John 9                                                                                                              Rev. Dr. Galen E. Russell III

                                              March 15, 2026

Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see and those who do see may become blind.”

My thanks to all who helped with today’s long dramatic reading! Interesting way to read scripture.

Prayer: Lord, please help us see. Amen.

 All during this season of Lent we’ve been exploring what it means to be “Living Spiritually.” And after I came up with today’s sermon title “Under Spiritual Influence,” I realized that this entire worship series is about being under the Holy Spirit’s influence. That every sermon and every worship service in this series is designed to help us choose to be under God’s spiritual influence. Our thoughts. Our words. Our actions. All of it. All of who we are—under spiritual influence.

And assuming that we are gaining some traction on being under the spirit’s influence, I’ve been thinking about how that affects our vison. Our understanding. Like if we see something more than we thought because we’re influenced by the Spirit.

Yesterday, a group of pastors and lay folk and I from the Committees on Ministry for the Lancaster, Lebanon, and York Associations met here at Christ Church. And our workshop started with each person introducing themselves by sharing a way they were blessed during this past week. I was intrigued by how many said they were blessed by family, mostly grandkids, or by people close to them, supporting them, helping them in some way. And yeah, some saw blessings in nature, in the dew on the leaves, in the previous warm days, which allowed some to get out of the house, clean the garage, and then take the golf clubs for a walk, which is fair.

These were all good things, and to see them as blessings is right to do, I think.  And I wondered if that’s one way that we know we’re under spiritual influence—when we see the good things in our lives and in the world around us as blessings.

Yes, of course, all true. But, maybe it’s not the whole truth. Because not one person lifted up a tragedy as a blessing. No one shared a trouble spot in their lives as a place where God’s blessings occurred. And to be honest, I didn’t think that way, either. Because I get it. We’re wired to see the good things in life as blessings and the not-so-good as, well, not blessings.

But, this week’s bible reading gave me pause on that thinking. Because the man’s blindness since birth was the not-so-good place where Jesus worked God’s blessing of giving sight for the man.

And I wondered that if we’re under the Spirit’s influence, might we see some of our tragic and difficult situations as places where God can work blessings? Places where we pray God will work healing into the tragedy. We ask that peace be infused into the violence. We pour out our heart and soul asking God to comfort those who mourn, fill those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. We may not see the answers to those prayers the way that we’d like, or when we’d like, but we pray them on faith, under spiritual influence, trusting God hears our prayers.

But one thing that struck me this week, if we are under the Spirit’s influence, and if the God of Jesus and the disciples is our God and the God we know, then we might have trouble with John’s gospel depicting God causing life-long suffering of blindness in the man just to show off a divine purpose. You think?

This is the text: ““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 him who sent me while it is day.” I don’t believe the way that reads; that God purposely made him blind.

So I started digging into this a little bit. One of the biblical commentators took me back to New Testament Greek 101 back in seminary. And one of the first things I learned in Greek class was that NT Greek manuscripts had no punctuation marks. And translators had to make decisions on where sentences began, paused, and ended. Several biblical scholars suggest that it’s possible the translators made some punctuation errors in this text.  Because commas and periods matter—where they’re placed.

        Check these out: “Crocodiles Do Not Swim Here.” If our brains didn’t put in the comma after crocodiles, we’d think that water is safe.  Or, how about this actual church marquee: “Hanging of the Green Family Worship.” Without the comma, I feel bad for the Green family.

All joking aside, with the blind man story, what if the periods and commas were placed differently? Like this alternative reading;  “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 him who sent me while it is day.” You see the difference? This translation breaks the assumed cause and effect link. In this version, the blindness is not explained and is not the focus. It is not an effect of sin. It just is just a fact of the man’s life. The focus is that the man’s blindness is the occasion for God to act. The emphasis is on what God does in his suffering. God does not cause our suffering, but is with us in it, and can work blessings in it.

So, perhaps one takeaway is that under spiritual influence, might we be able to see our sufferings, our tragedies, our crises as places where God can act? And if not our sufferings because we are such a privileged people, then to see the sufferings of others?

Like where maybe, under the Spirit’s influence, we might name and resist antisemitism? Push for justice and peace for Jewish people who have been maligned for centuries by antisemitism?

My heart breaks for Jewish people everywhere in our world who face bigotry largely stemming from misinterpretations of scripture, like from this passage. John’s usage of “the Jews” is not a blanket reference to the Jewish people as a whole. Parenthetically, here we encounter the seeds that led to the Holocaust. Rather, John refers to the Jewish Temple leaders who were in cahoots with the Roman government. Tragically, people over the centuries have expanded this narrow focus to a total indictment of all Jews, fueling centuries of Christian antisemitism. Which led toward the tragic act of terrorism when a car plowed into a Jewish synagogue this past week near Detroit, MI.

I think it’s time for us who are under the influence of the Holy Spirit, to stand up against any antisemitic bigotry against Jewish people. And not just Jewish people, but also bigotry against Muslim people who are persecuted in the world. And bigotry against Christian people who are oppressed by tyrannies in the world. Religism in the world is rampant. And I don’t know about you, but if I went the rest of my life without hearing one more religious-based act of terror, or any act of terror, I still would have heard too many.

I invite your prayers, my friends, that we may be under the influence of the Holy Spirit. And under that spiritual influence, can we ask God to help us not be blind to the fact that every one of us on this planet is a human being? And everyone of us is loved by God?

Under the influence of the spirit, can we ask God to judge where our blindness is with respect to others, where we first try to blame others when we think we’re right? And ask God to put mud on our eyes so that we and others around us may be healed from these blindnesses.

Under spiritual influence, can we ask God to help heal our desire to be superior over others through legalism, biblical or otherwise, through war and violence, so that we can see the healing of the soul that takes place right in front of our eyes? And, see how the healing of God is.

So, may God help us choose to be under God’s spiritual influence. Our thoughts. Our words. Our actions. All of it. All of who we are—under spiritual influence. Amen.