Spiritual Blindness -- A Message for February 15, 2026

 

Today, my friends, is the final Sunday in the season of Epiphany. In a few days, we will gather for Ash Wednesday worship at St. John’s Lutheran church in Blue Bell. Each year, on this final Sunday of Epiphany, we focus on Jesus’ Transfiguration. The Transfiguration event occurred when Jesus climbed Mount Tabor with some of his friends. Once they were on the mountain top, Jesus began to shine – he stopped being just a normal human being for a few minutes and the glory of God shone through him. Moses and Elijah appeared and began to talk with Jesus – and then the voice of God shouted down from the heavens and commanded: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!” 

The Transfiguration event was confirmation for the disciples that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. The disciples who witnessed this event were not initially sure how to respond, but Jesus invited them to climb back down the mountain and get to work with him ministering to the people of the world. For a few minutes they basked in the glory of God, but there were people to heal, sermons to preach, teachings to share, and work to do.

The Gospel of John doesn’t include the Transfiguration story. And, this year, we are focusing on the Gospel of John. So, we will read another example of people’s eyes being opened to the reality that Jesus is indeed the Messiah. Listen to the events unfold as we read John, chapter 9: 

The Scripture John 9:1-41

1 As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth.

2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

3 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.

4 As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work.

5 While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

6 After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes.

7 “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.

8 His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, “Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?”

9 Some claimed that he was. Others said, “No, he only looks like him.” But he himself insisted, “I am the man.”

10 “How then were your eyes opened?” they asked.

11 He replied, “The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see.”

12 “Where is this man?” they asked him. “I don’t know,” he said.

The Pharisees Investigate the Healing

13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind.

14 Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath.

15 Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. “He put mud on my eyes,” the man replied, “and I washed, and now I see.”

16 Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” But others asked, “How can a sinner perform such signs?” So they were divided.

17 Then they turned again to the blind man, “What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” The man replied, “He is a prophet.”

18 They still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man’s parents.

19 “Is this your son?” they asked. “Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?”

20 “We know he is our son,” the parents answered, “and we know he was born blind.

21 But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself.”

22 His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.

23 That was why his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”

24 A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. “Give glory to God by telling the truth,” they said. “We know this man is a sinner.”

25 He replied, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”

26 Then they asked him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?”

27 He answered, “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?”

28 Then they hurled insults at him and said, “You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses!

29 We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.”

30 The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes.

31 We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will.

32 Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind.

33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”

34 To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.

Spiritual Blindness

35 Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

36 “Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.”

37 Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.”

38 Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.

39 Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”

40 Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?”

41 Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.

Here ends this reading of the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Amen. 

Let us pray…

The Message Spiritual Blindness

A few years ago, our Consistory read a book about Evangelism. It is called Becoming a Welcoming Church and it was written by Thom Rainer. The book encourages congregations to take an inventory of the public spaces of their church buildings and grounds ... .and try to look around at everything with fresh eyes as if you were seeing the church for the first time ... Are the bathrooms clean? Does the wallpaper need to be refreshed? Do the gathering spaces look cluttered? Are there clear signs inviting people to know where important things are, like the bathrooms and the sanctuary?  

The book emphasized that when we attend a church for a while, we start to become blind to the messes and imperfections. We stop seeing things that may challenge new people – we know where the bathrooms are, so their placement seems obvious to us. We know where the kitchen is, so why wouldn’t everyone else realize which door it hides behind? The book suggested that in order to welcome new people to our church, we needed to un-blind ourselves and be able to see what new people would see.

Our scripture this morning has a few examples of blindness….both physical blindness and spiritual blindness. The events of the text center on a man who has been blind his whole life. Jesus healed the man’s vision using an unusual strategy – he spit on the ground, made some mud, and rubbed the mud in the man’s eyes. He told the man to go to the Pool of Siloam and wash out his eyes. After the man washed the mud out of his eyes, he could see….he was no longer physically blind.

Then we encounter the second example of blindness in the story. Just like the Evangelism book encouraged church folks to try to look around their churches with fresh eyes so that we aren’t blind to the clutter and grime, the people who had walked past the formerly blind man when he was a beggar didn’t recognize him once he was sighted. For them, while he was blind, the man was just part of the scenery of their lives. They didn’t notice him. They ignored him. They were blind to his presence. And, once he could see, they weren’t sure who he was. They didn’t recognize him. Before he was healed, the man wasn’t important to them – his humanity wasn’t real to them. But, once he could see, all of sudden they saw him as a human being.

