Sermon – Who’s really seeing?

(I preached this sermon at Christ Lutheran Church in Harrisburg, PA on February 15 in response to John 9:1-41.)

Let me begin with a story.

A few years ago I was sitting across the table from someone I knew well. We were both speaking English. Same country. Same church background. We were talking about immigration, poverty, and policing.

And I realized something.

We were using the same words,
but we were not speaking the same language.

We said words like justice, freedom, neighbor, faith.
But those words meant very different things depending on whose pain you could see and whose pain you ignored.

That’s the world we’re living in right now.

People say they follow Jesus, but sometimes what they support looks nothing like the Jesus we meet in the Gospels.
Jesus who touches the excluded.
Jesus who stands with the poor.
Jesus who challenges power.
Jesus who listens to people nobody else listens to.

So we have to ask:
Who is it that we’re really seeing?

That question sits at the center of John 9.

On the surface, this is a story about a man born blind who receives sight. But underneath that, it asks something deeper:

What does it really mean to see?

The man who couldn’t see begins to recognize who Jesus is. Meanwhile, the religious leaders who are sure they understand everything cannot recognize Jesus standing right in front of them.

And that’s not just their story.
It’s ours too.

Because seeing Jesus changes you.
It shakes what you thought was certain.
It asks where your loyalty really sits.

And seeing Jesus costs something.

As the story unfolds, the man keeps growing.
At first he’s just trying to explain what happened.
Then he starts speaking up.
By the end he stands firm, even when it gets him thrown out.

Seeing didn’t make life easier.
It made it harder.

That’s often the truth.

Martin Luther King Jr. saw Jesus in the struggle for basic human dignity.
He followed that vision.
And it cost him his life.

Today we see another kind of blindness spreading in parts of Christianity. Some voices now say empathy itself is dangerous.

For example, Allie Beth Stuckey has said:

“Empathy is not always a virtue… it can lead us away from truth.”

That turns the Gospel upside down.

Jesus moves toward suffering.
He does not avoid it.

Martin Luther understood this. In the Heidelberg Disputation he wrote:

“A theologian of the cross calls a thing what it actually is.”

He said the cross shows us where God really is — among suffering and weakness — while what he called the “theology of glory” looks for God in power, control, and winning.

When Christians reject empathy, they aren’t protecting truth.
They are refusing to see Christ in hurting people.

Jesus calls his followers somewhere very clear:

Be close to suffering.
Stand with the rejected.
Tell the truth about harm.
Love neighbors as people, not ideas.

That path will never be comfortable.
But it is where Jesus is.

Fear runs through this story.

The parents are afraid.
The leaders are afraid.
The healed man is navigating fear.

Fear changes how people see.

I remember sitting with a family after a doctor delivered painful news. Everything was explained clearly. But one person kept saying, “That can’t be right.”

Not because they didn’t understand.
Because accepting it would hurt too much.

Fear makes people hold onto safer stories instead of difficult truth.

We see this everywhere.
Fear of losing status.
Fear of losing belonging.
Fear of being wrong.

Fear shapes what people allow themselves to see.

The healed man becomes a problem for the system.
Instead of celebrating, leaders question him.
Eventually they push him out.

We see this today as well.

When Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested that pursuing every abuser could collapse the system, she revealed a painful truth about how many institutions operate. Protecting the structure becomes more important than protecting the people harmed within it.

And we live with that contradiction.

We say we care about victims.
We say we value the vulnerable.
We say justice matters.

But then we invest energy and power into protecting systems that abuse them.

Our words and our actions are often at odds.

Statements like that are one reason survivors — especially survivors of sexual abuse — wait so long to speak. They’ve watched what happens when others come forward.

They are doubted.
Ignored.
Treated like the disruption.

They learn the system protects itself.

That is exactly what happens in John 9.
The man’s story challenges the leaders, so they silence him.

Jesus does something else.

He sees the person.
He meets the human being in front of him.

Many of us know how powerful that can be. Sitting together. Listening. Sharing space. Being treated as human.

Healing often begins there.

The healed man tells his story again and again.
No one listens.

That pattern continues today.

Communities have insisted that we say the names of those killed by police violence because naming restores humanity.

George Floyd.
Breonna Taylor.
Tamir Rice.
Philando Castile.
Sandra Bland.

Listening matters.

Because ignoring voices allows harm to continue. Survivors are dismissed. Communities are overlooked. Injustice repeats.

Listening changes us.
Listening calls us to respond.

Jesus listens.
And listening opens the door to healing.

Here is where the Gospel turns.

After the man is thrown out, Jesus goes looking for him.

Hold onto that.

Jesus goes looking for him.

Because life wears people down. Systems exhaust people. Trauma lingers. Survival takes everything some days.

Some of you carry wounds passed down through generations.
Some of you have stopped trusting institutions.
Some of you are just tired.

And some of you came thinking you were here to help others, not realizing you need healing too.

Jesus doesn’t wait for strength.
He doesn’t require everything to be figured out.

He seeks people who have been pushed aside.

Hope begins there.

Hope is not pretending life is easy.
Hope is knowing you are not alone inside the struggle.

Hope says you are seen.
Hope says your voice matters.
Hope says your life has worth beyond usefulness.

And hope changes how we see others.
They are not projects.
They are not causes.
They are people loved by God.

Hope keeps us moving when everything says quit.

That is what Christ offers when he finds the man again.

This story ends with a question.

Jesus asks:

“Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

That question still reaches us.

Belief is not just agreement.
It is trust.
It is choosing how we live.

We say we value justice.
We say we value dignity.
We say we value human life.

If you want to know what someone truly values, look at actions.
Look at budgets.
Look at policies.
Look at who is protected and who is discarded.

Words speak.
Actions reveal truth.

So Christ’s question meets us here:

Will we see?
Will we trust what we see?
Will we live differently because of it?

The man answers, “Lord, I believe.”
And he worships.

That response is still open to us.

To see Christ in suffering people.
To refuse blindness shaped by fear.
To listen when voices are dismissed.
To stand with those systems push aside.

The miracle is not only that sight was given long ago.

The miracle is that sight is still offered now.

Christ still seeks.
Christ still asks.
Christ still invites.

May we answer — not just with words — but with our lives.

Thanks be to God.