My first reaction was anger, but it shouldn’t have been. It should have been sadness. Two students were snickering with each other as they eyed my exhibit at a campus ministry fair at a local college. On the table were flyers for our campus ministry Bible study. Those flyers made it clear whom we welcome at that Bible study, which is everyone, regardless of whether certain corners of the Church would do the same. Those flyers were intended to send an unequivocal message to those who had previously been hurt by the Church that they, too, could encounter Christ in the pages of Scripture, that Christ loves them unconditionally.
But those two students laughed because our campus ministry’s message of welcome surprised them. I suspect it shocked them. I suspect it unnerved them. But rather than become irritated, I should have felt compassion, because I remember what it was like to be young and arrogantly confident of own beliefs. I once was certain I knew what God condoned and what God judged, what was wrong and what was right. In my youthful immaturity, I, too, might have laughed like those students.
I don’t know the real story of those two college-aged scoffers, but I’m guessing that they entered college shaped by churches founded on easy answers to difficult questions. They had only known one version of theological clarity, and it must have brought them up short to enter a world where other Christians might think differently. When faced with that uncomfortable reality, the easiest kneejerk reaction is to laugh or to judge or to hunker down in one’s beliefs or to diligently seek out others who will confirm their own views, no matter what the facts are. Don’t confuse me with the facts, they might say.
And yet, there is a venerable and ancient tradition within Christianity that is deeply suspicious of certain knowledge of God. St. Augustine of Hippo said it incisively when he noted that if a person can comprehend something, then it is not God.[1] The Christian mystics over the ages have offered us an alternative way of coming to know God, encouraging us to empty ourselves of all pretensions about God, all definite knowledge of God, even all feelings about God so that we might truly find God. For the mystics, the most honest and crucial question might be, I don’t know.
Did you notice how often in today’s Gospel reading the man born blind says that he doesn’t know? The Pharisees repeatedly press him, trying to solicit knowledge from him. Where is Jesus? I don’t know, he says. I don’t know whether he is a sinner, he says. The Pharisees, on the other hand, know for certain that Jesus is not from God. They know, too, that the man born blind was born in sin, and so he has no authority to speak.
Time after time, the Pharisees are unwilling to confront the evidence before them, which the man born blind consistently lays out. The man tells them exactly what happened to him, even though he doesn’t yet understand what it means. The Pharisees are convinced that one who heals on the Sabbath must be a sinner. And like Jesus’s disciples, they’re convinced that a man who is born blind must have been born blind because he or his parents sinned. God works in a cause-and-effect world, right?
The Pharisees don’t want to be confused with the facts because the facts are not comforting. The facts show that the man before them was born blind, and his parents confirm it. The facts reveal that Jesus found this man born blind, mixed his saliva with mud, put it on the man’s eyes, told him to go and wash in the pool of Siloam, and then the man gained his sight after obeying Jesus. Those are the facts, but they will confuse those whose mind is already made up. It’s much easier to turn the one who is healed into a scapegoat. It’s much easier to laugh at a few flyers advertising a Bible study that disturbs one’s understanding of who’s in and who’s out.
The convoluted questioning of the Pharisees is countered by the humble simplicity of the man who can now see. That man doesn’t question what Jesus is doing when he puts a muddy mixture on his eyes. He doesn’t question why he should go to wash in the pool of Siloam rather than be healed on the spot. He doesn’t demand Jesus’s credentials before agreeing to be healed. The man simply does what Jesus says. No more, no less.
The truth is that the man born blind doesn’t yet know who Jesus is, and he doesn’t claim to know. He thinks that he is just a prophet, which is more than others think of him. The man doesn’t know where Jesus is from or where he goes after he heals him. There is so much he doesn’t know, and he is quite comfortable admitting it. But what he does know is crystal clear, and he is unashamed of stating it: once he was blind, but now he sees! Once when he was sitting by the road, begging, this man found him, put mud on his eyes, told him to wash, and after he obeyed, he was healed. That’s what he knows, no more, no less. He knows what he has encountered. He knows how he was before, and he knows that now he can see.
For the blind man, his lack of knowledge is a gift. He meets Jesus with no preconceived notions. And this helps him encounter the beautiful simplicity of the Gospel message. But for the opponents of Jesus, what they don’t know is a stumbling block. It makes them become more entrenched in their stubborn refusal to acknowledge who Jesus is. They don’t want to be confused with the facts.
There is a blessed relief in accepting our lack of knowledge about God. We don’t have to police an understanding of God. We don’t have to decide who is in and who is out. We don’t have to determine what Christians have access to the full truth and which ones don’t. We don’t need to pronounce what denominations possess validity and which ones don’t or use fear to buttress our control of the truth. This is exactly what Jesus’s opponents do to the blind man’s parents. Scared of being ostracized by the community, they refuse to stand up for their son. Ask him, they say. He will speak for himself.
And thankfully, the son does. The son simply states the facts. Once I was blind, but now I see! I don’t know who the man was who healed me, but what I do know is that he found me and made me whole. And when even this man, the vulnerable scapegoat, has been cast out of the local community, Jesus, the Good Shepherd of the sheep, finds him once again and reveals exactly who he is, and this man who didn’t know who Jesus was, now believes that he is the Son of God. He now believes because he didn’t claim to know. His confession is simple and profound. Lord, I believe. And then he worships the Lord.
Jesus has come so that those who claim to know everything about him can lose their sight for a time. And Jesus comes to give true sight to those who claim to have no real knowledge. But our Lord doesn’t want the world to be divided between those who have spiritual sight and those who don’t. Our Lord always acts in love, and so sometimes, he darkens our eyes precisely so that we can really see who he is. Paradoxically, it’s in our willingness not to know that we come to know God most fully.
It may that some of us will be maligned and cast out because we are brave enough to state the facts, to say with real simplicity and conviction that Christ has transformed our lives. This is a lonely place when others don’t want to be confused with the facts. But amid all the things we don’t know, we do know this: when we are cast out and reviled because of the name of Jesus, the Good Shepherd himself will find us of his own accord since he knows us each by name. And in that moment, our only response will be to state the facts. Lord, I believe. And then, we fall down and worship.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 15, 2026
[1] “Si comprehendis non est deus.”