The third example of blindness in the story was spiritual blindness. The religious authorities didn’t like it when Jesus healed people. They were intimidated by him. He threatened them….they didn’t want to accept he was the messiah. They didn’t want to accept that he came from God. They didn’t want to accept that he had anything to teach them about God. So, they quibbled about the day of the week upon which the healing took place.  They tried to say he wasn’t from God. They questioned the formerly blind man’s parents about his healing. They questioned the formerly blind man. They strategised among themselves about ways they could get Jesus arrested. They tried to shut him up. Jesus wasn’t a part of their group – he wasn’t from Jerusalem and was instead from a backwaters town in Galilee. He wasn’t educated or sophisticated or rich. Yet, he was more powerful, and more holy, than they were and their lot was.  And, Jesus scared them. They chose to be spiritually blind and not see him for who he was. They chose not to accept Jesus. They chose not to follow him.

These events took place a long, long time ago, but they still have a message for us today – or perhaps a few messages for us today.   

The first is that we have trouble recognizing the humanity and the personhood of people who are different than we are – the people in the story didn’t recognize the formerly blind man because he was suddenly like them, he could see – when he was perceived as different from them, he was easy to ignore. 

We also ignore people who are different from us, and we often fail to recognize their humanity. All week, we have been hearing about the Superbowl halftime show – people are mad because the singer sang in Spanish – people are mad because many of the people who danced in the performance weren’t white – people are mad because the performer has been critical of ICE’s tactics. It is much easier to dismiss people and ignore people if we think they aren’t like us ... .It is much easier to dismiss people and ignore people if we think we disagree with them about current events or politics.  

We must remember to model our lives on Jesus ... .and to work to model our choices, and actions on Jesus. We don’t believe in a Messiah who spoke English. We don’t believe in a Messiah who was European and White. We don’t believe in a Messiah who acted like it was ok to reject people who weren’t his religion, or cultural background, or were born in a foreign-country other than Israel. We shouldn’t dismiss people or ignore people just because they may be a little different from us. 

The religious authorities in the story we read this morning wanted to dismiss Jesus because he wasn’t the Messiah they expected. He healed on the Sabbath. He helped people who were defective – people with disabilities or illnesses or females. He was generous to people who were foreigners or who practiced other religions. And, he preached a message of love and acceptance and piety that was more focused on living out God’s compassion and justice than it was focused on following the rules to a T.

If we are blind to people who are different than ourselves, we will be blind to Jesus. We must work to open our eyes, to look upon others with love and acceptance and grace. We must work to “see” people even when we may be different from each other. And, we must work to care for other people, to be generous and kind to others, even though they may have formerly been people we ignored. Let us work to be like Jesus, to love like Jesus.

Amen

Healing Miracles -- A Message for February 8, 2026

        The first portion of the book of John focuses on Signs that prove Jesus is the Messiah. There are 7 signs that John highlights. We focused on the first “sign” a few weeks ago when we read about Jesus’ first miracle: turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana. This week, we will focus on two more of the signs - two occasions when Jesus miraculously healed people who were ill.

So, let’s turn to the Gospel of John and read these two stories of miraculous healings…starting at John chapter four verse forty-six:

The Scripture John 4:46-54 & 5:1-18

Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum. 

When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death.

“Unless you people see signs and wonders,” Jesus told him, “you will never believe.”

The royal official said, “Sir, come down before my child dies.”

“Go,” Jesus replied, “your son will live.”

The man took Jesus at his word and departed. 

While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living. 

When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, “Yesterday, at one in the afternoon, the fever left him.”

Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” So he and his whole household believed.

This was the second sign Jesus performed after coming from Judea to Galilee.

Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. 

Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 

Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. 

One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 

When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

“Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” 

At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, 

and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”

But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”

So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”

The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” 

The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.

So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. 

In his defense Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” 

For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

Here ends this reading of the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Let us pray…

The Message Healing Miracles

The stories we read today focus on healing – Jesus healed a sick child and Jesus healed a disabled man….one of the people healed was probably a Gentile and one was probably Jewish. Both formerly ill people received miracles from God – and yet, both incidents of healing led to religious leaders feeling disturbed and troubled about Jesus – if he could do this, these miracles, what else would he do?

In the first story, a desperate father approached Jesus. When the father asked Jesus to come to Capernaum, a 20-mile distance from where they were, Jesus said something critical about people needing evidence to believe in him. Jesus’ words were more for the gathered crowd than for the father.  But, the father’s next statement was so direct that Jesus immediately responded. The dad told Jesus that unless he acted the man's son would die….so Jesus told him that his son was healed. On Jesus’  word, the father began the journey back to Capernaum. And, he found out when his servants reached him the next day that the son was healed at the exact same moment Jesus told the father the son was well. 

