The Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 15, 2026
This is now the second Sunday since the US and Israel started bombing Iran, and it seems necessary to at least mention that I am heartsick about it as I bring the Word this morning. As a citizen of both the US and Israel, I feel ashamed and angry that so much evil is happening in my name in both of the countries that I have loved passionately for my entire life. I also believe that God calls us to face evil not with despair, but rather with hope, and with a vision for living with one another in peace, joy, and love, not just someday, but right now..
As we just heard, today’s scripture readings are filled with words about seeing and vision. In the passage from 1 Samuel, God tells the prophet not to look at a person’s outward appearance “The Holy One does not see as mortals see; mortals see only appearances but The Holy One sees into the heart.” In the Epistle, Paul exhorts the Ephesians to expose the unfruitful works of darkness because “when such deeds are exposed and seen in the light of day, everything that becomes visible is light..” And, finally, in John’s story of a person who was born blind and receives the ability to see, Jesus says “It wasn’t because of anyone missing the mark (which is what the word we translate as ‘sin’ actually means)—not this person’s, nor the parents’. Rather, it was to let God’s works shine forth”
I know a little about people who do not have the physical ability to see. Many years ago, when I was in junior high school, my best friend and I spent our Saturday mornings helping out at a place called The Foundation for the Junior Blind. Founded in 1953, the Foundation was a place where blind and vision-impaired children and youth could spend time with others in a safe environment, learning a variety of life skills while just being kids together. Some Saturdays, my friend and I were asked to run the mimeograph machine, or fold letters and stuff them into envelopes for the current fundraising campaign. Most of the time, however, we hung out with the blind kids, doing whatever chores the adult volunteers asked us to do as they taught folk dancing, knitting, sewing, and adaptive versions of basketball and baseball as well as things like how to prepare a simple meal and pour water into a glass without spilling. I learned a lot about teaching on those Saturday mornings, and also about expectations. Whenever we thought that something might be impossible for the kids to do, we were reminded that a blind person is just like anyone else – they just don’t happen to be able to see.
As Jesus points out in the story we heard earlier, physical blindness is not due to anyone’s failing or mistake, but refusing to see another person’s reality is really a problem.
One time, when I was working as the Curator of the Dadian Gallery, I installed an exhibit of photographs made by children in DC. A famous photographer had given the seminary a portfolio of large, beautifully printed, framed, monochrome silver prints. The photographer believed that when young people are given cameras and encouraged to explore what catches their eye, they begin to see themselves as God sees them – creative, competent, caring, and connected to others and to the world around them. I selected a few of the photos to hang in a permanent exhibition in an otherwise dull and dreary upstairs hallway across from some office doors. I thought I was doing something helpful.
However, because many of the photos included scenes with broken playground equipment, bullet holes, graffitied walls, and ugly chain link fences, some of the African-American staff who worked in those offices took issue with the installation, saying that it perpetuated stereotypes of Black life. In a letter to the administration insisting that the installation come down, I was cast as a racist, a White woman who was exploiting the wounds of Black children and throwing them in the face of the Black staff who would have to see them every day.
Needless to say, I was hurt and confused. Where I had seen strikingly-composed photographs that told the truth about the lives of the children that had held the cameras, others had seen an image that, if not a lie, was incomplete at best. Clearly, I had made a terrible mistake. Clearly, I was blind to things that were crystal clear to my colleagues.
As a first step in healing the rift that I had opened between us, I invited the person who had written the letter to join me for lunch. They agreed, and as I listened to their stories of pain and outrage, I began to see the photographs through their eyes. At the same time, they began to see that I was not an enemy as, by way of explanation, I told them that I tend to see similarities between people, regardless of race. I pointed out that a friend’s dark-skinned daughter has the same eyes, nose, and smile as her pale-skinned mother and asked whether I should think of the daughter as Black, like the father that she did not know, or Jewish, like the Jewish mother and grandmother who raised her. I mentioned how similar Glen’s second-generation Japanese-American parents are to my second-generation Jewish-American parents in certain ways, despite the obvious cultural and racial differences. And my colleague’s eyes opened wide. They had never seen things that way. Eventually, we both apologized for our blindness, and made a plan for them and few other colleagues to look at the entire portfolio together, so that they could suggest which photographs might be replaced by others that showed a more uplifting vision.
