March 15 2026 Lent 4
1 Samuel 16.1-13 Psalm 23 Ephesians 5.8-14 John 9.1-41
When we see things as ‘outside the norm’ we ‘automatically’ question ‘why is it so’. When it is a negative thing, we look to ‘blame’, we need to ascribe ‘responsibility’ for it on someone. Hence the disciple’s question to Jesus about whose ‘fault’ this man’s blindness is. The disciples want to use this man as an example for their debate about the relationship between human suffering and sin. But Jesus isn’t interested in that debate, he talks about revelation, about God’s work in the world, and how it defies our understanding and all attempts we make to create formulas about it. Jesus spits on the dirt, makes mud, puts the mud on the man’s eyes and tells him to go the pool of Siloam and wash it off. It is a strange, and messy miracle.
And as the story unfolds, we see layers of meaning, of discussion, of misunderstanding, of debate and desperate attempts to continue that debate about the relationship between suffering and sin. The man is recognised by those who know him, yet he also not recognised. He ‘looks’ like the man who used to sit here begging and was blind, and no matter how many times the man assures them he is that man, they can’t accept it. The Pharisees just want to know how it is this man now sees, and even when told what happened, they want ‘proof’ that he was previously blind. They bring in his parents who are as dumbstruck as the others, they know this is their son, but they have no idea how he now sees. The Pharisees are also caught up in the ‘how can a sinner’ be healed, and how can it have happened on the Sabbath.
But the question that seems to terrify the Pharisees the most is the one they do not ask: what does this mean for us?
They are looking at this in the same way we usually look at things – through predetermined lenses, coloured by our judgements about the world and what should or should not be happening. We assess our world, through ‘visual overload’ where, in order to make sense of what we see, we make snap judgements about the meaning of what it is we are seeing. We make random guesses about the true nature of reality by interpreting a series of clues written in what has been called ‘visual shorthand’. And the visual shorthand for this situation is ‘sin’. Sin is all around them, this man himself must have sinned, and if not him, his parents must have, and then sin is also attributed to Jesus because he healed on the Sabbath.
The fact that the man has been healed stands against all they know and believe to be true. In their reality, a blind man cannot be healed of blindness, especially by someone whose behaviour is outside their boundaries of righteousness. But the transformational seeing that both Jesus and the man born blind possess is guided, not by sin, but by, as Willian Wordsworth put it, ‘seeing into the life of things’. In other words, seeing beyond the visual shorthand perception of reality. The man born blind knows what it means for him. He tells the Pharisees, ‘‘I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.’’. Jesus approaches this man, not through the conditional seeing of others, but through the uninhibited and unlimited form of love. Love is what enables us to see beyond – outside snap judgements, outside preconceived notions of reality – and ‘see into the life of things’.
Our visual shorthand is evident almost every day. When we see someone or something in our environment we ‘instantly’ assess what we see and assign values to it. We see people as ‘single parent’, as ‘unemployed’, as ‘unkempt’, as ‘rich’, and we then respond to them or the situation, according to those snap judgements. Sometimes we even make those judgements about ourselves – where past events or disappointments shape how we see ourselves and shape how we act or respond to future events. We are so good at defining people, and ourselves, in terms of problems rather than possibilities, that we don’t know how to react or respond when the situation changes. And this gives us insight into why those who knew the man were unable to be sure who he was after he had received his sight.
But transformation does not always come without difficulties. When our whole ‘outlook’ on life is based around the ‘problem’, we don’t know what to do when the problem is solved. And often, we create a new problem because that is our ‘default’ outlook. So this ‘man who sees’, notice not the ‘man born blind’, or even the ‘man previously blind’, but ‘the man who sees’ is expelled from his own community because they don’t know how to deal with him now that he sees. It is so confrontational, that the ‘solution’ is to remove it so we don’t have to deal with it.
How often do we do this in the course of our lives. When ‘problem children’ grow out of their ‘problem’, do we still relate to them as if they still are a ‘problem’. Do we need to hang on to their label because we are unsure how to relate to them without that label. In this story, the cost of acknowledging that Jesus was sent by God – was too big a step for those in authority, so they deny it even happened, and when they find they cannot do that, they drive the man out so they are no longer confronted by this man who stands there as living evidence to his own testimony.
In John’s gospel, when Jesus arrives on the scene, things change. Limitations are no longer limiting for this man who turns water into wine. Divisions between Samaritans and Jews fade away in the presence of the one who offers living water. And the one who can heal a man born blind is the One who offers not just life, but life in all its abundance. When Jesus comes into our lives, things change. Which sounds great, until we realise that change can be disruptive, and we wonder if that change is such a good idea. We may think that it is easier to live with our defined, even if it is deformed, sense of ourselves and others rather than risk the new identity and abundant life Jesus offers.
But just as Jesus seeks out the man who now sees and confirms him in his healing, in his new identity and abundant life, God also seeks us out, denying those who need to hang ‘labels’ on us, even when it us who is doing it, and invites us to experience rich and abundant life. Jesus wants full and rich and abundant life for all of us. The kind of life that stems from knowing that we have infinite worth in God’s eyes and we are, and always will be, God’s beloved child.