I See That I Am Blind: A Lenten Sermon
I See That I Am Blind
Sermon preached at Church of the Holy Nativity, Clarendon Hills, IL March 26, 2017
I.
Here’s a fun fact: technically speaking, the Gospel of John contains no parables. Those famous stories of Jesus are all found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But John does something even more remarkable: he makes the entirety of Jesus’ life into a kind of parable. And the story of the healing of the blind man in John 9 is a great example of this. Like any good parable, there is the initial, surface-level story. But there is also something much deeper going on, and even a surprise twist at the end.
Think about some of the famous parables of Jesus. Take the prodigal son, for instance. This story initially appears to be about a selfish son who squanders his inheritance and who is welcomed back due to the boundless love of his father who lavishes gifts upon him regardless of what he has done in the past. All of that is true—and yet at the very end we discover the story is also about the…
Sermon preached at Church of the Holy Nativity, Clarendon Hills, IL March 26, 2017
I.
Here’s a fun fact: technically speaking, the Gospel of John contains no parables. Those famous stories of Jesus are all found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But John does something even more remarkable: he makes the entirety of Jesus’ life into a kind of parable. And the story of the healing of the blind man in John 9 is a great example of this. Like any good parable, there is the initial, surface-level story. But there is also something much deeper going on, and even a surprise twist at the end.
Think about some of the famous parables of Jesus. Take the prodigal son, for instance. This story initially appears to be about a selfish son who squanders his inheritance and who is welcomed back due to the boundless love of his father who lavishes gifts upon him regardless of what he has done in the past. All of that is true—and yet at the very end we discover the story is also about the…
