Was Blind But Now I See

 John 9:1-41 Lent 4 March 15, 2026

 

We have a lot of characters here:

Jesus Heals the Blind Man
Brian Jenkel

We have Jesus, the disciples, 

the neighbors, the Pharisees,

the man’s parents and - of course -

the man born blind.

The identified patient in this story.

 

We have lots of healings in the other Gospels,

we even the healing of blind man in a similar

way, with mud and spit,

but here again, we have John’s gospels coming 

in a little different. John often seems like he’s commenting

the stories in the other three gospels, and looking deeper.

John’s story seems to be asking

“what would the people around the healed say about this healing”

“How would everyone react” and

“what does this tell us about God and Jesus?”

 

One thing this story seems to say is that

The man in the story is blind in the literal sense,

but it seems like everyone else in

the story are the ones who really can’t see.

 

First we have the disciples,

When they see the man born blind,

They don’t ask Jesus, “Can we do anything to help this man.”

They don’t even talk to the man himself who is sitting right there.

They ask Jesus , rudely, right over him,

“What caused this man to be blind? Was it his sin or his parents?”

I mean he’s blind, he’s not deaf.

 

They are working under the assumption that prevailed at the time

that if someone is born in such an unfortunate circumstance,

it has to be evidence of God’s displeasure with them.

We talked about that a few weeks ago.

The disciples ignore the man and use him as a 

theological object lesson, they can’t see the man, they don’t talk to him,

they talk about him.

 

But Jesus basically said, this man couldn’t be cursed,

he’s about to be used to reveal God’s glory.

 

Now this blind man has certainly been

around this town his whole life

It’s the same town his parents live in.

People didn’t move around like they do today.

And his parents say he is of age, so he could be

15, 18, 20, or 30 years or more.

But yet none of them seem to know his name.

 

And after he’s able to see,

the neighbors who have passed him every day

for the last couple of decades, hardly seem to recognize him.

Remember, towns were small, neighborhoods were small

It’s not like there were bunches of people to keep track of.

 

And yet, these neighbors can’t really say for sure

they call him, “the man who used to beg.”

They don’t believe it’s him, even though he says, “It’s me”.

 

They probably don’t know him because

they never actually met him before.

they probably walked over him, ignored him,

they discounted him as a sinner who was cursed by God.

They probably yelled at him for being in the way,

or having the nerve to ask for money,

But they never actually saw him. They were blind to him.

And they still can’t see him now.

 

And there’s the Pharisees, the religious leaders.

 Jesus has just healed a man – an amazing miracle –

no one should argue that.

But they can’t see the amazing miracle.

They can’t see it because it was Jesus who did it,

and they think Jesus is a bad guy because he’s not following their program, 

he healed on the Sabbath and they count that as bad.

 

So they ignore the man who was healed,

and they curse the one who healed,

and just argue amongst themselves.

The man tells them exactly what happened,

but they are so preoccupied with their own judgments

that they’re blind to a miracle of God when it happens in front of them.

 

Then there are the man’s parents

they don’t seem very parental at all.

They don’t seem too elated that their son

has just been given his sight back.

And they keep distancing themselves from him

it says because they were afraid.

They were so afraid, that they are blind to

their own flesh and blood, and his joy

because all they can see are the problems he is causing them.

 

The man is the one who was called blind,

but the other people in this story are the ones who

were really blind.

They are each so convinced, so set in their ways,

that they could not see what was there in front of them.

They were blinded by their apathy, their religious convictions,

their preconceived notions, their fear, their prejudice.

 

The only person who can really see in this story

is the man who was born blind.

He sees the religious leaders for the self righteous fools they are.

He can see that Jesus healed him,

And he sees that anyone who could restore his sight

must be sent from God. He sees Jesus for who he is.

 

Jesus doesn’t just heal the man here,

through this healing Jesus shows us that

The people who think they can see, might very well be blind,

and the ones called blind might actually see.

