“Was Blind, But Now I See”

March 15, 2026

Fourth Sunday of Lent, Year A

1 Samuel 16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a | Psalm 23:1-3a, 3b-4, 5, 6 | Ephesians 5:8-14 | John 9:1-41

There’s a hymn that almost everybody knows: church people, non-church people, doesn’t matter. You’ve heard it at weddings and funerals. If you’re anything like me, you’ve heard it done beautifully, and you’ve heard it butchered by well-meaning but not very talented soloists. It’s "Amazing Grace," written by a former slave owner turned abolitionist and English clergyman John Newton in 1772. After more than 250 years, the truth of the opening verse still stops me in my tracks:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.

Was blind, but now I see. Hold onto those words today. Because every single reading we just heard is circling that same truth: the movement from darkness into light, from blindness into sight. Not just the physical kind, the kind that changes who you are.

Let’s start with Samuel. God sends him to Bethlehem to anoint the next king of Israel, and Jesse lines up his sons: tall, strong, and impressive, all of them. Samuel takes one look at Eliab and thinks, surely that’s the guy, but God says no. “Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance, but the LORD looks into the heart.”

One by one, the sons come forward. One by one, God says no. Samuel has to ask, “Are these all the sons you have?” Jesse sheepishly admits, “Well, there’s the youngest, but he’s out tending to the sheep.” Almost an afterthought. The kid nobody planned to bring inside. And yet, that’s the one: David, an overlooked and underestimated shepherd boy. Notice the language after David’s anointing: “From that day on, the spirit of the LORD rushed upon David.”

It didn’t tiptoe; it didn’t trickle; it rushed. That should be our prayer every single day: Lord, let your spirit rush upon me.

Next, we hear Psalm 23, the most famous psalm ever written, and for good reason. “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.” We know it so well we sometimes stop hearing it. Please listen to verse five: “You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.”

There’s that anointing again. This time, it isn’t reserved for a future king. It’s for you and me: humble, ordinary followers of Jesus. Anointed; cup overflowing; with the promise that goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives, and that we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. It’s no wonder we reach for this psalm in our most vulnerable moments. The promises hit so hard.

Then Paul, writing to the Ephesians, puts it as bluntly as Paul ever puts anything, which is saying something: “You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of the light.” Catch that language. He doesn’t say you were in darkness. He says you were darkness. That’s identity-level stuff. There's no room for self-righteousness in that sentence! We were the darkness itself. But with God? We are light. What magnificent imagery. What awesome transformation.

Now, because we’re all human — every one of us shaped by our upbringing and our experiences — we all have what are appropriately called blind spots, biases and behaviors that others can see in us, but we can’t see in ourselves. The doctor who doesn’t realize that the gifts from a pharmaceutical rep are quietly influencing her prescribing habits; she’d tell you she’s completely objective, and she believes it, but the data says otherwise. The friend who’s stuck in a toxic relationship, and you can see it so clearly, it’s almost painful; but when you try to say something, they look at you like you’re the one who’s crazy. We’ve all been on both sides of that conversation.

The tricky thing about blind spots is that, by definition, you can’t see your own. That’s what makes them dangerous. That’s what makes them relevant as we turn to the Gospel today because I’m going to choose to give the Pharisees a little bit of grace.

John chapter nine reads more like a one-act play than a Gospel passage. Two characters, opposite story arcs. By the end, you realize the one who could see all along was the one who started in the dark.

There’s a man, blind from birth, begging on the side of the road. Jesus heals him. And what happens next is one of the most remarkable spiritual progressions in all of Scripture: when people first ask him what happened, he refers to Jesus as simply “the man called Jesus.” That’s it. A man. Then, the Pharisees haul him in for questioning, and he calls Jesus “a prophet.” His vision is sharpening. They drag him back a second time, pressuring him harder. Now, he defends Jesus, arguing that he must be from God, because nobody could do what he did otherwise. Finally, when Jesus finds him again and reveals himself, the man says, “I believe, Lord,” and he worships him. The man called Jesus went from prophet, to man from God, then rightfully, Lord. Physical sight was just the beginning. The formerly blind man’s spiritual sight grew with every step.

Now, look at the Pharisees. They travel the exact opposite direction. These are the scholars, the experts, the men who had memorized the Law and could dissect every syllable of it. They are so hung up on the fact that Jesus healed on the Sabbath — that he worked — that they’re willing to discount the good (not to mention the power) in what he did. They interrogate the formerly blind man. They interrogate his parents. They declare themselves “disciples of Moses.” Their knowledge, their credentials, their certainty — the very things that should have helped them see — became the things that blinded them. They looked directly at the power of God and just…couldn’t…see it.

That’s the blind spot. If we’re being honest with ourselves, it’s one we know well — not because we’re bad people, but because we are human. We get so locked into what we think we know, what we’ve always believed, the framework we’ve built our lives around, that when God shows up in a way we didn’t expect, we almost can’t see it. The Pharisees weren’t stupid — they were stuck. And that’s a warning for all of us.

So, what does Jesus want us to take from this Gospel message today? Maybe it’s simpler than we think. Maybe it’s this: we need God; we need his love and true spiritual vision, the kind that changes everything and only comes when we’re humble enough to admit we don’t have it on our own. The Pharisees couldn’t get there. The blind man could. The difference wasn’t intelligence. It wasn’t education. It was humility. It was recognizing need.

The promise Paul makes to the Ephesians is the promise God makes to every one of us: in Him, you are light. Not someday. Not after you earn it. Now. It is an incredible promise, and a present reality.

John Newton understood this. A man who spent years in spiritual darkness, who eventually saw clearly enough to write words that have carried people through their hardest moments for a quarter of a millennium. The last verse of that hymn is a great close for today:

When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we’d first begun.

Ten thousand years of light, and it’s only the beginning. As we come down the home stretch of Lent, here’s my prayer for all of us: that we open our eyes, that we have the humility to admit that we can’t yet see, that we stop trying to make God fit our vision of Him, and simply let His spirit rush upon us. And that we live as what we already are: children of the light: in this world and in the one to come. “Was blind, but now I see!”