Preached on the Fourth Sunday in Lent (Year A), March 15, 2026, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.
1 Samuel 16:1-13
Psalm 23
Ephesians 5:8-14
John 9:1-41
“Mercy and truth have met together.” – Psalm 85:10, by Shimi
Some of the Pharisees said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?”
The world is exploding, yet again, in ever more horrific ways. In the face of all this chaos, and in response to all this injustice, we remain a progressive, affirming, Christian faith community, sent on a mission to mend this neighborhood, this city, and this world, in any way we can.
Our faith took root and flourished twenty centuries ago, in yet another terrible, apocalyptic time, led by a few dozen courageous souls who responded to the cruelties of war and empire by building a community of joyful yet serious mission in the name of the Risen One. In our own time of violence, fear, division, and discord, what then shall we do?
I’d like to begin our discernment by reflecting on ourselves a bit. This is not a narcissistic exercise. I just want to begin with our community’s identity: who are we, and are we ready to go on this mission?
At first glance, I’d say we have some notable virtues. We support honorable public servants, and many of us contribute to the campaigns of just and good politicians… Well, okay, we have concluded that they are just and good enough.
“Surely we are not blind, are we?”
We say fervent prayers. We are faithful to the Prayer Book, and when we make changes to ableist or gendered language, we do so carefully and consciously. (Today, we’re squirming with discomfort at the metaphor of “blindness”.) We have a real mission in Uptown, a mission that has grown and flourished in recent years, a mission that has literally saved human lives.
We strive for gender balance at the altar, and we prayerfully intercede with God on behalf of innocent people and just causes. We care for our sick; we lovingly bury our dead; we nurture our children; we honor our elders. Our liturgy and music are second to none. We plan and rehearse our movements and actions at this Table. Our choir studies challenging sacred music and sings it beautifully. We engage all the senses in worship. We not only use incense; we search for hypoallergenic incense! We offer gluten-free bread.
“Surely we are not blind, are we?”
We greet our newcomers with genuine warmth, and nourish them with God’s Eucharistic Meal… and cookies and cake downstairs. We brew good, fair-trade coffee and bake fragrant bread for mass. We greet our neighbors. We stand at our curbside and protest injustice. We pay money to Real Rent on behalf of those who lived on this land long before us, and live here still.
We account for every penny of donated funds. We ensure our staff doesn’t work in a hostile or unethical workplace. We employ self-deprecating humor to be sure we’re not too proud or haughty. We express remorse, and forgive. We read widely and often. We sweep our sidewalks and operate a lift for those who don’t walk. We don’t shout in anger; we sing with gusto.
“Surely we are not blind, are we?”
This question rightly worries us.
But — now let’s talk about them, about other people, about those people.
We could borrow another line from the Pharisees and say to “those people,” “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?”
“Those people” wear red ball caps and call human beings “illegals.” They overlook violence against women, girls, and trans persons, or even endorse cruelty against them. They take the Christian gospel and twist it into a nationalist nightmare, not because of anything that Jesus said, but in spite of everything he said and did.
“Those people” burn with resentment that they live in so-called “flyover country” and have been ignored and mistreated in politics and popular culture. They enjoy more representation per capita in the U.S. Senate; and in the expanding gerrymandering war, they’re doing quite well, thank you very much. They roll their eyes at our demand for tolerance and affirmation of personal pronouns, and even mock the practice, saying things like, “My pronouns aren’t they/them; my pronouns are U.S./A.!”
We think that the worship practices of many of “those people” are silly, dull, corny, and tacky. They flash their song lyrics on TV screens and rock the house with electric guitars. They preach a self-centered, individualistic faith that’s more concerned about “me and Jesus” than the needs of our neighbors.
Or at least that’s what we think they do; that’s who we think they are.
“You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?”
Some others of “those people” live outside, in this neighborhood. They don’t smell very good, and they look even worse. They leave sharps and propane tanks on our sidewalks, and start fires in our garden. Sometimes they’re homophobic, or just generally hostile and incoherent, or just scary. Even the nice ones, the kind ones — even they are unsettling. They remind us of our own vulnerability, that everybody gets sick, that everybody could run out of money and friends, that everybody will die.
“You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?”
Still others of “those people” seethe with contempt for us, for our Christian faith, and definitely for our membership in the Episcopal Church. (They attack us from the left.) They know we have inherited a church tradition that has propped up and even cultivated patriarchy and white supremacy. They know our province of the Anglican Communion holds vast wealth that was gained from the genocidal destruction of cultures across Turtle Island, also known as North America. They know what we’re guilty of. It would be quite easy for us to defensively write them off, or at the very least ignore them.
But Jesus has something to say to all of these people, to all of “those people,” to all of the people we would prefer did not enter this room, to all of the people who — from our perspective at least — were “born entirely in sins.” If you ask us, those people are spiritually unseeing, they are those who reject God, they are our adversaries, they are our bad guys, they are not in our fold. And here is what Jesus says to them:
“I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me, just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.”
Not every one of “those people” will listen to the Good Shepherd. (If only!) But what if just one of “those people” — one of the ones for whom Jesus lays down his life — what if this guy wears a red baseball hat but he understands better than we do what kind of world Jesus is resurrecting? That’s hard to imagine, let alone believe: how could Red Ball Cap Guy support such atrocious political leaders who do such terrible things, and yet he announces the Good News? We might have to get to know him to find out, to make sense of the vexing contradictions in his life, to empathize with him and truly hear what he has to say, and why he says it. And maybe he will hear us and empathize with us, too.
What if another one of “those people” — what if she lives in West Texas or southern Indiana or somewhere beyond familiar Seattle, somewhere (let’s be honest) beneath our contempt, but she is a daughter of Mary Magdalene who may be wrong about a great many ideas and issues of our time, but has gotten something right? We might have to get to know her to find out, to hear her story, to be vulnerable to her and willing to listen and not just talk. If she harbors violent or unsafe beliefs about immigrants or trans folk, we must stay firmly at their sides and not be irresponsible or foolhardy about our decision to break bread with those we call our enemies. But maybe, in breaking that bread, she might come to understand us, too.
What if some of “those people” who live outside here in Uptown are struggling in deep despair, battling addiction and hardly able to carry on a conversation, and yet they see what we cannot see, and they have a gift for us? What if everyone in Uptown, us included, is hungry and thirsty?
What if he attends a megachurch, and she belongs to a synagogue, and he prays at a mosque, and they want nothing whatsoever to do with organized religion, and each of them sees something we cannot see, knows what we refuse to learn, or hears the voice of the Holy One in their native spiritual or religious language, and unlike us, readily follows that voice?
Can we allow the Good Shepherd to open our eyes to all of these difficult people?
It will help a lot if we first recognize that our eyes are closed. In the Sacred Ground anti-racism curriculum of the Episcopal Church, we meet two people in a video, one from blue-liberal Berkeley and another from the ultra-conservative heartland. To their mutual astonishment, their brave shared decision to sit down and talk about their mutual hopes and dreams opened their eyes, and increased each of their friends lists by one. Both of them had always known they were right about many things. Only in this encounter did they see how their eyes were still closed.
Thankfully, joyfully, wonderfully, Jesus speaks to everyone, including us, when he says this: “I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me, just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.”
Jesus calls to us, too, inviting us to open our eyes.
But… if Jesus is trying to get us to talk to these problematic and upsetting people, maybe some of us will say that Jesus “has a demon and is out of his mind. Why listen to him?”
But maybe others among us will say, “These are not the words of one who has a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”