  

And so it is with all of us too.

Often we are so stuck in our own convictions,

our rules, our traditions, our prejudices, by what we’ve been taught 

in our youth, by our parents, Sunday school teachers,

by our fear, and by our own stubbornness that

we just can’t see what God is doing right before our eyes.

 

People can be converted, or claim Jesus as their lord and savior

or be raised Christian all their lives, and go to church faithfully ,

and still not see— not understand – what God is doing.

 

I’ve told this story before.

And I will probably tell it again,

because it’s a good story.

 

John Newton was born in 1725 in London.

His mother died when he was 7 and at 17,

he started to work on different ships.

 

When he was 23, he was on a ship that was going to Ireland

when a terrible storm hit and the ship was about to sink.

He prayed to God to save the ship,

and after the storm began to die down and they were saved.

He marked that event as the day that changed the rest of his life,

the day that he began his conversion to Christianity.

He started to study scripture, and he avoided

profanity, gambling and drinking.

But he said later that he still didn’t understand at that time.

 

That was because even after he was converted to Christianity,

he became the first mate and then captain of a slave ship.

He captained three voyages between Guinea and the 

West Indies kidnapping and capturing African people

to be sold as slaves in England.

Even after he stopped being a sea captain,

he still invested in the slave trade.

He still didn’t see.

 

After he stopped being a ship’s captain,

He became ordained in the church of

England and was a pastor in London.

Eventually, through his understanding of scripture

and his work as a pastor, he began to rethink

his past and the institution of slavery.

He started to see.

 

He became repentant of his past, and eventually

started to work with English lawmakers to end the slave trade

and became a vocal leader in the abolition movement

that eventually led to the end of slavery in England in 1807.

He later wrote:  

“It will always be a subject of

humiliating reflection to me,

that I was, once,

an active instrument in a business

at which my heart now shudders.”

 

Normally the words of a pastor from more than 200 years ago

would be forgotten with the ages,

but the words of John Newton are remembered

because in 1779, he wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace”,

one of the most popular and familiar hymns ever written.

 

People call it “John Newton’s spiritual autobiography in verse”.

“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.”

 

John Newton became a Christian in name in 1748,

but his actual conversion took place over many decades.

He wrote: 

"I cannot consider myself

to have been a believer in the full

sense of the word,

until a considerable time afterwards."

 

Jesus doesn’t just make Christians and then leave us

to our own devices. Jesus is constantly opening our eyes.

Helping us to see and understand more about God’s will.

Jesus expects us to be changed, not all at once, but over time.

 

Christianity and the church have changed. A lot.

Change can hurt and can be hard to deal with.

But change is necessary. There’s no shame in changing our

convictions once we have new understanding.

 

The truth is, God is working on us all the time.

We opening our eyes. Making us new.

 

Jesus said,

“I came into this world

so that those who do not see may see,

and those who think they can see,

will realize that they have been be blind.”

 

Jesus doesn’t just heal people’s eyes.

Jesus helps people to see.

 

We die to our own sight,

and we rise to Jesus’s sight.

 

I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind, but now I see.

 

Jesus Empowering a Woman

 John 4:5-42  Lent 3 March 8, 2026

 

Today is International Women’s Day –

A day commemorating women’s fight for equality—

so it’s appropriate that we have this reading.

 

Jesus and the Samaritan Woman
Jorge Coco Santangelo

Many people have made a lot of assumptions

about this woman at the well.

We read a lot into this scripture.

A popular assumption, which I’ve made myself,

is that since she was alone at the well,

and she’s there at noon instead of in the morning

then she was ostracized by her community.

 

That may or may not be true,

but we assume that and call it truth.

 

But most of the assumptions people make come from

one line where Jesus reveals that the woman

has had five husbands. He doesn’t dwell on that

for very long at all, but a lot of preachers over the years

have heaped their judgment on her for that too.

