A Famine Not of Bread

"The Blind Man Washes in the Pool of Siloam" by James Tissot Click here to listen to this sermon. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! Today we have the third of a series of sermons on the Gospel readings for the month of March. Each reading features a specific individual who was encountered by Jesus and was changed. They lived in times and places far from ours, but we have more in common with them than we might initially imagine.  The Gospel reading for this week, John 9, puts a blind man in the spotlight. The text is long and complex with several subplots. The disciples asked the wrong question. The parents distanced themselves from their son. The Pharisees bullied and refused to believe. The neighbors were confused. And then there was the mud and the spit. These details and subplots are all significant. But rather than trying to unpack them all, we’ll stick with the man in the middle, a man born blind. This man had lived his entire life...

"Christ Healing the Blind" by El Greco Click here to listen to this sermon. “As [Jesus] passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:1-3). Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! Have you ever noticed how John, in his Gospel, takes us into small personal encounters with Jesus? Rather than give us an overview of Jesus’ ministry, listing regions and various kinds of healing, John takes us into the heart of Jesus’ work, asking us to meditate on how He interacts with people. The last couple of weeks we’ve had Jesus and Nicodemus, Jesus and the Samaritan woman. Today, it is Jesus and the man born blind. In these moments, John offers us an intimate view of how God works, personally, individually, then and now in the world....