On Sunday, March 15, 2026 it was my privilege to be the Guest Preacher at The Outer Banks Presbyterian Church in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. The sermon was dealing with the story found in John 9. 1-41
Beware of the Illusion of Sightedness
You may have seen it as the happy story on the evening news-- the one shown just before signing off. It featured a young boy, who was colorblind. Thanks to a pair of special lenses he was able to see colors for the first time in his life. What his eyes suddenly saw was so over-whelming that he turned around and hugged his father who was sharing the moment with him.
Can you imagine what it must be like to suddenly see today’s bluebird sky and the variety of greens worn by the grass, pine, spruce and cedar? An algae covered turtle climbing onto a log bleached gray by sun. A squadron of brown Pelicans winging over a beige sand beach. What a sensory overload it must be to take a walk down the cereal aisle of a grocery store or stroll through The Elizabethan Gardens at the height of summer!
Now imagine what it must have been
like for that man in Jerusalem after his soak in the pool at Siloam discovering
he could see muddy drops of water dripping back into the pool from his fingers
and face. Can you picture the expression
of wonder as he notices the circles made as drops splash into the still water? Watch him retrace his steps to the place
where he had been sitting before, eyes darting this way and that taking in
sights he passed all his life but now could see for the first time. See his face light up with recognition when
the voices of his neighbors begin their wondering. “Is that him?” “No, just someone who looks
like him.” Did you notice his eyes get big
as saucers when they looked perplexed each time he repeated “I am the man?”
This very long story found in the
Gospel of John is one in which we are invited to see ourselves in each of the people
who spend a few moments at the center of the action. As the disciples, the neighbors, the Pharisees,
the parents, the formerly blind man and Jesus speak, we are invited to hear
ourselves. In doing so we may not like
what we see or be pleased to hear an echo of our own voices. Yet we might find incentive to examine
ourselves and leave behind all the ways in which we blind our own eyes to the
work of God occurring right under our noses.
Let’s start with the disciples. Their only contribution to the story is to
ask a question prompted by the sight of the blind man begging. “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents,
that he was born blind?” We do not fault
them for their inquiring minds or their need to know. The question asked grew
from the prevailing view of the time, that there was a connection between suffering
and sin.
If you were suffering, you must have
sinned. It was the same reasoning that
Job’s friends used. The Old Testament
story debunked that worn out way of thinking, but that didn’t mean it had been
put to rest. It rears its ugly head even today every time someone asks: “What
sin did I commit that caused me to be brought low by cancer? What offence of
mine is being repaid causing me to watch my child get lost in a drugged-out
haze? Did our communal iniquity ignite
the fire that burned our beloved church to the ground?
Some lessons each generation must
learn for itself. Some pay attention to history and avoid repeating the
mistakes of the past…but most of us learn the stove is hot, not because our
parents said so, but because we ignored what they said and found out the hard
way.
We stand with the disciples in needing to hear again (and again, and again) the answer Jesus offered: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned: he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”
Don’t be stymied by that answer,
however. Don’t get the idea that God relegated this poor soul to a life of dark-ness
just so the light of the world could chance upon him one day and make his
useless orbs function. Take it as the teachable moment it was meant to be. God
is all about bringing light where there is darkness; God is all about chasing
us with goodness and mercy; God is all about inviting us to dwell in his house
our whole lives long. So feed on the food fit for children of light found “in
all that is good and right and true.”
When we turn our attention to the
neighbors in the story, the first question that arises is: why didn’t they know
it was him? Did he look so different without his white cane and dark glasses?
Or was it that he had blended into the scenery so well that they had never
really looked at him before…you know, the way we avert our glance from the girl
on the streetcorner playing her flute, with the case open at her feet to
receive coins; or the dude with the cardboard sign at the intersection who
walks past each driver’s window until the light turns green.
If nothing else, their puzzled
reaction to the suddenly sighted man leads us to question who we might be
ignoring in our daily rounds. Who sits beside the roads we travel with needs we
might meet, in need of love we’ve been called to share? Is the astonishment of
the neighbors John’s version of Matthew’s “when did I see you hungry”
revelation of when one did or did not respond to the least, the last of the lost?
It leads to yet another question to ponder in these remaining Lenten days:
what might we do to open our eyes so we might see and respond to those loved by
Jesus?
Sandwiched between the two
interrogations of the man is the questioning of his parents by the
Pharisees. The authorities appear to be
determined to show the healing to be a hoax, and to have their opinion of Jesus
as a fake confirmed. The man’s parents, however, are only able to speak of what
they know. There are only two facts they can verify: “Yes, this is our son.
Yes, he was born blind.”
They cannot, or perhaps, will not,
say anymore. As John tells it, fear of losing their own standing in the
community is the reason. The man’s parents stand before us as a reminder that
even those closest to us are unable to speak for us about the gifts God has
given us.
Additionally, their part in the
story allows us to ponder how much or how little we know about our children and
grandchildren and the lives they lead. One writer points to “the paucity of intergenerational
conversation.”[i] With the
increase of time staring at little handheld screens, and the decrease of banter
around the dinner table or in the car, the depth of our knowledge of those with
whom we share life suffers. It leads us to wonder what we might do to foster
communication, so we don’t find ourselves able to answer only: “we do not
know, ask them.”