As I remember how my colleagues and I struggled to get past our mutual blindness and see one another as complex, well-meaning, yet sometimes unseeing, persons made in the image and likeness of God, I realize how easy it is to fall into the temptation to turn other people into two-dimensional, monochrome caricatures, each intent on our own agenda and unable to see the glorious vision that another is holding up in all its wonder. It is all too easy for me to take criticism personally, to fear that what I treasure is mere old-fashioned junk in another person’s eyes, and to judge others in the same way that I fear they are judging me.
For me, coming to church every Sunday is a corrective to all that. Praying, singing, sitting in silence, and hearing scripture read aloud allows me to remember that I am – we are – part of a story that our ancestors in faith started telling their children thousands of years ago. And each generation went on retelling and revising those stories as they found themselves in different countries, had different kinds of struggles, and learned different things about themselves, about the world around them, and about God. When we stand at this lectern to preach or make a brief comment in the response time, we are continuing that story, that inter-generational conversation. And each iteration helps me to see a little more clearly, as though I am cleaning my glasses of all the accumulated smudge of the past. Little by little, I learn to see the story whole.
And that, I think, is the point of our gathering. Sometimes we dance, sometimes we sit still, sometimes we laugh, sometimes we cry. Sometimes we take deep, cleansing breaths, and other times we catch our breath in wonder or in collective outrage. We gather on Sunday mornings to see one another whole, to heal one another’s wounds, and to help one another remember that — whatever else is going on in the world around us – we, here together, are part of a longer story. Here at Seekers, I remember that I am part of the Body of Christ, and I hope that you do, too.
This time on Sunday morning is an opportunity to strengthen and encourage one another, to nurture our life – physical, emotional, and spiritual — together. While what happens outside this beautiful, simple room is not and never should be entirely shut out, there are people who come here on Sunday morning already exhausted from their daily life in the political or social justice trenches and in need of rest, in physical or emotional pain and in need of hope, grieving and in need of quiet and a hug. There are people who come looking for God, asking about Jesus, searching for something to believe in, and we need to make room for all of them every Sunday. There are many realities, values, and subjects that are important to address when we are together if each of us, and Seekers as a body, is to remain whole and healthy.
As is so often said, we cannot give what we do not possess. If we are constantly angry, we cannot be peacemakers. If we are entirely broken, we cannot offer healing. Without the nourishment of prayer and silence, without a connection to the ancient stories in scripture and the new stories in preaching, without singing together and sometimes dancing or doing something else that remind us that our bodies are, in fact, part of our spiritual life, we will all become burnt out, with nothing of value to offer to anyone.
The other night, as some of us were gathering our things after the final session of the Erica’s eye-opening class on radical hospitality, Sharon and I were talking about something very practical – maybe it was clearing the coat rack in the hallway of all the leftover hats, scarves, and tote bags that have accumulated over the past few months. At some point, she asked me how Celebration Circle has the energy to keep writing new liturgies every season and to keep getting here early to get things ready every Sunday morning. I said that I cannot speak for anyone else, but for me, the only answer is that I am called to this work of putting our memories and longings and fears into words and images, and of leading the congregation in worship. And when something is truly a matter of call, of love, it never gets old.
The truth is that I am in love with Seekers, and have been since the very first time I set foot in the door in 1990. Yes, sometimes I have disagreements with one person or another. Sometimes my feelings get hurt, or I hurt someone else. Sometimes I make mistakes. And sometimes I get tired and become blind to all the good that Seekers does in the world, both as individuals and as a body. But the reality is that when I stand here and look around this room, I see God shining in each of your faces, and fall in love with you all, all over again.
When Jesus gave sight to the person who was unable to see, he said it was not because of anyone’s moral failings, but rather to reveal what God can do. What is God waiting to reveal for you, in you right now? When will you allow God to open your eyes to whatever you are blind to right now? What have you been blind to, and what are you now willing to see?