Our John 9 Gospel reading begins with what feels like a very human impulse: Who’s to blame? The disciples see a man, blind from birth, and immediately reach for an explanation that keeps the world tidy. Was it his sin or his parents’ sin? Why would a good God permit this? If suffering can be traced to fault, then maybe it can be controlled. Maybe it can be avoided.
Jesus refuses the premise entirely. “This happened so that God’s works might be revealed in him,” Jesus says, not as a justification for suffering, but as a redirection of attention. Stop looking for blame. Start looking for what love is about to do.
That shift, from searching to explain to transformation, sets everything else in motion.
On this Transfiguration-adjacent Sunday, we’re used to talking about light: dazzling light on a mountain, Jesus glowing with divine clarity, the voice from heaven saying, “Listen to him.” We love light when it is heavenly and reassures us when it confirms what we already believe. When it feels holy but not disruptive.
But the light in John 9 is not polite. Jesus heals a man by making mud, rubbing it on his eyes, and telling him to wash. When the man comes back with sight, everything breaks open. The miracle is undeniable, but instead of celebration, there is interrogation. Just like Pastor Emillie has pointed out as being so common in John, the neighbors argue. The religious authorities investigate. The healed man is summoned again and again, pressured to explain himself, to explain Jesus, to fit the experience into an approved theological framework.
The irony is sharp: the man who could not see now sees clearly, while those who are certain they see are increasingly blind.
This is where John’s gospel becomes less about eyesight and more about courage. The healed man does not suddenly become a theologian. He doesn’t have answers to every doctrinal question. He simply tells the truth of his experience: I was blind. Now I see. When pressed to denounce Jesus, he refuses to perform the expected script. His honesty becomes an act of resistance.
And that honesty costs him. He is cast out.
Transfiguration light often feels glorious from a distance. But up close, light reveals fault lines. It exposes systems that rely on silence, conformity, and fear. In John 9, illumination doesn’t make life easier; it makes it truer.
For many of us, this story lands close to home. Many of us know what it is like to be questioned for telling the truth of what we have seen and lived. We know what it is like to be told, “Give glory to God by agreeing with us,” when what is really being demanded is compliance. The command is to assimilate. We know what it is like to be pushed to the margins because our testimony doesn’t fit someone else’s certainty.
John 9 reminds us that faith is not about defending perfect explanations. It is about bearing witness, to healing, to change, to grace that refuses to stay within our approved boundaries. And then comes the most tender moment in the story.
After the man is cast out, Jesus goes looking for him.
This is not incidental. Jesus does not just initiate healing; Jesus remains present for the social and spiritual consequences of that healing. He finds the man and asks, “Do you believe?” Not as a test, but as an invitation into relationship. This is his invitation to a transfiguring truth.
The light of God is not reserved for mountaintops or moments of spectacle. It shines in muddy encounters, in contested truths, in the quiet dignity of someone who refuses to deny their own healing. It shines when Jesus seeks out those who have been excluded and says, in effect, You are not alone. You belong. We need to counter the national narrative that led to some to condemn the Bad Bunny halftime show. We need to rise above last week's infamous racist tweet or "truth".
As a congregation, we are called, not merely to admire the light in a muddy encounter, but to live by those moments. That means choosing curiosity over blame. Listening to lived experience. Trusting that God is revealed not through control, but through compassion that disrupts unjust systems.
The question John 9 leaves us with is not, Who sinned? It is. What does it mean to see?
To see clearly may mean losing the comfort of certainty. It may mean standing with those whose stories challenge the status quo. It may mean trusting that the God who dazzles on the mountain is the same God kneeling in the dust, shaping new sight out of earth and breath.
And it may mean believing, again and again, that even when the light unsettles us, it is still the light that heals.
