The Rev. Dr. Brandon Perrine
Lent 4 A
John 9:1-12
March 15, 2026
As he walked 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?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of the one who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.” Then he went and washed and came back able to see. The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am he.” But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”
~o~
The American showman P.T. Barnum, owner of the “greatest show on earth,” once said that, “without promotion, something terrible happens…nothing!” Perhaps people assume that with a reputation as a healer and miracle-worker, Jesus understood the basics of showmanship. He was, after all, trying to convince people that the kingdom of God was coming and was already among them. Some miracles, an exorcism or two, and a few healings would go a long way in swaying public opinion in favor of his message, right? As sacrilegious as it sounds, I’m not actually the first person to draw a parallel between the lives of Jesus of Nazareth and P.T. Barnum—who coincidentally was raised as a Congregationalist!
But, as we heard in today’s reading, Jesus really wasn’t a very good showman at all. The scene begins with a walk and a blind man and an insensitive question from the disciples. “Whose fault is he?” You can hear the superiority in their voices. “He’s no one’s fault,” Jesus corrects them. “He was born this way—made this way.” Though the blind man hadn’t said a word, Jesus makes mud from saliva and dirt and spreads it on his eyes, telling him to go wash in a spring-fed ritual bath called the Pool of Siloam. He did as instructed and then he could see—everyone except Jesus, that is, who seems to have vanished.
Surprisingly for someone of his occupation, Jesus wasn’t much for the limelight or theatrics. One Jewish scholar tells us that he, “shunned the abracadabra of Jewish or pagan amulets and magical bowls and the various real or phony medicines prescribed in them. He discarded even the less exotic characteristics of [healing work] attested in the respectable writings of the Apocrypha and the rest of ancient Jewish literature . . . he didn’t make use of angelic wisdom [and] apart from his saliva, he employed no remedies . . . Jesus disdained the showy acting of [other healers. He] didn’t even imitate the orthodox form of healing or expelling evil spirits in the name of God, but simply commanded the demon to quit, leprosy to disappear, the withered hand to stretch out, the deaf ear to open…”1 And he usually insisted on secrecy. “Jesus was against publicity.”2 In short, Jesus was not the greatest showman. In fact, he was downright bad at it. Yet, people still came. They still watched. They still sought him out for healing, or exorcism, or just to listen to him talk.
It may not have made sense to old P.T. Barnum, but crowds still flocked to Jesus anyway. Then again, maybe P.T. would have sensed the allure of Jesus despite his lack of panache. In a little pamphlet he once wrote, Barnum quoted these lines referring to Jesus by James Russell Lowell:
I fear not [Your] withdrawal; more I fear,
Seeing, to know [You] not, hoodwinked with dreams
Of signs and wonders, while, unnoticed, [You],
Walking [Your] garden still, commun’st with men,
Missed in the commonplace of miracle.3
Perhaps Barnum really did understand Jesus, better than many. As miraculous as healings, exorcisms, mastering the weather, and feeding the masses may seem, that wasn’t really what Jesus was all about. For him, the miracle was more common and yet, infinitely more difficult. It’s the miracle of perfect harmony in authentic community—the kingdom of God, as he called it. It’s the miracle of treating others—all others—as we wish to be treated. It’s the miracle of loving self, and neighbor, and the divine. It’s the miracle of forgiving another person and accepting forgiveness. It’s the miracle of radical hospitality and abundant generosity. It’s the commonplace miracles that so often get overshadowed, or simply missed, as we look for the next distraction or the next headline.
Don’t get me wrong, it is absolutely miraculous to think of a man, blind from birth, receiving his sight, or a crowd of thousands fed with five rolls and two sardines, or turning water into wine. But all those signs, as they’re called in John’s gospel, are exactly that. They point beyond themselves to something else. And it’s that something that Jesus thought was the biggest showstopper of them all: sharing together in the eternal life and love of God—the kingdom of God— beginning right now. For John that happens in two ways.
First, it happens by actively choosing to participate—joining God’s love in and for the world and thereby joining God’s life. Second, it happens uniquely in Jesus, who for John is the embodiment of God’s life made flesh for the world—the divine becoming human that humanity might become divine. Through God’s self-revelation in Jesus—and through our choice to participate in Love’s work—we experience kingdom life: here and now and always.
In his own way, I think the formerly blind man in the story got that. After receiving his sight, John reports that he was questioned by his neighbors, then questioned by the religious leaders, who then questioned his parents, and then questioned him again. Was he really born blind? Did Jesus heal on the Sabbath? Was he really from God? So many questions for a man who had never before seen a sunrise. But he said, “Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”
Born blind, but the man saw the signs. And the signs pointed to Jesus. And he saw Jesus—really saw him. And he decided to join Love’s work—experiencing the kingdom then and there and always. Will we see Jesus with the same eyes?
Will we recognize the voice of the still-speaking God, the work of the ever-living Christ-Spirit in our midst? Will we join in living divine love in the world—experiencing what Jesus described as kingdom life—eternal life—here and now and always? Or, in the words of P.T. Barnum: “Eternal life is right life—here, there, everywhere.”
May that kind of life be for us and for all.
Amen.
1Geza Vermes. “The Authentic Gospel of Jesus,” London: Penguin Books, 2003, pg. 36.
2Ibid., 37.
3James Russell Lowell, “The Cathedral,” 1870.
