March 15, 2026, The Fourth Sunday in Lent

The ninth chapter of John’s Gospel is one of the longest and most layered stories of healing in the New Testament. It begins simply enough: a man born blind sits by the roadside, and Jesus restores his sight. But the miracle itself is only the beginning. What follows is a cascade of questions, arguments, testimonies, and interrogations that grow more intense with each passing moment.

By the time the story ends, the central issue is no longer merely the healing of a blind man. The real question becomes: Who is Jesus?

That question echoes through the entire chapter. It is asked by the disciples. It is asked by the neighbours. It is pressed by the Pharisees. Even the healed man himself gradually grows into answering it.

And that same question still stands before us today, especially as we walk the road of Lent toward Holy Week.

The story opens with Jesus and his disciples encountering the blind man. Immediately the disciples ask a question that reflects a very common belief of the ancient world: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

In other words, they assume suffering must have a direct moral cause. Someone must be at fault. But Jesus refuses that framework entirely. He says neither the man nor his parents sinned in such a way as to cause this. Instead, Jesus speaks about the works of God being revealed.

This is an important moment. The conversation shifts away from blame and toward grace.

Human beings are often very quick to assign fault when we encounter suffering. We want explanations. We want tidy answers. We want a world where everything makes sense.

But Jesus does not give the disciples a tidy theological explanation. Instead, he gives the man sight.

He kneels in the dust, makes mud with his saliva, places it on the man’s eyes, and sends him to wash in the pool of Siloam. And when the man returns, he can see.

The miracle itself is quiet and almost earthy. Mud, water, washing. Creation imagery echoes here — dust shaped by the hands of the one through whom all things were made.

Yet the real storm begins afterward.

The neighbours are the first to react. Some say, “Isn’t this the man who used to sit and beg?” Others say it only looks like him. The man himself keeps insisting: “I am the man.”

Already the interrogation has begun.

They ask how it happened. He tells them simply: “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and told me to wash.”

Notice something important. At this point the healed man knows almost nothing about Jesus. He simply calls him “the man called Jesus.”

But the questioning intensifies when the Pharisees enter the story.

They quickly discover that the healing happened on the Sabbath.

And so the controversy deepens.

Some of the Pharisees insist that anyone who breaks the Sabbath cannot be from God. Others wonder how a sinner could perform such signs.

So they question the man again.

“How did he open your eyes?”

The man answers plainly: “He put mud on my eyes. I washed. And now I see.”

The investigation grows more aggressive. They summon the man’s parents to verify whether he was truly born blind. His parents confirm the basic facts, but they are afraid. The Gospel tells us they feared being put out of the synagogue if they said too much about Jesus.

So, they step back and say, “Ask him. He is of age.”

And so, the interrogation returns to the healed man.

By now something remarkable has begun to happen.

The man who started the story knowing almost nothing about Jesus begins to grow in clarity and courage.

When the authorities challenge him again, he responds with a kind of holy sarcasm: “I have already told you. Do you want to become his disciples too?”

This does not go over well.

They insult him. They insist they are disciples of Moses. They claim not to know where Jesus comes from.

And then comes one of the most striking moments in the chapter.

The formerly blind man becomes the theologian in the room.

He says, essentially: “This is astonishing. You say you do not know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. 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.”

It is a powerful testimony.

And the result?

They throw him out.

The man who has just received his sight is expelled from the religious community.

But that is not the end of the story.

Jesus hears what has happened and goes to find him. This is a small but beautiful detail: the one who was cast out is sought out by Christ.

Jesus asks him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

The man responds honestly: “Who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.”

Jesus answers, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.”

And the man says, “Lord, I believe.”

Then he worships him.

The journey is complete.

At the beginning of the chapter he knew only “the man called Jesus.”
Later he called him “a prophet.”
Then he defended him as someone “from God.”
Now he recognizes him as Lord.

Sight has come not only to his eyes, but to his heart.

Meanwhile the religious authorities remain spiritually blind.

This is the great irony of the story.

Those who claim to see cannot recognize the light standing in front of them.

And so Jesus concludes the chapter with words that sound almost paradoxical: he says he came so that those who do not see may see, and those who think they see may become blind.

This is where the story meets us in Lent.

Because Lent is not simply a season of reflection or self-denial. It is a season of illumination. A season in which God gently exposes the places where we cannot yet see clearly.

Like the blind man, we are invited into a journey of sight.

And that journey unfolds gradually.

Very few people arrive at perfect clarity about Jesus all at once. Faith often grows the way it does in this story — step by step, question by question, encounter by encounter.

At first we may only know “the man called Jesus.”
Then we begin to see him as a teacher or prophet.
Eventually we begin to recognize something deeper: that God is truly at work in him.
And finally, sometimes after much struggle, we are able to say with the healed man: “Lord, I believe.”

Lent gives us space for that journey.

But there is also another layer here as we move toward Holy Week.

Because the interrogation in this story foreshadows the interrogation that Jesus himself will soon face.

The religious authorities who question the blind man will soon question Jesus. They will put him on trial. They will demand to know who he claims to be.

And the answer to that question will lead directly to the Cross.

The story in John 9 is, in a sense, a rehearsal for the great confrontation that will come in Jerusalem.

Who is Jesus?

Is he a sinner who breaks the Sabbath?
Is he merely a teacher?
Or is he truly the one sent from God?

The Cross will seem, at first, like the final verdict of the world: rejection, humiliation, defeat.

But the Empty Tomb will reveal the deeper truth.

The one who opens blind eyes is also the one who defeats death itself.

The light that shines in the darkness cannot be overcome.

And so the question that fills this Gospel chapter eventually becomes the question that stands before each of us.

Who do we say that Jesus is?

Lent does not demand that we have every answer perfectly formed. The healed man himself grew in understanding over time.

But Lent does invite us to keep moving toward the light.

To allow Christ to open our eyes.

To be honest about the places where we still struggle to see clearly.

And to trust that the same Lord who sought out the man cast out by the world is still seeking us today.

Because the journey we are on does not end with the grief of the Cross.

It leads, through darkness and bewilderment, toward the astonishment of Easter morning.

Toward the moment when the light of the world rises again.

And when that day comes, we too will see more clearly than we ever imagined possible.