22 Mar Sermon for the 4th Sunday of Lent, Year A
The Community here at Mucknell is, as with any group, made up of diverse individuals with varying opinions on just about everything! As such, sermons posted on our website represent the ideas of the preachers who wrote and delivered them, not necessarily those of the entire Community.
Sunday 15th March, 2026
Our Sunday reading schedule – the lectionary – does some apparently strange things. Why ever is the story of Samuel anointing David as the future king of Israel twinned with the story of Jesus healing the blind man and all the hoo-ha with the Pharisees over that?
The one thing the 2 stories have in common is that the person God is choosing for a particular work (in God’s scheme of things – otherwise known as the Kingdom) was seen as insignificant by the people around them. David hasn’t even been sent for by his father, who assumes one of the older brothers must be who Samuel is looking for.
The man born blind is constantly overlooked:
The disciples talked about him to Jesus as if he wasn’t there.
Jesus speaks first indirectly then directly to him.
The man’s neighbours, astonished at his healing, all discussed it with each other. Again, as if he were not there. And all the time he was trying to interject, “It is me. It really is!”
They missed his need to share his joy and celebration and were only concerned with who the miracle worker was.
The man was made to go to the Pharisees.
It didn’t seem to matter what he wanted or needed.
The Pharisees didn’t believe his testimony and asked his parents.
Even his parents were too afraid to back up their son and distanced themselves from what had happened to him, fearful of authority, power.
And again the Pharisees, rather than hearing what the man said and accepting it, cannot escape their prescribed image of God and how God was supposed to work. They dismissed the man.
Jesus, by contrast, goes to find him.
Throughout, the man born blind simply tells the truth about himself and the truth about Jesus.
He simply tells it like it is. His persistence is astonishing. As astonishing as the miracle that has happened to him. He “sees” clearly. At every turn, no matter how often he is knocked back he just keeps saying, “This is true. I don’t understand it all, but this is true. I was blind. Now I am not. This man did it.”
Is the invitation of the two stories – David and the man born blind – perhaps, to be open to be astonished by God? To be ready for God to be about the place and doing stuff and recognise it. See it. As the second reading put it, to “Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.”
It is very hard to see people. Truly to see them. Even those we love and live with, we take for granted some of the time; we dismiss some of the time; we ignore, some of the time. Similarly, people who are differently abled – whether living with a physical difference, or a neuro-diversity, or something else that marks them out as “other” – often find themselves being talked about or talked over. (Just what the disciples did in the Gospel story.) The Radio 4 program was called “Does he take sugar” because so often the carer would be spoken to not the person themselves. I experienced that taking Sr Mary Bernard to the GP. Even when I wheeled her chair up to the lower wheelchair-accessible counter, healthcare staff (who should know and be trained better) spoke with me, until I made them speak to Sister directly, by referring everything to her. Jesus’ invitation, then and now, is to see the individual and take a risk, by reaching out to speak directly to the someone who is different from myself; to offer a space for encounter; to invite hospitality to happen.
When Jesus speaks directly to the man (in contrast to the disciples talking about him) Jesus tells the man:
That his blindness is for God’s glory.
That it has a positive purpose.
That it isn’t something that has “gone wrong”,
And far from being someone who is there just to be dismissed, he is the means of God’s works to happen.
That is some affirmation! His blindness isn’t negative, impairment, nothingness, diminishment. He is no more sinful, or impaired, or irrelevant, than anyone else, in God’s sight. Jesus is giving the man such esteem, such human worth.
Now, it is a long journey for any of us to come to terms with our impairments – whatever they are, and we all have them; to come to terms with them so much that we can see them in this positive light – as constructive things, not destructive. But this is at least part of God’s healing process. For everyone.
Healing is not necessarily a mending of a problem, fixing people, or making the illness or incapacity go away. Healing is much more about becoming fully who God made each of us to be. The “Try(ing) to find out what is pleasing to the Lord” in the sense of what God is enabling through us as we are. It is stepping beyond the pre-fixed idea we may have of ourselves, or that others push onto us, and beyond our pre-fixed idea of what we want healing to be. Not easy!
Jesus’ invitation – shown by the man born blind – is that, just as we are (impairments and impediments, warts and all) we can be instruments of God’s glory in the world. When we put our faith in him and faithfully witness to him, even if we don’t fully understand everything that is happening to us, we can be instruments of God’s glory in the world.
In is not easy for us to allow that kind of healing, nor for us to mend and build our relationships between ourselves and others, however close. It is very difficult to see people. Truly see them. We are a little afraid of someone who is different, whether they are in a wheelchair, have different skin colour, customs and culture, practice a different lifestyle, wear distinctive clothes… “They” are not like “us”. And it is very easy for each group to gravitate to their own, building barriers, consciously or unconsciously. (As the blind man’s neighbours did.) Subtly to exclude someone. For example: not to notice someone’s discomfort with a viewpoint we, and the majority of the group, think perfectly natural.
Jesus’ invitation is to be curious about the other person, to reach out, to affirm the other person as they are and find out what their needs are. To sit with them and listen. Invite them to enter our world too. To accept, and find we are accepted. To seek to see, and find we are being seen too. To love, and find it creates love. And this is part of the monastic project too. Giving our full attention – to God, to the people and things and events around us – and to see them simply as they are, without projecting all our “stuff”. To appreciate, affirm. To remind people that they are God’s wonderful creation – if we can find a non-cringe-making way to do that! The acceptance and listening, curiosity, and courage to engage, is probably how we do just that.
And what of the disciples, who ignored the man? What of the neighbours who, gravitated into a group set against him? His parents, who distanced themselves from him? The Pharisees who reviled and dismissed him? The door remains open. Jesus remains accessible and engages with them. Everyone is created for God’s glory. It just requires our cooperation, our simplicity of heart, like the man born blind. The man himself remains nameless. He could be you or me. How will we respond to Jesus’ faith in us and his affirmation that the good of God can be accomplished in and through us? How do you see that – this “trying to find out what is pleasing to the Lord” this Lent?”
Sr. Alison
Image credit: Colored light bathes the interior of Saint-Julien in Brioude, France., from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=47117 [retrieved March 22, 2026]. Original source: Image donated by Jim Womack and Anne Richardson.