Lent 4A 2026: To remain teachable

There is a deep irony in today’s Gospel. A man who has never seen before receives his sight. And the people most certain that they see clearly turn out to be the ones who cannot see at all.

At first glance this story appears to be about a miracle: a man born blind is healed. But as the story unfolds, another question becomes the centre of debate: who gets to interpret reality?

The Pharisees are confident in their conclusions. They know the law. But knowing something and interpreting it well are two very different things, depending on the lenses through which we look.

One of the most persistent temptations in human life is the belief that we already know all we need to know in order to understand everything we see.

And if I am honest, I recognise that temptation in myself as much as I see it anywhere else. As the years go on, I find myself increasingly grateful for the supervisors, spiritual directors, and colleagues who help me check my understanding of things. Because we all carry convictions, passions, and wounds that become the lenses through which we interpret the world.

Those lenses can help us order our priorities. But sometimes they harden into certainty. And once that happens, instead of seeking truth, we begin protecting our own version of it.

This is the trap the Pharisees fall into in John’s Gospel. They are not foolish people. They are serious and devout people who care deeply about faithfulness to God.

But the healing of this man challenges what they think they know about sin and the nature of suffering, what the sabbath is for and who has the authority to interpret events for others, whether we should believe the word of a person on the edge of society. These were things on which their minds were already made up.

So instead of allowing the good news of a miracle to enlarge their understanding of God, they feel compelled to defend what they already believe. They question the man. They question his parents. They question whether healing has occurred at all. Something wonderful has occurred for this man, and they choose not to see it.

At the end of the story Jesus says something quite unsettling. He says, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” In other words, the real danger here is not blindness. The danger is assuming that we see perfectly. Which raises the question: if none of us sees perfectly, what actually helps us to see?

Think about how this works in other areas of life. In medicine, we rely on doctors whose knowledge has been shaped by generations of research and is constantly checked and improved by peer review. In music, no great musician becomes great without learning from the literature of great composers, the techniques of masters, or the insights of conductors who have learned how to draw the skills of many people into one beautiful voice.

In most areas of life there is a path of formation, and those paths exist for good reason. They protect people from accidental harm, they guard against misunderstanding, and they preserve the integrity of the craft itself. Why would we imagine that a life of faith would require anything less?

The Church has never been simply a gathering of independent spiritual opinions. Yes, we come with different experiences and perspectives, and those experiences are valuable. But like the Pharisees, we should be wary of assuming that the conclusions we have drawn from our singular perspective must therefore be universally true.

In Anglicanism we try to check our vision through a model often described as the three-legged stool: scripture, reason, and tradition.

• Scripture grounds us in the story of God’s saving work.

• Reason invites us into conversation with the best knowledge and insight of our time.

• Tradition reminds us that we have an inherited body of wisdom - we are not the first generation of Christians to wrestle with these questions.

Together these form something more rigorous and more enduring than any single perspective. And yes, these processes take time. Sometimes months. Sometimes years. Sometimes decades, even centuries. Discernment is rarely quick. But that patience protects the Church from reacting only to the pressures of the moment. It allows space for prayer, listening, learning, and the quiet work of the Spirit across generations.

Sometimes people joke that the Church moves slowly. (Often I am one of those people.) But there is wisdom in slowness. A faith tested across ages protects us from the impulsiveness of the moment and the passing fashions of a generation. Our own age certainly has its temptations.

One of them is the relentless myth of productivity. An ever-expanding economic system that once measured success by the growth of profit now often measures human worth by output. People are squeezed for efficiency. The earth is pushed beyond its limits. And this mentality quietly seeps into the Church as well, where we are sometimes tempted to measure faithfulness by numbers, attendance, programs offered and visible success. But the Gospel does not ask how many seats are filled. It asks how deeply we love our neighbour.

Then there is our astonishing technological power. We can send machines beyond our solar system. Artificial intelligence can now produce answers in seconds that once took scholars years. But speed is not the same thing as wisdom. The scientist Carl Sagan once warned that we were becoming a civilisation “based on science and technology in which hardly anyone understands science and technology.” In other words, our power is growing faster than our understanding. The question is not whether we can do something. The question is whether we understand what we are doing, and whether we have the wisdom to use that power well.

That is why upholding traditions of guidance matter. That’s why reminders such as we hear in Psalm 23 are important.

“The Lord is my shepherd.” It may be one of the most beloved lines in Scripture, but the image we are given is not of all-knowing creatures but creatures seeking guidance on the way.

It says:
“He leads me beside still waters.
He guides me along right pathways.
He restores my soul.”
Faith has always been understood this way: not as a solitary project, but as a journey in which we need guidance and are, together, guided.

But all of that only bears fruit if we are willing to be formed, if have a spirit that remains teachable.

One of the most striking things about the man born blind is that although he receives his healing right at the beginning of the story, it is only the beginning of his learning. As the story unfolds - through conversations and encounters, we watch his understanding grow.

At first he refers to Jesus simply as “the man called Jesus.” Later he calls him “a prophet.” And finally, when Jesus reveals himself, the man worships him. His spiritual vision grows step by step because he remains open to what yet may be.

In any field of knowledge, the deeper one goes the more one discovers how much remains yet to be seen. I love the story of the celebrated cellist Pablo Casals, who was once asked why, at the age of ninety, he still practised for so many hours every day. Casals replied, “Because I think I am making progress.”

That is the spirit of teachability. And faith works the same way.

The real question in John’s Gospel is not who wins the argument, or who holds authority. The real question is whose heart remains teachable. And that I believe is the real purpose of a faith - not to win the debate, but to be able to stand honestly before Christ and ask: Where am I still learning to see?

And when we do, something remarkable happens. Every day becomes a new revelation.