Fourth Sunday in Lent

Vivian Lewin, Spiritual Director in the Diocese of Montreal

Gospel John 9:1-41

Well, whose fault was it?

When somebody becomes ill, or is disabled, or simply takes a tumble, this question pops up.  Not just for Christians, either.  My osteopath said that her clients, as secular as they often are, characteristically ask what they have done wrong when their bodies stop working well. My own brother, when he was diagnosed with cancer years ago, phoned to tell me, and quickly said, in a voice overbrimming with frustration, “Hey, I did everything right!”

Theologians who study the Gospel of John, where we find this morning’s lesson, say that John does not understand sin as a moral category of behaviour; rather, it is a theological state of separation from God.  Cf.  “I am the vine, you are the branches” [John 15:5].

Further, as much as we might prefer to take this story on its surface, as referring to God’s ability to heal on a physical level, we need to see what else is going on.

First, because we risk sounding callous if we identify people with their disabilities or frailties, perhaps because we’re uncomfortable with limitation itself. If we let ourselves do that, we denigrate the reality that we are living as mortals. We ARE mortals.  And it is in this mortal life that we pray, as one famous collect says :

“Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal.”

Now, I know I’m quoting the collect from the first Sunday in Advent.  And we are now deep into Lent, we are in fact marking the Sunday of respite known as Laetere, Rejoice!  That’s why you see pink vestments instead of purple ones, and flowers… perhaps even pink roses… decorating the altar.

I want to remind you that the church year has two great portions.  Part One stretches from Advent through Lent to Easter and Pentecost. Part Two we call “ordinary time”. Each of these parts calls us to grow in faith in different ways, although we never stop responding to these calls by limiting  our attention to half of our Christian life in either of those portions.

In Ordinary time–Part Two– which extends through the summer and fall up to the start of Advent, unfolds Jesus’ activities beyond his miraculous birth and gruelling passion.  More of his teachings, healings, encounters, travels, conversations. How he trained up his disciples.  How the church evolved, too, and grew as a vessel to carry the Good News farther and farther afield. How did it do that so astonishingly?  The Holy Spirit worked on the seeds planted during Part One, where we find ourselves today,  receiving Christ as our companion and getting to know Jesus as our saviour, our redeemer. It is in his humanity, after all, that we can begin to grasp who he is, and come to know the one who says … immediately after the chapter we are reading this morning…”I am the good Shepherd.”  (John 10:1-18)

Soon, soon, we will joyfully witness the baptism and confirmation of new members.  We will, Godwilling, have accompanied Christ on Holy Thursday, and again on Good Friday, as he dies. On Saturday night, the church will be dark. A fire will be kindled outside the church, and an enormous candle will be lit from it and then brought inside in procession, and its light will spread from hand to hand as everyone lights their own candle. We will hear Bible passages and perhaps other writings that tell the story of salvation, all the way through to the Resurrection early on Easter.

Every single Sunday, whether this is one of our first Sundays or whether we have been coming to receive holy communion for years and years, we step deeper into this story of salvation. Today, we encounter someone who is meeting Jesus for the first time.  This blind person, our sibling… whose name we never know… serves as a stand-in for us.  Notice that, at the start, he doesn’t ask for anything at all, much less know who Jesus is!  Jesus simply heals him. There is no time to lose!

“We must work the works of [the One] who sent me while it is day” Jesus says: “Night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” (v.5)

When the fellow returns from washing in the pool of Siloam, we see him becoming more and more his own person. And simultaneously, gaining a progressively clearer sense of who Jesus is.

First, he is not even asked to give any testimony himself.  The Pharisees, who are the gatekeepers to religious correctness in that place, ask his parents about him. But they are reluctant to get involved.  They know.. everybody in Jerusalem knows… that Jesus is a dangerous outsider and the authorities are on his case.

And when they question him, his own truth rings out more and more clearly. He shows no sign of fear. First, he simply names simply “The man called Jesus”.   Then, “he is a prophet.”  Then “this man is from God.” At that point they cast him out.

It’s then that Jesus learns he has been driven out, searches for him and finds him (exactly the way a shepherd searches for a sheep) asks “do you believe” and he says “Lord, I believe,” and worships him.

Jesus will go on to say “my sheep hear my voice” echoing the promise of abundance in Psalm 23:

You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
forever.

This abundant life is not a lottery win in our earthly life.  There’s a fuller dimension, one we can hold to when the valley of the shadow of death does threaten to close us in… as indeed it is closing in on Jesus in Jerusalem during these approaching days. And today, too, when people we know, or don’t know, including some who have no one to pray for them, are in fear or peril.

Jesus said “I am the light of the world.” and “I am the good shepherd”

This is exactly what Jesus promises each one of us. All of us. And his promises are trustworthy. So on Easter, as babies and grownups are baptised, each one is offered a candle and together, we say “Receive the light of Christ as a sign that you have passed from darkness into light.”

My dear friends, walk in that light during these last weeks of Lent and in all the weeks to come.

Thanks be to God.  Amen

Notes:

The lessons for this morning of the Fourth Sunday in Lent , March 15, 2026, are:  1 Samuel 16:1-13, Psalm 23, Ephesians 5:8-14, and John 9:1-41

In preparing these remarks I referred to the New Interpreter’s Study Bible (Nashville, Abington, 2003) and Raymond Brown’s Anchor Bible commentary on the Gospel of John (New York, Doubleday, 1966) and listened to the weekly Sermon Brainwave podcast prepared by Working Preacher.

The image on the web version of this sermon is a portion of a painting by Duccio di Buoninsegna. It is in the public domain.