Sermon: March 15, 2026
Readings: 1 Samuel 16:1-13, Psalm 23, John 9: 1-41
In this Sunday’s Gospel from John 9, Jesus encounters a man who had been blind since birth—a man who spent his life sitting beside a dusty road while people passed him by without truly seeing him. For many, his life was reduced to a question: Who sinned? Surely there must be some explanation for his suffering.
But Jesus refuses to see this man as a problem to be explained. Instead, Jesus sees a person—a human being created in the image of God.
This moment reveals something profound about the way God sees the world. Again and again throughout scripture, God notices the people the world overlooks. A young shepherd boy standing in a field while everyone else is looking at his older brothers. A blind beggar sitting beside a dusty road while everyone else walks past him. Human beings barely noticed by others, but never overlooked by God.
Yet the story also exposes another kind of blindness. The religious leaders, who were certain they understood God and believed they saw everything clearly, fail to recognize what God is doing right in front of them. Their certainty becomes its own kind of blindness. As Jesus says, “I came into this world so that those who do not see may see, and those who think they see may become blind.”
This Gospel invites us to reflect on our own sight. How often do we pass by people without truly seeing them? In a world shaped by fear, political rhetoric, and social division, people are often reduced to labels, talking points, and categories—objects to be managed rather than neighbors to be loved.
But the Gospel reminds us of a deeper truth: every human being carries the sacred dignity of being created by God.
Jesus reveals himself as the Good Shepherd, the one who seeks out those who have been cast aside. Just as he went looking for the man who had been rejected by others, Christ continues to seek out the overlooked in our world today.
And perhaps most importantly, God sees you. God sees the burdens you carry, the struggles you hide, and the parts of your life that feel unseen or forgotten.
The same Christ who stopped along that dusty road still walks beside us today, opening our eyes and teaching us to see what God sees: the sacred dignity of every human life.