 

Some have said she was a hopeless romantic,

Some have used the words “loose”, or a “seductress”.

One modern, Christian preacher actually called her a

“a worldly, sensually-minded, unspiritual harlot from Samaria”

That’s some projecting there.

That probably holds more information about the preacher

than about this woman at the well.

 

Lots of Christians have taken the opportunity

of this interaction to indirectly scold and shame

other women for their sexuality.

 

The truth is, there is no evidence that this woman was

promiscuous either from what she or Jesus or the scripture says.

And from what we know about these things during Jesus time,

Women didn’t have many choices when it came to marriage.

And marriage choices had little to do with romance, love

or sexual impulse – at least for women.

It’s actually doubtful that a woman would have had

much choice in the matter.

 

The most likely reason might have been that her husbands

had died and she bore no heirs to carry on the man’s lineage.

In that case, she would have been passed on to her

husband’s brother, and another brother,

until she had a child, then it would be called the

child of the first husband. It was called a Levirate Marriage,

it was practiced in many patriarchic societies  and it is outlined

for Jews and Samaritans in the book of Deuteronomy.

 

At the very least, a woman who was single at the time

had very little options, so marriage was a means for survival.

A story about a woman who has five husbands at that time,

is most likely a story about a woman who has

been mercilessly shuffled around by the system.

 

But people still try and make this out to be a story about

an impetuous woman who can’t control herself

or hold together a relationship. Even if that was the case,

It doesn’t seem like the gospel writer presented this character

just so we can heap more judgement on her than already existed.

 

And, living in that culture, Jesus would have

understood her situation.

And we see that he doesn’t shame or criticize her.

He just mentions it. That it.

  

What this story does say plainly - so we don’t have to

make any assumptions about - is that this is

a woman and that this woman is a Samaritan.

And it says that the disciples were astonished

that Jesus was talking to a woman,

and that Jews didn’t share things with Samaritans.

So there were two reasons why Jesus wouldn’t

be talking to this woman.

With or without her marriage situation.

 

But  Jesus still comes to talk to her.

 

I think that when we read a lot of these stories

and talk about women’s situations in that time,

we kind of count ourselves  fortunate that we

don’t live in those times with such oppressive customs,

and we feel lucky to live now where women have individual rights. 

We feel like we’ve come very far,

and we might feel secure with the rights we have.

 

But we have to remember that women

have only had the right to vote in the US for 100 years,

women weren’t allowed to wear pants in public until 1923.

And women only gained the right to open their own bank

account without a male co-signer in 1974.

Even though we feel we’ve come a long way,

these rights are new, they’re fragile and they’re easily lost.

And even now, the version of Christianity that has so much

power in our government  at the moment,

is attempting to take us back a vision of “biblical womanhood.”

  

This version is influenced by modern,

“purity culture” which started in certain

Christian churches in the 1990’s and has taken

over certain facets of Christianity today.

 

They overtly want to return to a time

of rigid gender stereotypes, when men had

dominion over women and where women

are seen almost like possessions of men

rather than as individuals with their own rights.

Where the only place for women is

in the house, producing and caring for children

and supporting their husbands.

Which can be fine choice,

if that’s what a woman chooses to do.

 

But in this type of Christianity wants all women

to be seen as “vessels” for bearing children

and for serving men in various ways.

This “purity culture” ties a woman’s

worth with their purity or virginity

before marriage.

 

It also stresses modesty for women insinuating

that men have no control over their urges

and that women are responsible for them.

This has led to the normalization and

justification for rape and sexual assault,

which leads victim blaming, trauma,

shame for normal sexual feelings,

and a warped view of sex and relationships.

This is where the motivation comes from for the

people who try to shame the woman in this story.

 

And this culture does not just effect the people

who choose it, it has implications for everyone.

