Pastor Trisha Taylor | John 9:1-12 | March 15, 2026
We’re all here b/c we want God to do a new thing. We want God to show up. We want to be there when God changes things in our broken world . . . and . . . when he does it, we will resist it.
It’s what we do.
Yes, God, I wanted the change but not like that!
Okay, God, but might I make a suggestion?
But we’ve never done it that way before.
This story is called, “Jesus opens the eyes of a man born blind.” There’s a man – who was born blind – and Jesus heals him.
Why doesn’t the story end there?
Why isn’t everybody happy?
This story is 41 verses long. Only 2 of those verses are actually about Jesus healing the blind man. The story should be called,”Jesus does a new thing and opens the eyes of a man born blind and everybody loses their ever-lovin’ minds.”
Because this isn’t just a story about this blind man who can see again. It’s really a story about everyone else.
Starts with the disciples: Is he blind because of his own sins or his parents’ sins? In other words whose fault is this?
Mental model: everyone knew the blind man was blind because of sin. That was obvious. But Jesus says, Nothing is what you think it is.
In fact, try this on: Jesus says that because this man was born blind, the work of God is going to be displayed.
This man is not just a prop or a character in someone else’s story; and Jesus isn’t saying that. We know that Jesus loves this man whether he remains blind or whether he is healed, whatever his story is. Jesus humanizes him. Jesus doesn’t use people as props.
But Jesus says, “whose fault is this?” is not the question. The question is: “How can the loving and surprising work of God be revealed here?” This is true of this man b/c this is true of everyone. Our lives are an opportunity to show the glory of God. When things happen that are bad. That are good. That we thought were bad but turned out to be good. That we thought were good but turned out to be bad. Everything is an opportunity for the work of God to be displayed.
And when the works of God are displayed – even when we want to see the glory of God, even when we’re praying for the glory of God – we will look at God and say, “Not like that.” “See, that’s not how we do things.” “We’ll just keep things the way they are, thanks.”
Response 1: v. 8-12 Curiosity, skepticism - but v. 13 raises the stakes. Let’s go find an authority figure to tell us what is going on here.
Response 2: v. 14-16 Tradition and theology - He doesn’t keep the Sabbath, his faith doesn’t look like ours, he doesn’t follow the rules, he’s a sinner, he’s doing it wrong.
Response 3: v. 8-9, v. 18-19 Maybe this isn’t even the guy.
Why didn’t they know he was the blind guy that Jesus healed? Because they had never really seen him.
People were so sure that they were right about people like this blind man. It was obvious, everyone knew that the reason he was born blind could only be 2 things – either he sinned or his parents sinned. Either he was being punished or his parents were. Everyone knew–had always known–there were only 2 options. What else could it be?
So to them, not only is he blind but honestly, he deserves to be blind – he is a sinner, he is a beggar, he obviously doesn’t come from a good family, he isn’t like us.
That became the reason not to see this man – they didn’t know his name, they didn’t even know what he looked like. They didn’t get to know this blind man – to wonder what else might be true about him.
They put him in a category and then assumed they had the answers about him. When we do that, we’re so sure we know who people are and why things happen. It’s just the way things are.
But Jesus came to make all things new. Not just to make the life we already have a little bit better. To make us new creations.
The gospel – the good news– can’t change anything unless we’re willing to change. Jesus can’t bring anything new unless we’re willing to be new. Unless we’re willing to rethink some things, willing to see from new eyes, going with Jesus from “you have heard it said” to “I say to you,” willing to think about God in some completely fresh ways, we can’t live in the kingdom of God because the kingdom of God is always new, always surprising.
They were judging this man who was born blind w/o knowing him b/c they didn’t even recognize him.
He wasn’t a person to them, he was a category – “blind man” and therefore “sinner” and therefore not worth knowing or loving or even seeing.
Who was really blind here?
It makes me wonder who I think I’ve gotten figured out. Who do I see (or not see) as “those people.” Who am I so sure about, that I know who “those people” are and why they are the way they are?
Have I seen them? Talked to them? Asked what their story is and told them mine?
This is the way, the only way, that the kingdom of God can break in to the way things are so that they can be the way they should be.
They had to go ask his parents, is this the same guy we saw back there?
What happens when the authorities come to this man’s parents? V. 19-21
At first, it looks like they throw him under the bus. But then we see their courage in acknowledging that yes, this is their son but also we remember that they live in this same culture as the disciples where there are only two options: remember, either he sinned or we sinned. And he was born blind so it wasn’t him, it was us.
It breaks my heart to think about these two parents who have spent their adult lives wondering what on earth they did to create this blindness in their son, what they did to make God punish him to punish them. And they lived with this every day.
Start right now, one moment, take one thing that we could open up to a new thought; won’t apply to everyone here but . . .
If you have lived with the belief that something terrible happened to someone else b/c God punished you, would you consider turning that loose? If you did something foolish or even sinful or you don’t even know what you did but you’ve assumed that there was a direct line that what you did caused God to harm you or to harm other people, would you be willing right now to let that go? To take on the possibility that there is another explanation.
We don’t have enough time to go through all the complicated theological explanations so let’s go back to Jesus’ explanation – that somehow in the midst of the suffering that is in this world, where we sometimes make bad choices and we sometimes do things in ignorance that have bad consequences and sometimes things happen just b/c we live in this world that is so very broken, that in spite of all that, the work of God – the glory of God – can be revealed.
The glory of God can be revealed in your life even if you have believed, like this man’s parents, that you (or people you love) have been punished by God because of you. Will you receive it?
Remember we said that the name of this story should be “Jesus does a really cool thing and everyone loses their ever-lovin’ minds?” I mean, it’s even more dramatic than what we’ve read – the man can see now, but everyone is mad at him and he’s mad at everyone and even his parents have kind of thrown him under the bus and the leaders have kicked him out . . . but it slows down at the very end. Jesus finds the man to have a one-on-one conversation with him.
He asks him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The man asks, “Who is he? Tell me, I’d like to believe in him.” And Jesus says, “You’re looking at him!” And the man says, “I believe” and starts to worship Jesus. And Jesus tells him, “I’ve come into the world so that those who are blind will see and those who think they can see will become blind.”
That’s when the leaders get upset again. Oh, you’re so close! Jesus tells them, “If you were blind, that wouldn’t be a problem; no shame in being blind. But because you claim you can see – better than everyone else, you’re blinder than this man ever was.”
The cost of the new is the old.
We can’t have the new work of God – new vision, new sight, new perspective – until we’re willing to let go of our traditions and our superiority, our assumptions about who God is, our suspicions about who other people are, our categories about who is in and who is out and who God loves and who God punishes . . . we can’t have the new until we let go of the old.