Sermon Transcript: February 15, 2026
Our reading today comes from John Chapter 9. We have been in the Gospel of John since Christmastime, paying particular attention to the things that are unique in John’s Gospel. Today we are going to encounter one of those things for the first time so far in our journey through the Gospel, and that is what are often referred to as the “I Am” statements of Jesus, where Jesus says, “I am the bread of life.” Today in our passage, he says, “I am the light of the world.”
In a couple of chapters, he says, “I am the resurrection and the life.” And these are referred to as the “I Am” statements. And so today is “I am the light of the world.” And our passage describes a situation in which we see how Jesus’ light changes our sight.
John 9: 1-41
As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am he.” But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”
They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath.” Others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided. So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.”
The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” His parents answered, “We know that this is our son and that he was born blind, but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.” His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”
So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.” He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” Then they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” The man answered, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.
Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him. Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see may see and those who do see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.
For the Word of God in scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.
***
Well, right off the bat in today’s reading, the disciples pose one of the biggest, most enduring theological questions: Why do bad things happen to good people?
“Teacher,” they ask, “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” This reflects the prominent theology in the Hebrew Scriptures.
In Jeremiah 39, we read the prophet speaking to God: “You show steadfast love to the thousandth generation but repay the guilt of parents into the laps of their children after them.”
Jeremiah and the like do not have the only answers in the Hebrew Scriptures, however. The book of Job is written in response to this theology—suffering being the result of someone’s sin. Ultimately, Job rejects any correlation between sin and suffering and submits that the world is chaotic, complicated, and a dangerous place, and not everything happens for a reason.
Of the book of Job, Frederick Buechner writes, “God does not give answers. God gives God’s self to Job.”
You see, in Job, the first tragedy is what fate deals to Job—the loss of his family, his property, and finally his own health. The second, perhaps more devastating, is how Job’s friends respond. One by one, they abandon him. He says, “My friends are wholly estranged from me. I have become an alien in their eyes.”
The man born blind is John’s version of Job. The disciples see him and ask Jesus a theological question: “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” But what does Jesus do? He dismisses their question out of hand. “Neither this man nor his parents sinned. He was born this way that the glory of God might be revealed.”
Now, we don’t know how this man has been treated up to this point. But previous stories, like the man lying by the pool being ignored for over three decades, give us a bit of a clue, right? And how is he treated once his sight is regained?
No one pays him any mind. They talk about him like he’s not even there. They ask for his testimony, but they don’t believe it. They call on his parents to testify on his behalf. Then they come back to him again, but they don’t accept it.
I’m beginning to think this passage isn’t so much about the sense of sight as much as the sense of hearing.
As John Buchanan points out, there is no more powerful way to deny the very being of another than refusing to listen. There’s no better way to kill intimacy than to stop listening. And there is no better way to love, no greater gift than to listen.
But this comes at a cost.
“The trouble with really seeing and really hearing,” Frederick Buechner writes, “is that then we really have to do something about what we’ve seen and heard.”
And that’s the heart of the issue in this story. The man born blind cannot see at first, but he had no choice. What he could do was pay attention to what God was doing by listening to others. By doing this, God’s work is revealed in him.
His example stands in stark contrast to the willful blindness and deafness of the religious authorities. They refuse his testimony time and time again. They refuse to see him. Even Jesus’ disciples do not see the man at first, right?
Their blindness is less the willful kind, more the kind that maybe you and I are more likely to be guilty of—ignorance. They don’t know better. They’re simply repeating what has been taught to them until Jesus calls it into question and offers a different framework.
“Neither this man sinned, nor his parents. He was born this way that he might reveal the glory of God.”
Once they know better—to paraphrase Maya Angelou—they can then do better. But ignorance, blindness, deafness to others is the real target of this story. And we can be guilty of this too. Because, as Buechner points out, once we hear and see, then it falls on us to do something.
And so, like Job’s friends, when we are confronted with something or someone that does not fit into our neatly defined categories, we find it easier to ignore or even blame instead of doing the hard work of truly hearing and seeing our neighbors.
Because we can’t love them without seeing them, without listening to them first. It is the first step—and maybe the hardest.
“Christ never promises peace in the sense of no more struggle and suffering,” writes Buechner. “Instead, he helps us to struggle and suffer as he did, in love for one another. Christ does not give us security in the sense of something in this world—some cause, some principle, some value—which is forever. Instead, he tells us that there is nothing in this world that is forever. All flesh is as grass. He does not promise us unlonely lives.”
His own life speaks loud of how, in a world where there is little love, love is always lonely.
Instead of all these, the answer that he gives, I think, is himself. And if we go to him for anything else, writes Buechner, he may send us away empty, or he may not. But if we go to him for himself, I believe that we go away always with the deepest of all our hungers fulfilled.
Friends, this week we saw one of the most powerful people in our country willfully ignore the victims of abuse.
Every day for months, we have seen federal agents dragging people of color from their homes and their cars without warrant, but merely the suspicion that they don’t belong here.
We hear the cries of our queer and trans siblings asking just to be accepted for who they are.
And we see our own planet show signs of distress and climate change.
Are we listening? Can we see?
Do we see those in our own midst whose abilities lie outside of the norm? Do we value them and their unique gifts? Do we celebrate them? Do we see God’s work revealed in them?
Our world is a messy, chaotic, challenging, and dangerous place. There are no easy answers as to why some people suffer while others prosper.
But there is a response. We have the same thing to offer that Christ gives us.
We can offer ourselves to each other.
We can see and hear each other. We can believe the testimony of others, not dismiss it. And we can avoid the mistake that Job’s friends and the religious authorities make—compounding the tragedy by adding our judgment or fear or dismissal to an already difficult situation.
There’s no more powerful way to deny the very being of another than refusing to listen to them. There is no better way to love, no greater gift than to listen.
If you’re daunted by the world’s suffering, if you’re overwhelmed with grief, it’s okay. Because it means that you care. And caring can hurt.
But don’t let it turn you from seeing and hearing.
Do not willfully ignore because you’re afraid you can’t solve the world’s problems. Because guess what? You can’t. We can’t.
But we do have something to offer.
And that is exactly what the world needs.
It needs you. And me. And us.
And the glory of God revealed through us.
Amen.
