Gifts of Faith: Clarity

2026-19
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

The Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 15, 2026

1 Samuel 16:1-13 ; Psalm 23 ; Ephesians 5:8-14 ; John 9:1-41

“Hmmm, I wonder something … ooh, I don’t quite understand it, but I want to learn more … ohhhh, now I see! … Hey, this opens up a whole new world to me!”

Curiosity leads to thirst. Thirst leads to clarity. Clarity leads to hope. These are all gifts of faith—gifts from the Holy Spirit, who animates us and gives us direction for going about our lives. Those gifts may lead you to get curious about science or psychology or the study of communication. People choose both hobbies and college majors because their God-given curiosity makes them thirsty for clarity.

The Holy Spirit also makes us curious about … the Holy Spirit. About the nature of God. About the life and work and salvation of Jesus. What is all this? Can we understand it on a deeper level than the American cultural osmosis that honestly has never done it justice?

Yes, we can. And in this place, that happens the way it has in every culture the world over: through storytelling.

Two weeks ago we heard about Jesus through the lens of Nicodemus’s curiosity, and last week through the lens of the thirst of the Samaritan woman at the well. So this week is all about clarity—you know, seeing in new ways. Because you know what? Today’s Gospel passage is not about literal blindness … nor is it about the healing of literal blindness.

Now, in numerous healing stories throughout the gospels, the main point is not the miracle of the cure, but the miracle of restoring people to their communities. Yet this story isn’t even about that. It’s about the ways that new forms of clarity can actually alienate us from the communities we’d always depended on before. And it’s about how while that might be painful, ultimately it is a very good thing.

We just heard nearly five percent of John’s gospel—itself only part of a longer scene. We meet a man who has had a place in his culture and his society all his life. Then Jesus comes along, and suddenly the man becomes unmoored. Unlike in other stories, Jesus doesn’t ask this man whether he wants to be healed. He intends to make an example out of him, in a good way, if in a troublesome way. Jesus applies the cure, in the form of mud, then sends him to wash it off … and to see again.

Once the man’s sight is unwittingly restored—or, rather, granted for the first time, since he was blind from birth—he is rejected by those he thought had mattered to him. But he is embraced and accepted by a new family—a found family—centered on Jesus of Nazareth and, therefore, on God’s greatest hopes for him.

The way of Jesus is not the way of smooth sailing, of security, of power and privilege and a life of ease. When Jesus shows up in our lives, he yanks all of our crutches away, and you never know what the consequences of that will be. Chances are we will become familiar with chaos and uncertainty. Yet we will also come to know a form of clarity that no certainty can ever do justice to.

Who has been this blind man’s community? In the largest sense, the Jewish community. He was born and raised in a specific culture: Judaism is this man’s core identity. And because he was born blind, he has always relied on Jewish laws to protect him. Since he cannot work, he needs to beg for alms, and it is understood that he will be sustained in this way for the length of his life. So he is a Jew, and a blind man, and a beggar. He is also a son; his parents do come into this story.

But don’t fall into thinking that this is a story of Jews versus Christians. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s an easy mistake to make, and many people have done so throughout the centuries. Chances are the story was first circulated in the context of a specific Christian community near the year 100 after they had been told by those in their synagogue, “We no longer accept you as Jews.” Contrary to the way the story tells it today, that didn’t happen before then. Followers of Jesus customarily participated in synagogue and temple life all the way until its destruction in the year … what year was it again? (That’s right! 70!)

Only in the decades that followed did the breach between Jews and Christians become permanent. We see it most clearly in Matthew’s gospel, probably written in the 80s, and then in John’s gospel, probably written in the 90s. The pages drip with both heartbreak and anger that Christianity did not manage to reform all of Judaism, but wound up splintering from it. Subsequent violence against Jews has always been a part of Christianity’s shameful legacy.

Accept that the gospel writers were human, and don’t allow their heartbreak to make you hate anyone. See, our focus does not need to be on the communities we leave behind. That’s a waste of energy. When we cannot continue in the direction we’ve always gone, we can strike out in a new and hopeful direction, based on the clarity we’ve attained. Our own clarity does not need to nullify the clarity of others, but only lead us more deeply into loving the world back into wholeness.

For God sees the world differently than we do … and God even sees us differently than we do. Like the man who can now see, when we are rejected and cast out, God finds us and asks, “Do you believe?” And really, that means, “Do you trust me not to abandon you, no matter what else may happen?” This is the clarity we seek—not your garden variety safety and security, but the kind of eternal insurance that can make us as bold as this formerly blind man suddenly becomes.

Did you notice the change? He goes from being blind to seeing, yes, but more importantly, he goes from object to a subject, from lost to found, from uncertain to clear. “Who is the Son of Man,” he asks, “that I may believe in him?” He knows the Source of his healing. He just doesn’t know where specifically to fall down in worship. So Jesus tells him.

The Pharisees are still stuck not believing that anything like this could ever happen, despite all the evidence being shoved right in their faces. They insist on their own certainty. When things turn out in a way that doesn’t allow for that particular certainty, they don’t go looking for clarity. They double down on their self-assurance, and that means casting around for alternative facts. It’s nothing to do with being Jewish or Christian. It’s about insisting that we already know it all—that there is nothing left to learn—nothing to get curious about or thirsty for.

Don’t be like the Pharisees are portrayed in this story. Be like the man who was born blind, thinking he could never see, who is suddenly granted the ability to see in ways that put all his old mentors to shame. It was never about sin and repentance. It was always about welcome, and new community, and joy.

I’ll say it again: Behind everything in the universe is a constant, fundamental, life-giving, mysterious Revealing—clarity where all had been confusion. I want to spend all of my brief life on Earth learning to see that more clearly! How about you?

We’re past the middle of Lent … two weeks until Holy Week. In this place, we find our way from curiosity to thirst to clarity to hope the way it has happened in every culture the world over: through storytelling. Take these stories deeply into your soul. Reread them on your own. Chew on them. Let them go to work on you from the inside. They are all part of the much grander story that we tell in this place every year—the story that I see with greater and greater clarity with every passing year of my life. Amen.