Seeing and Believing, Blindness and Vision
Seeing and Believing, Vision and Blindness
John 9:1-12
February 8, 2026
Rev. Cynthia Cochran-Carney, First Presbyterian Church of San Rafael, CA
As Jesus went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.
His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, “Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?” Some claimed that he was. Others said, “No, he only looks like him.” But he himself insisted, “I am the man.” “How then were your eyes opened?” they asked. He replied, “The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see.” “Where is this man?” they asked him. “I don’t know,” he said. (Full story found in John 9:1-42)
There are questions that seek to keep us in our place. There are questions that reflect our biases & blind spots. And there are questions that help us find the place where we belong and deepen our connections to God, Holy Mystery and the human family. Our reading today invites us to hear all three kinds of questions and to notice the differences between them. This story helps us see more clearly – the world and our hearts.
John draws us into the story of a man, blind from birth, who has an encounter with Jesus that results in his being able to see. For those who had known the man as a blind beggar, the change in his condition is deeply unsettling. They begin to ask questions, first of one another, then of the man. Later in the passage, they take him to the Pharisees, who ask questions of their own. Then they bring in the man’s parents and ask questions of them; they, in turn, direct the questioning back to the man. Lifted from their context, here are the questions they pose:
Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?
Then how were your eyes opened?
Where is he [Jesus]?
How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?
What do you say about him?
Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?
What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?
There is a sense of mounting tension in John’s story, a steady escalation of frustration and fury on the part of the questioners each time the man responds. He is telling them nothing they want to hear, nothing that fits into the beliefs and experiences that they carry. The newly-sighted man possesses a remarkable sense of calm, answering in the only way he knows how: from his own experience. “One thing I do know,” he says, “that though I was blind, now I see.”
When the man’s inquisitors press further, he finally asks a question of his own. “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” His questions are too much for the questioners. John tells us that they begin to revile the man, finally sending him away with an abrupt, rhetorical question: “You were born entirely in sin, and are you trying to teach us?”
Their questions keep raising the temperature of the situation. These questions are not doorways into conversation. These questions are fences, these questions are walls. They are designed to reinforce the boundaries of what these people already know, and to keep their landscape of belief, experience, and knowledge safely contained.
These questioners are arrogant. They are aggravating. It would, therefore, be easy to dismiss them as the bad guys in this story. However, reading this text in the context of lectio divina, urges me to consider where I find those maddening questioners inside myself.
And I feel a measure of compassion for them, because I know the times when, faced with something beyond my own experience, I may want answers to fit into the categories I have. At times, I may want to maintain the boundaries of my beliefs. There are times I have asked a question—of someone else or of myself—that built a wall rather than opening a door.
One of the best practices we can engage in is to ask the questions of others and ourselves, that expand our vision rather than confining it. As Jan Richardson reminds us, good questions carry something of a ritual within them, a sense of the sacramental: they do for us what the act of washing in the pool of Siloam did for the muddy-eyed man. Good questions rinse our eyes. They help us practice seeing. They widen and deepen our vision. They clarify our perception of what is present in our lives and of what is possible. They remind us, that we may not always get answers, but asking a good question makes way for a response.
John wants to make sure that we know that Siloam, the name of the pool in which the man washed his eyes, means Sent. Interesting. We are all being sent. Sometimes we are sent beyond the boundaries of what others find acceptable or comfortable or convenient. Sometimes we are sent beyond the limits of our own vision. Whether or not we know where we are going—and sometimes especially when we think we know where God means for us to go—we are ever needful of learning how to see.
Like Jesus with the blind man, God calls us to participate in claiming the vision that God gives us, so that, as Christ says, God’s works might be revealed in us. We need to keep visiting Siloam to do the washing that will keep our eyes clear.
These are challenging days in our country when we consider what we see and what that means. How does what we see shape what we believe? Or maybe the question is - how does what we believe shape what we see? Both. How do we seek clarity?
In a recent article in The Atlantic entitled “Believe Your Eyes,” journalist Charlie Warzel wrote this:
In the past 18 days (In mid January) federal agents have used excessive force against numerous people in Minneapolis and killed two of them—first Renee Good, now Pretti. We know about this violence—we can see it ourselves from numerous angles—largely because of video and photographic evidence taken by everyday citizens, many of whom have purposefully set out to make sure that they are recording what is happening for the world to see.
….A dark irony of our current age is that there is more video and photographic evidence than ever before, and yet propagandists can coerce or convince others to not believe what they can see with their own eyes.
What do we see? Will we trust our eyes when some people in power, like some of powerful in John’s gospel story, deny what happened or what people saw?
We are called to see with clarity, with compassion, with the eyes and heart of Christ. When we see cruelty, when we see racism and hate in actions and words and images, then we name it and say No, no that is wrong. We use our moral compass and the lenses of our deepest values rooted in Christ’s vision.
What else do we see? I also see so many examples of neighbors helping neighbors. I see you caring for each other. Hosting the Sing Love, Peace and Hope to the World next Saturday.
There are a variety of ways we as human beings can use what we see and observe and question we ask to seek deeper truths, to change our minds, to be willing let go of what we had believed and be transformed. Spiritual formation, serving others, reading and study theologians and a variety of writers. And the scientific method. I was struck by the use of this in an ad by Eli Lilly company during the opening ceremonies for the winter Olympics
The commercial makes use of footage from a 1950s educational film on the scientific method, while its visuals comprise a range of historical and more modern shots of both scientists and athletes at work.
The clips play out as the narrator begins listing the steps of the scientific method: observe, question, hypothesize, experiment, test. Repeats. Now start again.
The process repeats, this time making it to the final step of “share results.”
There are images of laboratories and other images of athletes along the way.
One image at the end – “Share results” is the creation of the polio vaccine.
Observe and question. Yes. In science, this is a critical part of the process.
In our spiritual lives and as citizens, we too are invited to do this – in our inner life and our collective life.
Jesus called the disciples at the beginning of the John’s gospel by saying, “come and see.” To come and see is the invitation to discipleship. To come and see is also our invitation into authentic community.
John closes this story with questions that are good eye-clearing questions. Jesus, John tells us, finds the seeing man and asks him, “Do you believe in the Son of Humanity ?” He answers Jesus’ question with a question: “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” His question leads, not to a wall, but to worship, to love, to grace.
It’s the Pharisees who offer the final line in the long litany of questions that this story contains. Overhearing the exchange between the sighted man and Jesus, they ask, “Surely we are not blind, are we?”
Are we?
How well is your spirit seeing these days? What questions are coming your way in this season? What questions are you offering? Are they doorways or walls? How do they take you deeper into the mystery of Christ? Are there deeper questions beneath your questions? What questions will help keep your eyes clear so that you can see, be transformed and be sent? Amen.
Resources
Rev. Jan Richardson, “Here’s Mud In Your Eye,” 2.27.08 Painted Prayerbook blog https://paintedprayerbook.com/2008/02/27/lent-4-heres-mud-in-your-eye/
Charlie Warzel, “Believe Your Eyes,” 1.25.26 The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/01/minneapolis-protests-footage/685753/
“Lilly likens relentless work of scientific and athletic progress in Winter Olympics ad,” 2.6.26