Sermon for March 15, 2026, Fourth Sunday in Lent

John 9:1-7 (Fourth Sunday in Lent—Series A)

“From Blindness to Sight”

Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer, Enfield, CT

March 15, 2026

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Our text is from the Gospel lesson recorded in John 9:

¹And as [Jesus] passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. ²And His disciples asked him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” ³Jesus answered, “Neither this man sinned nor his parents, but [he was born blind] so that the works of God might be made known in him. ⁴It is necessary that we work the works of Him who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one is able to work. ⁵As long as I am in the world, I am the Light of the world.” ⁶After He had said these things, He spat on the ground and made mud from the spittle and rubbed the mud on his eyes ⁷and He said to him, “Go, wash yourself in the Pool of Siloam (which is translated, Sent). So he went away and washed himself and came seeing.

          Darkness is a negative theme in the Bible. Darkness is the absence of light, the absence of light’s life-giving qualities. Darkness is being deprived of what is necessary for survival. Just think of what happens to plants when then do not get enough light. They shrivel and die. What happens when people are deprived of light? They also suffer physical and psychological damage.

          Another facet of darkness is that it is seen as evil. Few things bring out greater fear in people than darkness. Although most of us have probably grown out of our childish fear of monsters under the bed and in the closet, which came along with our fear of the darkness, we keep our fear of the dark itself. Would you go into a dark alley at night? How many people are afraid of caves and other dark places? Darkness instills fear in us because darkness is the abode of evil. Evil flourishes in dark places—in back streets and alleys, behind closed doors, in hidden places. It is under the cover of darkness that people do evil deeds. St. Paul writes in Ephesians 5, “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret” (Ephesians 5:11-12). More frightening still is the evil that lurks in the darkness of our own hearts. Do we not fear that the truth will be brought to light? Do we really want our secret sins exposed for the world to see?

          And then there is the theme of darkness expressed by blindness. For the physically blind, life is lived “in the dark.” The physically blind cannot know which way to go as they would stumble and grope in the darkness without help and assistance. Spiritual blindness, however, is a darkness or an ignorance of the things of God. Luther preached on our text, saying, “The blind man was a sign of the blindness that lay hidden in our hearts.”^[1] We are all born spiritually blind and so we are unable to see our sin. We are unwilling to do things God’s way because we can’t see or know God’s way. It is hidden in the darkness and blindness of our sin.

          Jesus and His disciples passed by the man blind from birth. The disciples wondered if the man was suffering physical blindness because of some sin of his in the womb or some sin of his parents. But Jesus said, “No.” The purpose of the man’s blindness was that a divine work should be produced in him. This does not mean that God deliberately caused the child to be born blind in order that, after many years, His glory should be displayed in the removal of the blindness. It does mean that God overruled the disaster of the child’s blindness so that, when the child grew to manhood, he might, by recovering his sight, see the glory of God in the face of the Christ, the Savior, and that other people, seeing this work of God, might turn to the true Light of the World, Jesus Christ. “As long as I am in the world,” Jesus said, “I am the Light of the world.” He proved His words with this miraculous work.

          Jesus gave the light of sight to a man living in the darkness of being blind. But even more than that, Jesus gave this man the true light of salvation, delivering him also from spiritual darkness to the light of faith in Jesus. At the end of our Gospel text, Jesus asked the man, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” Jesus said to him, “You have seen Him, and it is he who is speaking to you.” He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped Jesus.

          Physical darkness to physical light—spiritual darkness to spiritual light. That’s what Jesus does for people. Jesus rescues us from the evil darkness of sin. He heals our spiritual blindness so that we can see our God and Lord with the sight of saving faith. He transforms us from darkness to light so that we might reflect His light to others who still live in the darkness of sin.

          As we look at the healing of the man born blind, take note of Jesus’ method—He worked through physical means along with His Word. Jesus spat on the ground and made mud. He put the mud on the man’s eyes and told him, “Go, wash in the Pool of Siloam.” “He went away and washed himself and came seeing.” St. John tells us non-Hebrew speaking people that Siloam means “Sent.” Consider, what did Jesus say to His disciples just before He healed the blind man? “It is necessary that we work the works of Him who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one is able to work.” Jesus, the Sent One, sent the blind man to wash in the “Sent Pool” to receive light from the darkness of his blindness. The name of the pool, Siloam, also reminds us of the wonderful truth that God the Father sent Jesus to our world to save and heal us from the darkness and blindness of sin through His life, death, and resurrection. The early Church Father St. Ambrose, “You, too, should come to Siloam, that is, to Him who was sent by the Father. . . Let Christ wash you, and you will then see. Come and be baptized, it is time; come quickly, and you too will be able to say, ‘I went and I washed’; you will be able to say, ‘I was blind, and now I can see.’”

          Just a few Sundays ago we heard Jesus share this Good News message with Nicodemus (who remember came to Jesus in the dark, at night): “Truly I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. . . . And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:5,14-17).

          God gave His light of faith, forgiveness, and salvation to us not by taking us out of the darkness of this world and our own sins, but by entering into our darkness, by being enveloped in the darkness of our death, be being oppressed by the darkness of our evil, by experiencing the darkness of our blindness. On the cross, Jesus went into the darkness. He died our death and suffered our punishment. In doing so Jesus won our forgiveness, our rescue from the darkness of sin, death, and the devil.

Through Holy Baptism and the Word of the Gospel, our Lord has delivered us personally from the domain of darkness through His beloved Son and has enlightened our hearts in faith to know and follow Christ, the true Light. Colossians 1 reminds us, “[God] has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” This means that you and I no longer live in spiritual blindness and darkness. We bask in the light, in the life, in the goodness and wisdom of Christ’s light. We now “walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord” (Eph. 5: 8-10).

Jesus Christ was sent by the Father to send the blindness and darkness of sin away from us through the forgiveness Jesus won for us on the cross. In Baptism, Christ has truly washed you by means of water and the Word. Your sins are completely forgiven. Your eyes of faith are open to see Jesus who is the Light of the world, your Lord and your Savior. Amen.

     ^[1] Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 51: Sermons I, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1999), 37.