 

In the Heritage Foundation’s project 2025 –

a political plan by a conglomeration of

conservative Christian groups which is being

enacted by our current administration –

laid out their objectives for reviving the traditional patriarchal family

and adopting purity culture by effecting legislation like:

·       reducing reproductive rights for women,

·       removing inclusive language from government web sites,

·       removing protections for workplace harassment,

·       intimidating companies to do away with equal hiring practices,

·       removing funding for family planning and contraception,

·       removing funding for childcare and education for children of single parents,

·       and promoting laws that limit women’s access to voting.

Many of which have already been enacted, or attempted to be enacted, in just the last year.

 

The vision of many of these groups is to return to a patriarchal

society where men have power and dominion.

To support this, certain Christians have shared a

distorted picture of hyper-masculine image of Jesus.  

 

Jesus has become this warrior-like character who

advocates by dominance, aggression and control.

And Christian men are supposed to emulate this

in relation to the world and in their relation to women.

 

But that’s a false characterization of Jesus.

We don’t find that in any of the stories we read

in the gospels. Jesus doesn’t achieve anything by

dominance, aggression, or control.

 

And the idea is that Jesus wants us to return to this idea of women 

who are subservient to men is preposterous

because it’s Jesus who did so much in his ministry to counter that.

And this story is a good example of that.

 

Jesus approaches the woman at the well.

He doesn’t need to talk with her.

As it said, the disciples were surprised

that he was talking to the woman

and Jews didn’t share with Samaritans.

But Jesus does anyway. And this conversation is the longest

that Jesus has with anyone, man or woman,

that is recorded in all of the scriptures. With a woman.

 

And he starts by asking her for water.

Jesus puts himself in a position of humility.

He needs something she has.

He doesn’t demand it from her

as if she’s compelled to serve him.

 

When Jesus does mention that she’s had five husbands,

Jesus doesn’t tell her to repent or be reborn,

like he does Nicodemus. He doesn’t

demand that she change anything at all.

He doesn’t shame her for this fact,

or question her purity or call her a harlot,

like some seem to want to call her.

He just tells her that he knows about her life.

 

And then when she changes the subject he lets her,

she throws out a theological question,

and Jesus actually engages in some

theological banter with her.

 

And when she says she’s waiting for the

Messiah, Jesus says, “I am he” Jesus reveals himself to be the Messiah. 

This woman is the first one who Jesus trusts

this information with in this gospel.

 

And then she becomes the first evangelist,

spreading the word about Jesus to

other people in Samaria and it says

they believed because of her.

And when the disciples come back,

Jesus is still talking to this woman.

He doesn’t stop like it’s a mistake.

And they don’t dare ask him.

 

Neither Jesus or the author of the story,

shame this woman or belittle her.  

Jesus doesn’t tell her that she needs to repent

or change her ways. On the contrary,

he treats her as an equal disciple,

he affirms her, he trusts her, and he empowers her.

 

Jesus is showing his disciples how to treat other women.

And Jesus shows us the way women should be

treated and should expect to be treated.

 

And most importantly,

Jesus shows us the way that the church

should be treating women.

Not as submissive and subservient or as possessions

not just called to bear children and serve others,

but to serve God in whatever way they feel called.

 

It seems ridiculous that a female pastor should

need to stand here in the 21^st century and

remind us all of this, but these are strange times.

  

After Jesus asks this woman for

for water from her well,

Jesus offers her living water.

 

We know the living water that Jesus talks about

is the water of rebirth and the water of eternal

and abundant life in Jesus.

That is what Jesus has given this world

through his life and death and resurrection.

 

And the way we can share this living water

with others is not only by sharing faith in Jesus,

but by sharing the stories of Jesus

and living according to his example.

We share living water with the world by

healing shame and exclusion like Jesus did,

By empowering people like Jesus did.

We share living water by standing up

for the rights of women like Jesus did.

 

We share living water with the world by sharing

Jesus unconditional love, grace, and hope

across all cultures, races, and genders.