Welcome to the CommonsCast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information.

This is the day where we rehearse Jesus' arrival into ancient Jerusalem. And we know this, we know that the ancient city was packed with throngs of Jewish pilgrims that had gathered to celebrate the high Passover feast. And as Jesus crested the hill to come into the city, John's gospel tells us that many of these pilgrims went out to meet him and his followers. They were waving palm branches and they were welcoming him as a long anticipated revolutionary and ruler that they hoped would lift the heavy hand of Roman oppression. And if you've been tracking with this signs of things to come series we have been in, you know that Jesus inspired a lot of this kind of attention.

I mean, let's be honest, Jesus did a lot of incredible things. When you think about it, multiplying wine and bread is a surefire strategy to becoming an influencer. I don't know why more people don't do it. Right? But the truth is that Jesus had these ideas that sparked a lot of hope.

And you know what? The gospels tell us repeatedly how Jesus undermined and confronted the efforts of crowds drawn to those ideas when they tried to make him king, he sort of pushed back. And this image of a humble Palm Sunday entry is just another example of this. And what I love about the story that we covered last week when Jesus comes to his friends in the middle of a lake walking on water is that Jesus seems to have understood what it was costing his friends to stick with him. And right there, as they're sitting in that boat arguing about who gets shotgun and exhausted from rowing and trying to figure out why Jesus isn't coming through in the ways that they imagined.

Right there, in that moment of no return, Jesus shows up in the most unexpected way with a reminder and with a sign that their hope wasn't misplaced, that there was good still yet to come. And that brings us to the sixth sign in John's gospel where we need to talk about a better story and what you know and characters and certainty. And we will come to all of that in a moment, but first, maybe this has been a crazy week for you, maybe you have been bringing some of your heaviness with you into these moments. Let's take a moment now to quiet our hearts and minds, maybe even our bodies. Let's take a breath.

Let's pray together. God of all, of this expanding universe that we can't really fathom. You're God of this beautiful world, this beautiful day, all the caring community around us, but then also the deep harrowing conflicts that we see. You're God of our stories here and the joy, sorrow that we bring with us. And we ask, would you come and be present now in word and in image drawn from ancient memory, in the space we make to hear of whispers of what could be.

And grant us grace to perceive your kindness, the great goodness that's in the world seeking and finding, the goodness that's leading and keeping us always. These things we pray now in the name of Christ, our hope. Amen. Alright. Well, let's jump right in.

Our story for today unfolds throughout the entire ninth chapter of John, and that chapter begins this way. As Jesus went along, he saw a man born blind or blind from birth. And 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, Jesus said. Night is coming when no one will be able to work, and while I'm in the world, I am the light of the world. After saying this, Jesus spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man's eyes. And go, he told him, wash in the pool of Salom.

So the man went and washed and came home seeing. Right out of the gate here, there's a few things to notice. I mean, we have to notice that Jesus is performing a miracle in this bizarre fashion that's so reminiscent of how every parent in this room here today has cleaned their kid's face at some point. Right? You lick your finger.

You scrub their face. It's completely disgusting, but it's effective, and you know you've done it. It's okay. And while Jesus is doing this strange thing, there's some difficult language that we need to deal with. Jesus has recently ducked out of the temple after confronting some religious leaders there, and he's walking through the city.

And as he is, he encounters a man who's been blind his entire life. And it's not immediately clear how Jesus and his disciples know the details of this man's story, but regardless, the disciples ask this troubling question. Teacher, they say, whose sin is the source of blindness? This man or his parents? Now that language is probably confusing and uncomfortable to you and to me because of our sensibilities informed by modern medicine and holistic narratives around illness.

The truth is is that Disciples' question here is rooted firmly in an ancient context where Jewish rabbis and theologians held a number of misguided ideas that informed this correlation between illness or disability and a person's moral conduct. Some of those thinkers taught that it was possible to begin sinning while still in the womb. While others believed that somehow, preexistent souls could become tainted by human fallenness while making their mysterious entry into the womb, and that these sins and fallenness were the cause of the unwanted health conditions that people saw in the world around them. So on one hand, we know that there were faulty theological ideas like this rooted in ancient conceptions of biology and cosmology floating around. But on the other hand, the disciples' question is also informed by this recurring theme that we see in the Hebrew scriptures where in places like Exodus 20 and Numbers 14, we hear God telling the Jewish community that the errors and mistakes of parents would impact their children and subsequent generations.

And it is important to realize that the gospel writer is putting Jesus in conversation with these ideas that were familiar to this ancient audience, strange as they might be to us. But it's also important to see how Jesus flatly dismisses this idea that this man's blindness is tied to any kind of moral condition. Okay? So pay attention to that. But then what happens next is tricky because Jesus says this, he says, look, this man's condition is not caused by sin but this has happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.

