Fourth Sunday in Lent – March 15, 2026

John 9:1-41

Today’s gospel…shows us…what Jesus said to correct the view…of many in his day…that the cause of physical disability was the sin of one’s parents.

This miracle story tells us something about the nature of faith.

There is an idea floating about…that faith is warm and fuzzy…and naive.
That people who have faith are susceptible to ideas which go against common sense.
But here’s the thing:
The healing of the blind man is showing us that faith is actually the result of accepting the facts of our own experience.
Faith is the product of honesty…not being naive.

OK then… Jesus gives the blind man his sight.

And then we see the inevitable reaction of the world:
A person who has had a faith experience may assume that the world will be interested in hearing about it…and affirm it.
More often…though…those around us move in to persuade him…or her…that they are mistaken.
That they have misunderstood the facts.
The world does not encourage spiritual awakenings.

And then…we see the man’s faith take shape…when he confirms his own experience…simply by refusing to lie about it to himself.

The man who had been given his sight refused to be convinced that he was a victim of some kind of mirage/pink elephant.
The man’s honesty enabled Jesus to reveal himself to him.

All of us…who have a faith relationship with Jesus…have a personal life-story…made up of significant experiences.

Many of our experiences are so personal…that when they are told to others…they tend to lose their power.
They may not be at all that dramatic to others.
These experiences forge the facts upon which our relationship with Christ is based.

It was 1998…our son…Jason had just graduated from Luther College…in Decorah Iowa…

Together…Jason and I drove his car out to Monterey California…
Where he would be a graduate student at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
On our way…the car just stopped in the middle of the road…
In the middle of Nevada…
With absolutely nothing around…and absolutely no traffic…nothing.
Not even a one-arm bandit.
I mean…it was desolate.

We later found out we had burned out the alternator.

In a state of utter helplessness…we sat in the meager shade of the car…and I thought to myself:
Well God…how are you going to get us out of this one?
No cell phone…not much food…not much water.
OK God…You say you will always provide…but it looks like I’ve got you this time.
In a strange way…I was enjoying the situation.

After about 20 minutes or so a lone car drove up…it was a Hispanic couple with their two children in the back seat.

The father…apparently afraid of us…rolled down his window two inches and handed me his cell phone.
I called Triple A…and thanked him for stopping to help us.

The tow truck came thirty minutes later.

The driver was a young man and said this:
After the war…my grandparents decided to move out to California to build a motel and service station.
They were from Minnesota…Lutherans…of course.
On the way out to California their car broke down right here…exactly where your car broke down.
And in those days…there was nothing around here…it took them days to get back on the road.
In fact…they never did get back on the road…
You see…because there was no help available…
They decided to stay and build their motel and service station right here…
And today it has become a little town not far from here.
The young man towed us to that little village where his motel and service station was to get the car fixed.
And we were on our way the next day.
To this day…and many years later…I remember this experience as a vicarious intervention of God on our behalf.

This experience is part of my own personal…spiritual…story.

And if I were to agree that it was only a coincidence…I would be lying to myself.
A moving forward of faith requires that we honor facts as we have witnessed them.
It requires that we do not deny our own experience.

Here we go then…the Pharisees wanted the man who had received his sight to deny his experience.

Their attitude shows us how people of the world…while claiming to respect facts and objectivity…
Are in reality…highly prejudicial and subjective.
They are only willing to integrate facts which accord with their prevailing bias.

Speaking personally for a moment:

There have been those times in my life when I have experienced doubt and uncertainty.
At such times faith has never been restored to me automatically.
Faith has been restored to me by taking a survey of my personal life story with Christ.
This has taken the form of a recounting…of all that has happened to me…in my faith relationship.
Did I…in any way…invent the things that happened to me?
Did I misguide myself…or were the feelings I had clear and definite…
And as far as I could honestly say…not of my imagining?

So…thinking through my faith journey leads me to say this:

So…like the neighbors and Pharisees in our story…the world will try to get us to lie.

Not only the world…but our own worldly self…which is conditioned and socialized and trained to conform.

There is satire here:

It is comical…the way the Pharisees insist on denying an undesirable fact…that has presented itself in an undeniable form.
Jesus told his followers in various ways that the kingdom is not unknown or mysterious.
But…that it remains invisible to us only because…deep down…we are determined not to see it.
We see here that there are forms of willful blindness that result from basic dishonesty.
Dishonesty of this kind comes because of having enough sight to see what we do not want to see.
The blindness of being unaware.

Christ gave this man his physical sight.

But it was his honesty that allowed Jesus to reveal himself to him as his Lord and savior.
Faith does not ask us to believe the incredible.
Faith asks only that we believe our own eyes…ears…and experience.
If we have that kind of honesty…then…Jesus has a footing to communicate with us.
He has a way of reaching us.
He has a way of making himself real to us.
To have faith then…is to open our eyes…to what is really going on.