Christ Lutheran Church in Aptos, CA
Assigned Lectionary Scripture: 1 Samuel 16:1-13 | Ephesians 5:8-14 | John 9:1-41
Note: Again, my lav microphone didn’t pick up the audio, but here’s the manuscript and re-recorded audio… Enjoy!
When was the last time you said (to someone else, out loud)...
I don’t know?
Not “I’m not sure.”
Or “that’s a great question.”
These are the polite hedges we use. I’m talking about the real thing.
I. Don’t. Know.
Because the world tells us that our “I don’t knows” must be resolved before we’re allowed to experience anything that looks like a blessing.
You might’ve come in here today with some “I don’t knows” of your own, like...
I don’t know if AI is going to take my job. Or my kids’ or grandkids’ jobs.
I don’t know if what I’m watching on the news is the beginning of another endless war or just another atrocity that’ll be buried under next week’s atrocities.
I don’t know why I faithfully sip out of paper straws while the world’s militaries torch more fossil fuel in one airstrike than I will in my entire lifetime.
I don’t know why I got the diagnosis I got, or why I’m still here when someone else isn’t.
I don’t know why my political party — or, the political system itself — seems to have gone off the rails entirely.
I could go on. But you get it... The little voice in our head — echoed by little voices in our world — tells us: settle all of that first. Then you can receive something good and be justified for that blessing.
So... Into this world comes a man born blind, sitting by the side of the road.
And the first thing the disciples do (bless their hearts) is ask Jesus whose fault it is.
Which is a very human thing to do.
We want a ledger. We want Sin to explain suffering, fault to explain failure, moral logic to sort out the chaos. It’s just how our brains work: Give me the ledger, Jesus. Tell me who or what to blame. Is it this or that?
To which Jesus says: neither.
And then, before anyone can ask a follow-up question, he spits in the dirt, makes mud, and smears it on the man’s eyes.
This isn’t a dignified healing. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t pay for this service at Esalen (some people might; they pay for all kinds of things at Esalen).
This is spit. And dirt. On his face. It’s gratuitous and absurd and entirely unconcerned with whether he’s earned it, understood it, or even asked for it.
He’s not catechized. He doesn’t even seem to know who Jesus is. He’s just... got a muddy face now. And sent to go wash.
But this is what grace looks like. Excessive. Undeserved. Messy.
This is the cross in miniature. God getting into the dirt with us. Refusing to be the cosmic accountant from on high. Absorbing the world’s desperate need to make the ledger balance.
The resurrection is God laughing at the ledger entirely, as if to show us it was never real in the first place.
So the man goes and washes. And he comes back seeing.
And then, the next thirty-four verses...
are the world trying to argue him back into the darkness.
First, the crowd: Is this even the same guy?
Then the Pharisees: This Jesus is a sinner.
Then his own parents, who don’t say a single word in his defense because they’re afraid of what it’ll cost them.
Then the Pharisees again, but more desperate now.
And every single time, the man says some version of this:
I. Don’t. Know.
Three times, John puts it on his lips. (This is deliberate.)
I don’t know where he is.
I don’t know if he’s a sinner.
I don’t know.
But in this story, his not-knowing isn’t a weakness. He’s the only honest one in the room. Everyone else is performing certainty as a defense mechanism.
You might see this a lot if you look around the internet: performative certainty...
But this man refuses to claim more than his experience gives him.
One thing I do know: I was blind, and now I see.
That’s it. That’s all he’s got.
And it’s everything.
In our Lenten devotional, Madeleine L’Engle (Wrinkle in Time) writes about a moment on her 40th birthday when she got the rejection letter that seemed to end everything. She thought she was done. She covered her typewriter. Walked around the room crying. Defeated. And then she noticed... Her subconscious was already working out the next novel... About failure!
She realized her defeat wasn’t her punishment. It was the fertile ground that God was working with.
She uncovered the typewriter. And she wrote: when the decision is made in the abyss, it is quite clear that it is not one’s own decision at all.
Grace was already moving before she knew it. It’s always already moving before we know it.
The Pharisees, I want to be clear, are not the villains of this story. They are us. They are the best that religious seriousness has to offer. And it’s precisely that false, stodgy certainty that makes this healing intolerable to them.
Jesus says: those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.
The problem isn’t darkness. The problem is insisting you can see just fine without light. Because that’s what closes you off from the blessing.
As L’Engle put it (if any of you are looking for tattoo ideas, this is a good one; she says): “Logic goes no further than dust to dust.”
We all come into this sanctuary with our own dusty “I don’t knows.” But we also each come in with countless blessings we don’t know why we deserve. Or where they come from.
The other day I drove up the coast to San Francisco for lunch with a friend. The wildflowers are starting to bloom. Pigeon Point lighthouse looked better than any postcard I’ve seen. The whole drive was one stunning vista after another. What a blessing to behold. To just exist... And be able to take in this gratuitous beauty. But then the little voice crept in. Wait... War is looming. Bombs are dropping. Innocent people are dying. Markets are failing. Knock it off, you Pollyanna!
But I have to remind myself... Jesus never waited for the chaos to stop before he healed and blessed. He did his work while the world was still a mess. He didn’t wait for the man to justify his own blessing. He did his healing work in the middle of the chaos, uninvited, excessive, and absurd, as always. That’s just how Jesus operates.
Paul tells the Ephesians: once you were darkness.
Not in darkness. Were darkness.
And now... you are light.
Not near light. Or moving toward it. You are it.
The ground under your not-knowing is already lit by grace. Right now.
When you come forward in a few minutes to receive Communion, I’m going to make mud with my spit and smear it on your face.
Just kidding!
But not entirely. Because what happens at this table is not so different. Jesus is here. In the middle of the bleakness in our world. He uses simple earthy elements to become one with us. He offers something mysterious, absurd, undeserved, and really hard to explain. And he says: receive this. Before you have it figured out. Before the ledger in your head balances. Before you know.
Come forward not-knowing. And receive.
Because, as the blind man taught us... that’s the only thing we can do. And it’s everything.
After most of a seemingly lighthearted homily, you made me cry at the end. I love this story, and how the formerly blind man speaks truth to power, and that he becomes a worshipper of Jesus after all the fuss. His sight is his truth.