And we don't have a lot of time to explore all the nuance here, but it's important to note that this passage has been misinterpreted and misapplied a lot. Some of you may have heard someone say something like this when working with this verse. Okay. So sin isn't the cause of illness or chronic conditions, but God allows those things to happen so that divine glory can be revealed in the world. And I wanna be clear.

There are a number of perspectives on this passage, but I think that this particular kind of interpretation is wrong for a couple of reasons. First, it reduces any pain that you might be experiencing here today. Any condition you live with, any disease that you or someone you love has contracted, it reduces these to tools that God uses to build God's brand. And that perspective is hurtful because of how it reduces human suffering. And it's misguided because it offers an objectively awful picture of who God is.

K? So then secondly, I think this kind of interpretation is wrong because it doesn't actually read this phrase in context. See, I I agree with scholar J. Ramsey Michaels who points out the similarity between what Jesus is saying here in chapter nine and something he says to a guy named Nicodemus in that I thought that was almost falling over behind me. Sorry.

He's contrasting something that Jesus says in chapter nine and something said in chapter three. And back there, Jesus is explaining what it looks like when a person comprehends or starts to trust his message and he says this, those who do what is true come to the light. Remember Jesus called himself the light. So that it may be clearly seen that their works, all the things that they have done have been done in God. Or in other words, and this is part of what John's trying to always say, that when any person turns towards Jesus and begins to follow his humble way just like this blind man will in the aftermath of his healing encounter, All people who do this only do so in consort with God's faithful and persistent work.

Work that has been happening all along since the beginning of all things And this is Jesus's point here in chapter nine I think. His condition, this man, it has nothing to do with sin, but open your eyes Jesus says, because all that this man has experienced up to this moment and everything that will be revealed about him in this moment after I restore his sight, all of it uncovers God's goodness that has been with him all along. Which is to say that this is at the heart of what Jesus came to do. Jesus came with every parable and with every sign and with every conversation to tell a better story about God. Where your difficulties and your weakness, the suffering that you encounter, these things aren't reduced to being just the raw materials that God uses to accomplish divine objectives.

But instead, these are the things that Jesus experiences and carries and confronts with his own body, showing us that God spares no part of God's self to participate in our experience. And Jesus' solidarity with this man, and with me, and with you, that solidarity that is always there. This is the light that is always shining even in our darkest moments. Now, after Jesus restores the man's sight, all kinds of drama unfolds in the text. First of all, nobody believes this man's story.

Some people are like, isn't that the guy who used to stand on the corner right over there? And other people are like, no. That just looks like the guy who was there, which side note betrays what living or what people with living living with disabilities and chronic illness tell us about their experience. This feeling of being overlooked and of not being truly seen, which just goes to show you how progressive and engaged the scriptures are in some places. Now, as the story unfolds, the healed man gets pulled into a series of confrontations with religious leaders because they are not thrilled at all with who Jesus says he is and what he's trying to do.

So they question the healed man and they ask him, how have you received your sight? And when he tells them that it was Jesus, they say, well, Jesus is super shady. That can't be right. And then the man takes exception. He says, well, come on.

You gotta at least you gotta at least agree that he's probably a prophet. To which the leaders respond by calling his parents. They bring them in and they ask, can you verify that he was in fact blind? Like, of course he was blind. And then they say, will you please talk some sense into him?

And they basically say, he is a grown man, let him answer the question himself, and they tell him to quit faking it. To which he replies, I don't know much, but I do know this. I know that I used to be blind, and now I'm not. And I've always loved this response. In part, because of what it betrays about how act how faith actually works.

See, for all of the times that we talk about faith as surrendering to what we don't understand, for all the moments when faith feels like pushing off the shore into the unknown of your future, for all the times that people talk about faith as blind trust in some idea or some doctrine, This guy takes a different approach. He takes an evidence based approach to faith where the sign that Jesus offers to him isn't an end in itself, but it becomes the foundation of a place in him that can't be shaken. And you know what? This approach to faith changes everything I think. Or maybe you start to see faith in your resolute conviction that you did in fact make the right decision back there even when everybody else disagreed with you.

And realize that faith might be present in the ways that you know you're better because of a big shift you made in a certain season of your life, or because someone helped you in that season. You can see the difference. Or where when faced with uncertainty and complexity in your life right now, perhaps you'll find yourself in the coming days saying, I I don't know much, but I do know that this used to be true of me and now it's not anymore. I know that my current situation would be different if not for that decision I made or that intervention that somebody made or that simple choice I took to move forward in this part of my life. And I love how this story depicts faith as sometimes being rooted in the things that you know you know.