With the disciples, neighbors, and
the man’s parents out of the way, we’re left with the Pharisees in whom we may
hear echoes of our own voices or see glimpses of our own behavior. The
religious authorities in the story are prime of examples of what another writer
calls “the illusion of sightedness.”[ii]
Operating under what I call the curse of certainty, their view of Jesus is
summed up in one sentence. Speaking of
Jesus they say: “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the
Sabbath.” (v. 16) It is confirmed in the second interview when they begin by
trying to coach the man to say what they want to hear: “We know that this man
is a sinner.” (v. 24)
One hardly needs 20/20 vision to see
how the visual acuity of the Pharisees decreases as the focus of the healed man
increases. Anchored to their position that making a little healing mud on the
Sabbath was work, and therefore, prohibited; bound by their view that any
healing not a matter of life and death should wait for another day; they close
their eyes in order not to affirm the miracle that should have led to
celebration not condemnation.
One doesn’t need progressive lenses
to recognize how often the sin of certainty and the illusion of sightedness is
found among us. “The leopard can’t change its spots,” we say of those about
whom we have reached an irreversible verdict. “It is what it is and always will
be,” we declare when unwilling to acknowledge it is possible for there to be a
before and an after with a God-inspired change in the middle. And consider how
often we’ve been asked to pretend we don’t see what a video clip clearly shows.
The Pharisees in the story stand
before us like a caution sign reading “Beware of the Illusion of
Sightedness. Each time with eyes
clenched closed, they speak with such certainty, they remind us to reevaluate
those opinions and positions we have taken that eliminate the possibility of
God doing something new, different, amazing and graceful.
As the story of the man born blind begins, we see in the
actions of Jesus the creative power of God. As in the creation story in
Genesis, the dust of the earth and the water of life are combined. Darkness is
overpowered in a “let there be light” moment.
The formerly blind man is a new creation by story’s end, a child of
light able to “try and find out what is pleasing to the Lord,” as our reading
from Ephesians urges us all to do.
As the story
comes to its end, we also see the shepherd’s heart revealed. Jesus seeks and
finds the formerly blind man after he has been put out of the synagogue. Were
we to read into the next chapter, we would discover that Jesus has much to say
about what makes a good shepherd, and what a good shepherd does. Put the two chapters together and you realize
at the end of the blind man’s story we see the good shepherd at work bringing
the newly sighted man into the fold.
In between, as the
formerly blind man tells and retells his story the Gospel writer allows us to
see how faith grows gradually in the heart of a person on their way to becoming
a believer. At the beginning, all he can tell his neighbors is “the man called
Jesus” healed him. The first time the Pharisees challenge him after he tells
them his story he identifies Jesus as “a prophet.”
Each time he tells the story his
spiritual vision gets clearer. In the
longer interchange with the Pharisees, after his parents confirmed he was
really and truly, cross-our-hearts-and-hope-to-die—born blind, he has put two
and two together. He tells the blind guides before him: “If this man was not
from God, he could do nothing.”
Finally, when the Pharisees send him away and the Good
Shepherd finds him and reveals himself to him, the formerly blind man takes the
final step and says, “Lord, I believe,” and worshiped the source of his sight, and
his whole new life.
The contrast between his sight, both physical and
spiritual, and the blindness of the Pharisees leads the eagle eyed among Gospel
readers to realize the story was summarized on the very first page of John’s
Gospel where it said: “He was in the world, and the world came into being
through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and
his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in
his name he gave power to become children of God...” (John 1. 10-13)
The progression of the formerly
blind man’s observations offer us the opportunity to contemplate our own
journeys of faith. How is your view of Jesus today different from the first
time you sang “Jesus Loves Me” in Sunday School? When you hear a pastor ask new
members, “Who is your Lord and Savior?” do you silently answer along with them,
“Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior!” Trace and celebrate the way your own
relationship to the Lord has deepened over time. Consider how Jesus has opened
your eyes to the blessings God sends your way every day.
Each time the man at the center of
the story tells his story there is a reaction. The neigh-bors are confused; the
Pharisees are resistant; his parents are fearful. Did you notice what is
missing through it all? No one reaches out to celebrate with him the gift he
has received. No one does anything other than question how he got from his
lonely before to his new after. No one attempts to help him navigate the world
he can finally see.
No one, except Jesus, who seeks him
out at the end. Jesus searches and finds him, offers him a new family, a new
relationship with the one who gave him the twin gifts of physical sight and
spiritual insight.
What Jesus did for that man he has
done for many and continues to do, which is why we’ll sing now the musical
prayer with fervor:
Open
my eyes that I may see
Glimpses of truth thou hast
for me...
...Silently now I wait
for thee
Ready my God Thy will to
see.
Open my eyes, illumine
me, Spirit divine.[iii]
[i]
Gary V. Simpson, Feasting on the Gospels,
John, Vol. 1, Chapters 1-9, (Louisville: KY: Westminster John Knox Press,
2015), p. 298
[ii]
Cynthia A. Jarvis, Feasting on the
Gospels, John, Vol. 1, Chapters 1-9, (Louisville: KY: Westminster John Knox
Press, 2015), p. 286
[iii]
from the hymn, Open My Eyes That I May See
