Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 19, 2023

(1 Samuel 16:1-13)+Psalm 23+Ephesians 5:8-14+John 9:1-41

Earlier this week, I was having lunch with Janet Ayala who survived the Pinter Hotel arson fire on April 30, 1982, that killed 13 people, including her mother, stepfather, brother, and nephew. She now lives in Florida but was in Hoboken for the memorial plaque dedication last Sunday and to tell her story at the Hoboken Historical Museum. As I sat with her and her husband, Jose, a couple of local officials came in who knew about the memorial project and who approached me to say hello. I, in turn, introduced them to Janet and described her as “a survivor of the Pinter Hotel fire.”

I recognize that I used that term by way of letting them know something of who Janet is that they would know about, but as I read the story of the man born blind in John’s gospel, I realize that Janet is more than her tragic history. She is a mother and grandmother and nursing assistant and loving wife. While the tragic loss of her family has taken a toll on her and the course of her life, she is not just the girl who survived the fire.

We have a tendency to reduce people to their history, I think. Cancer survivor. Homeless person. Mentally ill woman. Paralyzed man. Divorced person. Widow. As if the sum of our identity is some random fact about ourselves or our experiences.

This story from John has customarily been known as the man born blind. We are led to believe that it is the salient thing about him.

But not to Jesus, it isn’t.

I imagine that, to those who lived in this community, this man who had not been able to see since his birth was like a fixture, a presence. Maybe he begged on the same corner every week. Maybe folks crossed to the other side because they were a little afraid that whatever the sinfulness it was that caused the blindness might just be catching. They certainly were incapable of believing that a man who could see after his encounter with Jesus could possibly be the same one they had known all of his life.

To the disciples, he is a teaching tool. “Jesus, who sinned – this man or his parents?”

To the religious leaders, he is a tool for entrapment. “Who was this man who healed you? How were your eyes opened? Where is the man?”

Not satisfied with the man’s answers, they seek out the parents who are not going to allow themselves to get into trouble. “We don’t know anything about this. Go ask our son.”

This story of the man who regained his sight is sandwiched between Jesus’s statement that he is the light of the world in Chapter 8 and that he is the Good Shepherd whose sheep know his voice in Chapter 10. It is less about physical sight than it is about being able to see what is true, what is good, what is real.

The man whom Jesus healed doesn’t need to see Jesus to know that he is the Messiah. He asks, “And who is he, sir? Tell me so that I may believe in him.” And Jesus replies, “…the one speaking to you is he.” He can see Jesus, but just as significantly, he hears Jesus’s voice, just as those sheep who know the Good Shepherd’s voice.

The religious folks haven’t quite got this figured out yet. The disciples aren’t exactly clear on it. The man’s parents and neighbors can’t see what has happened because their expectations are getting in the way of it. To them, he is the man born blind, and there is no way around that.

When I get together with my siblings, there is a tendency to want to put us all in that same family order that we grew up in. I am the youngest of six, and I will always be the youngest of six. My brothers and sisters know, intellectually, that I am no longer that littlest one of them, that I have accomplished a thing or two in my adult life, but it is still hard not to keep me in that role as the baby of the family.

This man whose life was changed by a random encounter with Jesus, knows who he is, and, by the end of our story, he knows who Jesus is.

Everyone else is still unseeing. In the darkness. They are scrambling around trying to explain, dismiss, reject, keep the man in his place.

But the man won’t be put back where he was. He was blind and now can see.

As we look around, we, too, have a place, a label, a name for everything around us, and it can trap us into blindness, into an inability to see that God is doing a new thing.

There is a saying that a car has a big windshield and a small rear window, because you have to keep looking ahead, not backward.

So, the next time you are tempted to pigeon-hole yourself or someone else, think of the man whose sight was restored. He is no longer what he was, and he is moving into a future filled with light and promise. When we wash the mud from our own eyes, maybe we can see what Jesus sees, each person in their full humanity, beloved of God. Just like each one of us.