Scholars assume the man and his family were Gentiles. They weren’t steeped in the Jewish faith and didn’t understand how Jesus was the fulfillment of hundreds of years of prophecies about the Messiah. Instead, the father was a desperate man on a mission – he would do anything to make his son better. He would do anything to keep his son alive. He heard that Jesus was a powerful healer, so the father rushed to seek Jesus’ help. When Jesus told the man his son was healed, the father trusted Jesus’ word. And, when the father returned and reunited with his son and his family, they all believed. They all believed in Jesus and our God. In our story from last week, the story of the Samaritan woman at the well, a whole community of Samaritans converted to the Christian faith after they met Jesus. After today’s event, a household of Gentiles believed after Jesus’ word healed one of their own. Jesus came to earth to save us, all of us, whether we are Jewish or Samaritan or Gentiles.

Our second healing story is about a disabled Jewish man. He laid next to the Pool of Bethesda for thirty-eight years….thirty-eight years. That is a long, long time. We don’t know what type of disability the man had – our scripture just calls him an invalid. In the first century,  Jewish believed that whenever the waters of the pool were disturbed, the first person who entered the water afterwards would be healed. But, in the thirty-eight years the man laid next to the pool, he was never the first person to enter the water. He was never fast enough. And, he apparently had no support – no one helped him get into the water.

When this healing took place, Jesus had returned to Jerusalem for a festival. He saw the invalid man and learned that he was laying next to the pool for thirty-eight years….an eternity! Yet, when Jesus asked the man if he wanted to be healed, the man was non-committal ... ..he was apathetic…he explained that no one would help him get into the pool and in the man’s mind, getting into the pool was the only way he could be healed. We can understand why the man was so hopeless…thirty-eight years is a long time to experience a disability….thirty-eight years is a long time to wait for healing.

Jesus told the man: “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” And the man was healed at once….he picked up his mat and walked. Finally, after thirty-eight years, the man was healed.

You would think everyone would rejoice…that everyone who saw the man after his healing would be delighted and happy. But, oddly, some people reacted with suspicion and accusations. Instead of delight, they were critical – why was the man carrying a mat on the Sabbath? Who healed him? And, when they found out Jesus had healed the man, they were upset that the healing occurred on the Sabbath. 

So, some of the haters, Temple authorities, approached Jesus with accusation – why was he violating the rules by healing someone, doing work, on the Sabbath? And, when Jesus responded, they became even more angry and accusatory…Jesus told them his father worked 7 days a week and so did he.. So, then they were upset because Jesus called God “his father.” They were upset because Jesus was indicating he was the Messiah and that he had insight into God’s will for us.

Instead of appreciating the wonderful things that were happening, the Temple authorities were mad about the little details – they thought Jesus violated the sabbath rules by working and they thought Jesus was making false claims about being the messiah. Ugh.

Talk about someone not being able to see the forest for the trees.  The Temple authorities were not happy about the healing. They weren’t delighted that the Messiah was in their midst. They were paying attention to the wrong things. 

When the Gentile family saw the healing of their son, everyone believed. They didn’t stop and throw out criticisms or excuses. They believed. 

But, the people who should have had a similar reaction to the invalid at the pool being healed were the opposite. Instead of believing in Jesus and being appreciative of God, they had many criticisms and excuses and accusations. Witnessing a miracle didn’t help them believe.

In our lives, we need to work to be more like the family of Gentiles and less like the Temple authorities. We should respond to good things that happen in our lives and in the lives of our family members appreciatively. God is making things better….God is actively at work in the world….let us rejoice and be glad in response to God.

But, often, like the Temple authorities, we get distracted by the details and miss out on the big events. A man who was disabled for 38 years was better! Praise God. But, because the healing happened on the wrong day of the week, and the person doing the healing didn’t look the way they expected or have the right kind of education or belong to the proper group of Pharaisees or Sadduccees, they were upset. They missed out on something special because they allowed themselves to be distracted by the details.

In our lives, we put these constraints on ourselves….we can’t help people who are homeless because we aren’t trained as social workers. We can’t help our nephew learn algebra because we don’t have an education degree. We can’t help our neighbor get groceries because we don’t speak their native language and they don’t speak English. We miss out on doing a good deed, or putting our Christian faith in action, because we get too caught up in the details ... .we get too caught up in doubting ourselves or our skills or our talents.

When Jesus met people who needed to be healed, he healed them. He didn’t demand they have the right background. He didn’t worry if they didn’t deserve to be healed. He didn’t check their documentation. The man by the pool of Bethesda didn’t even ask Jesus to heal him. When Jesus met people who needed to be healed, he healed them.

Let us work on putting our faith in action. Let us help people who are suffering. Let us help people who are struggling. Let us worry less about whether or not we have the right training or knowledge and instead step forward and respond. Let us model our lives on Jesus, and when we see a need, respond to that need with love and action. And, let us delight in the work of God all around us. 

Amen