Those moments where you realize you walk by faith. Yes, mysteriously sometimes, but sometimes we walk by faith by following real world tangible signs like good friends and sound advice and measurable transformation that we cannot deny. Now, as we keep reading this story, things get even more interesting and even a bit comical because the religious leaders won't let the guy go. They ask so many questions that the healed man gets annoyed and throws a little shade at them. He says, you know what?

You guys, for being so against this guy Jesus, you sure are asking a lot of questions. Are you sure you aren't Seeker Jesus fans? I could hook you guys up. And this makes the teachers quite angry, as you can imagine. And they go off on him, and we'll return to some of what they say in a second.

Because they get so upset that they cast him out of the religious community. And that doesn't just mean the building. They don't just have him thrown out. They excommunicate him. And verse 35 tells us that when Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, Jesus went and found him and asked the man, do you believe in the son of man?

And there's this lovely moment here where two things happen. First, the guy realizes that this man standing in front of him is the one who restored his sight. He knew the voice, but he didn't know the vase. And then, he seems to realize that Jesus is divine. In some way, comes to this knowledge and that Jesus is worthy of trust and that the things that maybe he's heard Jesus say that this is the way that he wants to live.

And this is the kind of response that John is always presenting people having to Jesus or at least presenting as the the model. But what I appreciate is how this story shows us how the gospel is always character driven. I mean, this guy has had a crazy life and as a result, has this unique perspective and all this humor hidden underneath the things he says and when the community rejects his transformation and experience, Jesus goes and finds this guy showing us how the good news is especially true for those forced out, and for those who don't fit, and for those who ask the pressing question, and those who see how truly wide Jesus' arms are opened. And maybe that's a helpful reminder for all the times you have been told that you're too much. The times that you have fought for what you felt was right and you were forced out.

The times that you stuck up for what you believed in or stuck up for others only to be cast out of a community. This is a great reminder because this is a story where characters like you are found and celebrated. Now, with that said, it's really important for us, as we come to the end of this story, to realize that there is a lot of symbolism at play in John's gospel. Scholar Adele Reinhardt points out how this story is more than just a record of a sign. How it depicts a journey from blindness to sight in multiple layers, alluding to the movement of one man from unbelief to belief.

And these layers in the story ask us to consider more than just how blind eyes could be made whole in the ancient world and to think about seeing and all that it represents. Because so much of the tension in the text revolves around how the religious leaders who are tasked with protecting the Jewish community, how they couldn't see Jesus' teaching and actions as legitimate. And when faced with the profound uncertainty of this formerly blind man's claims, they double down in the story. They say to the man, you go ahead, you follow Jesus, but we are disciples of Moses because you know what? We know that God spoke to Moses back there.

And as for this Jesus, we don't even know where he's from. And listen, in contrasting this kind of response with that of the restored man, the gospel author paints a picture of how sometimes certain forms of faith can be the very thing that blinds us. If you read to the end of the chapter, Jesus makes it clear that this whole sign, this whole story is about how he came into the world to give people a new way to see God and to see themselves. And he acknowledges that some people are blind to this. And we know that this is a realization that broke Jesus' heart.

Luke's gospel will tell us how as Jesus arrives in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, as he comes close to the city, Jesus breaks down and starts to weep. He was crying because he couldn't He knew that the city couldn't see the kingdom of peace that he was trying to bring to them. He was crying because this thing was hidden from their eyes. And this image of Jesus lies at the heart of what we celebrate today. How every sign he performed hinted at a world reset, and a world made new for all.

A world ready to be restored if we would only trust something more than certainty. Something more than our conclusions of what divine transformation looks like. Because if the stories of Palm Sunday and John nine teaches anything, and in fact, if looking at Jesus for any extended period of time reveals anything to us, It's that faith is the work of trusting the change that God always brings. God will always change your heart and attitudes toward others. The love of God will always change your exacting expectations of yourself.

And the love of God will surely change the views of God that we thought we'd always have to hold on to. Finding, as we change and as we lean in, that we discover something more than certainty, and find that we can finally see. So may your eyes be open as you journey with Christ this holy week. Let's pray. God, that we see in Christ.

On this Palm Sunday, we catch a glimpse of just how different you are, And we hear again a better story, a story you tell of who God is, one rooted in the peaceable way that we so desperately need. A story rooted in divine love that aches over the ways that we wound each other, and the ways that we are blind to your work that is swirling all around us. And in this moment, we pause, and we offer thanks for the ways that maybe, just in this moment, we can start to see, we can see your faithful presence at work in our past. We can sense your guidance and comfort for all that we are navigating today and in the days to come. Sensing courage to face tomorrow.

And we ask, would you give us grace to trust the change that you are always and faithfully bringing in our hearts, in our homes for the sake of our neighborhoods and our communities? Be with us as we follow your steps this holy week. Oh, unexpected Christ. You are our hope. Amen.