There is a kind of blindness that has nothing to do with the eyes. It is the condition of being so certain about the way things are that you cannot see the way God is actually working. It is not darkness in the usual sense. It is worse than that—it is a confident, well-defended certainty that mistakes itself for sight.

This is the blindness that Jesus addresses in the ninth chapter of John’s Gospel. And if we are honest with ourselves this morning, it is the blindness most of us know best.

The story begins with a man who has been blind from birth—not one who lost his sight later in life, but one who has never seen the light of day. He has lived his entire existence in darkness, knowing nothing else. And the disciples respond with what proves to be the wrong question: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

Their instinct is to categorize. To explain suffering by assigning blame. And if we are being truthful, we still do this. When something goes wrong—in a family, in a church, in a life—one of the first things we reach for is an explanation. Someone must be at fault. Because explanations, even false ones, give us the feeling of control over circumstances we cannot actually manage.

Jesus, however, refuses the question entirely.

He declares:

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”

Jesus does not claim that God caused this man’s suffering. He affirms something far more radical: that even in the deepest darkness, God’s grace is already at work—often long before we have the eyes to see it. John Wesley called this prevenient grace—the grace that goes before, that is already moving in a person’s life before they are conscious of it. Before the man born blind ever met Jesus, grace was already on its way to him.

And the method of that grace deserves careful attention. Jesus does not speak a word from a distance. He spits on the ground, makes mud with his hands, and spreads it on the man’s eyes. Then he says:

“Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.”

The act is earthy, ordinary, and even messy—and that is precisely the point. As N. T. Wright has observed, the signs in John’s Gospel are not magic tricks but windows into what God is accomplishing through Jesus to heal the whole creation. This God works through mud and spit and an ordinary pool of water.

I need to tell you something about where my blindness began, because I think it will help you understand where yours might be hiding.

I grew up in a church that drew hard lines around everything. Who was in. Who was out. What was acceptable. What was forbidden. We were told to check our reason at the entrance and trust only what the denomination taught us. The world outside our church walls was dangerous—spiritually contaminated—and the people in it were objects of pity at best and avoidance at worst.

I absorbed this completely. It was the only world I knew. I did not experience it as blindness. I experienced it as faithfulness.

There was a shaman who lived in our apartment building in Korea—a woman who practiced traditional spiritual rituals that my church considered demonic. And there was a Buddhist monk in the same building. I was taught, explicitly and repeatedly, to stay away from both of them. They were not just different; they were dangerous to my soul. I believed it without question.

Then came a season when my family needed help. I was seriously ill—too sick to go to work, too sick to do even the most basic things, like sweeping the hallway floor of our apartment unit. We asked our church for help. We called the people we had worshipped with, prayed with, studied Scripture with. But no one came. They were busy—back-to-back worship services, prayer meetings, Bible studies. Their schedules were full of God, and there was no room left for us.

But every morning, I found that the hallway had been swept clean.

It was the shaman. The woman I had been told to avoid. She had noticed, and without being asked, she simply began to care for what I could not care for myself.

And the Buddhist monk—also without being asked—went grocery shopping for my family, spending his own money to fill our kitchen with food we could not afford and could not go out to buy.

I want you to sit with that for a moment, because I had to sit with it for a long time.

The people I had been taught were outside God’s grace were the ones through whom grace arrived. The people who were supposed to be inside God’s grace—my own church community—could not find the time. And the ones I had been trained to fear became the hands that held my family together in our most vulnerable season.

This is exactly what happens in John 9. The man born blind is healed—and the people who should have been the first to recognize God’s work, the Pharisees, the religious experts, the ones who had spent their entire lives studying the Scriptures—they could not see it. They interrogated the man. They interrogated his parents. They tried to discredit the miracle and the one who performed it. Not because the evidence was unclear, but because the healing did not come through the proper channels. It did not follow their rules. It violated the Sabbath. It did not fit inside their theological system.

And so they declared the healer a sinner.

Jesus’ response is devastating:

“If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.”

The most dangerous blindness is the one that does not know it is blind. The certainty that says, “I already see. I already know who God uses and who God does not. I already know where grace flows and where it cannot.” When you are that certain, there is no room left for God to surprise you.

I was that certain. And God sent a shaman and a Buddhist monk to open my eyes.

But here is the thing about the man born blind in John’s Gospel—his sight did not come all at once. It was progressive.

At first, he identifies Jesus simply as “the man called Jesus.” Just a name. Then, under pressure from the authorities, his understanding deepens: “He is a prophet.” And finally, when Jesus finds him again, he arrives at full confession: “Lord, I believe.”

His spiritual sight deepened step by step. And mine did too.

What began in Korea continued as my family came to the United States. In El Paso, strangers became family. In a small church in Connecticut, people who barely knew me poured out a love I had not earned. Each time, my eyes opened a little further. Each time, grace was wider than I had been taught.

That was where my sight became clear. Not because I finally had the right theology or the right credentials. But because I was overwhelmed by the sheer size of God’s love—a love so wide and so unearned that I could only stand there and wonder: What did I do to deserve this?

And the answer came—not as a doctrine but as an experience: You did not deserve it by merit. You deserve it by who you are to God.

Now here is where this passage presses on all of us.

The Pharisees were not evil people. They were devout. They were disciplined. They had given their lives to studying Scripture and upholding the tradition. And that is precisely what made their blindness so dangerous—because it looked like faithfulness. Their certainty about how God works prevented them from seeing how God was actually working, right in front of them, in ways they had never expected and through people they had already dismissed.

We must ask ourselves honestly: Where might we be doing the same thing?

It is possible to be so focused on what has been lost—the members who have gone, the budgets that have shrunk, the programs that no longer run, the way things used to be—that we cannot see what God is building right now. It is possible to be so certain about what faithfulness looks like that we miss the new thing God is doing, because it does not arrive through the channels we expected.

God’s grace does not wait for our permission to flow. It moves through a shaman’s broom and a monk’s grocery bag. It moves through strangers who become family. It moves through small, struggling churches that have more love than resources. It moves through mud and spit and ordinary water.

The question is not whether God is at work. The question is whether we are willing to have our eyes opened to see it.

The man born blind had the simplest testimony in all of Scripture. When the authorities pressed him, when they demanded explanations he could not give, when they tried to trap him with theological arguments, he said only this:

“One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”

You do not need all the answers. You do not need a perfect theology. You need only the willingness to tell the truth about what Christ has done.

I was blind to grace outside the walls I was raised in—but now I see.

I was blind to God’s presence in the people I had been taught to avoid—but now I see.

I was blind to a love I did not earn and could not explain—but now I see.

May we, like that man who once sat in darkness, have the courage to let Christ open our eyes—even when what we see overturns everything we thought we knew.

Grace for what we could not see. Light for where we stand. Vision for where God is leading.

Lord, I believe. Amen.

A Prayer

God of light and mercy, forgive us our confident blindnesses—the certainties that kept us from seeing your grace in unexpected places and unexpected people. Open our eyes again. Not to the sight we choose, but to the sight you give.

Thank you for the hands that cared for us when we did not know to look for them. Thank you for the strangers who became family, and the love that arrived without being earned.

Help us to see what you are doing in our midst—even now, even here—and give us the courage to say, with that man who once sat in darkness: Lord, I believe.

Through Jesus Christ, who is the light of the world. Amen.