finding. And so Jesus, when he meets him, sees him as a person first, and secondly as one who happens to be blind. His blindness is a significant detail, but it’s not the most important thing about him.
What Jesus also sees, through the disciples’ question about whom to blame for his blindness, is the way society treats the man born blind. The people of Jerusalem make assumptions about him, rather than learning anything from the man himself. It turns out that his biggest problem is not being blind, in itself. His biggest problem is that because he is blind other people see him as being somehow “less” of a person; as not worth believing his lived experience. They exclude him from being a full member of the community.
In response to the man’s main problem, Jesus does something to fulfill the keeping of the Sabbath—because the particular day he met that man born blind was a Sabbath day. Jesus spat on the ground, made mud with the saliva, and spread the mud on the man’s eyes. Often, we think of keeping the Sabbath as doing “no work”, and making mud could be considered a form of work. But the true purpose of the Sabbath is to be refreshed and restored, on earth as it will be in heaven—and that’s what Jesus was up to on the man’s behalf.
Now, maybe making mud with saliva sounds kind of gross—certainly not up to our modern standards of medical hygiene—but it’s a significant detail. Jesus didn’t simply snap his fingers and say “Boom! You can see!” He gives the man a choice to respond to what Jesus is doing, so that he can participate in his own healing. “Go wash in the pool of Siloam” Jesus offers. And the man trusts what Jesus says—before he understands how it could happen, he puts his faith in Jesus’ word, and off he goes to the pool, and washes himself, and comes back able to see. Not only has he gained his sight, but the main thing is that he’s taken away the reason why people were treating him as “less” of a person. The man has taken away their excuse for excluding him as a full member of the community.
And yet, the old saying holds true. “We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are.” The neighbors of the community keep thinking of him in the same way they’ve always thought of him. His “lesser” position was stuck in their minds like, “where the old barn used to be” and not, “here is an open field ready for something new to be built or planted”. The man’s neighbors still do not see him as a person first, even though he’s not blind anymore. They don’t see him simply as a fellow neighbor, but as a problem. “Is not this the man who used to sit and beg?” they ask.
And then they keep badgering him when he doesn’t give them an answer that they like: “How were your eyes opened? How could this Jesus fellow do such a thing?” He keeps answering their questions about what happened, and they never accept what he says. His frustration almost pops off the page, with each answer getting shorter, more direct, more pointed. Each time he answers, they don’t believe him, so invested are they in assigning fault for his supposed sins. And then they pile their fault-finding onto Jesus, defining as “sin” Jesus’ violations of what they regard as his personal faults for not keeping their expectations of the Sabbath, instead of looking for the sin where it really exists—in their collective judging, excluding, shaming, and threatening of the formerly blind man and his parents. They have closed their minds to seeking understanding or compassion for all he’s been through, or even the kindness of offering to help him adjust to a major life change.
By the end of the story, those who could always see have revealed their “blindness” and hubris, while the one who was born blind reveals that he was always capable of “seeing” what really mattered.
What matters most for all of us is the person God has created each of us to be. Like the man born blind, Jesus came to restore and refresh us by his grace. And let us not forget that Jesus also came to forgive sins, and lead the way to living a more compassionate life towards ourselves and our neighbors. Therefore, even those neighbors in Jerusalem—who refused to believe anything the man born blind told them—even they were never beyond the scope of Jesus’ mercy and forgiveness themselves.
Jesus doesn’t give up on anyone. That’s why he gave himself to die on the cross, and why the Holy Spirit raised him up again to new life. Jesus keeps being persistent in going to any length to enter our lives, and enter the world, and offer again and again his gifts of forgiveness, new life, and salvation until we find some inspiration from the man born blind, and respond in faith and trust to Jesus’ invitation. Amen.