Blinded by the Light - March 15, 2026 - Community Missioner Ed Carrette Homilist

Summary

On the fourth Sunday in Lent, Grace Community Missioner Ed Carrette explores the theme of spiritual awakening through Biblical stories of people "seeing the light," from the blind man healed by Jesus to Paul's conversion experience. Using Bruce Springsteen's "Blinded by the Light" as a metaphor, Carrette emphasizes that God's grace and love come first—before our actions, baptism, or spiritual practices—and our lives become a response to that unconditional love. The central message is that we are called to live as "children of light," offering the same grace, mercy, and forgiveness to others that God has already given us.

THE GOSPEL                                                                                                                                                    John 9:1-41

Artwork: Christ Healing the Blind - El Greco (c. 1570) 

Transcript

Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light— for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please be seated.

Spoiler alert: there will be a brief audience participation moment ahead.

There are many stories in the Gospels and in the book of Acts where we read about people suddenly seeing God through the lens of Jesus Christ. There’s the woman at the well we saw last Sunday, the lepers, the centurion, the eunuch by the roadside, kings and religious leaders. They see, if you will, the light.

They have these “aha” moments when they begin to understand and see the world differently.

Of course, there is the narrative today of the blind man, where Jesus makes mud and heals him. Suddenly he can see. The world is new. Things are being raised up.

We know that Paul is a person who is blinded by the light, quite literally. And we have these images of light and darkness, of blindness and seeing, of knowing and awakening that float through that lesson from Ephesians.

And in case you missed it, the book of Samuel tells us quite clearly that human beings have a hard time seeing as God sees. Samuel keeps looking for the next king and saying, “Surely this must be the one.” And God keeps saying, “Nope. Wrong. Try again.” Until finally we arrive at the last and the least.

God keeps reminding us that the last and the least shall be first.

All of this puts me in mind of Bruce Springsteen’s Blinded by the Light. I’ve had that song stuck in my head all week. And while Springsteen probably wasn’t writing a meditation, the image actually works—because sometimes the light of God doesn’t just gently illuminate things. Sometimes it overwhelms us, and suddenly we see everything differently.

Now I couldn’t resist. Some of you already know the words running through your head.

And Go-cart Mozart was checkin' out the weather chart to see if it was safe to go outside. And little Early-Pearly came by in her curly-wurly and asked me if I needed a ride The Calliope crashed to the ground, but she was… BLINDED BY THE LIGHT

Exactly. Rev'd up like a… DEUCE, another…RUNNER IN THE NIGHT. Exactly. 

Now you’re all going to be humming it the rest of the day. You’re welcome.

But “blinded by the light” is actually a powerful metaphor.

Paul, in the letter to the Ephesians, is playing with that idea of blindness and light. In many ways it echoes the story of the blind man in the Gospel. The author tells the Ephesians that once they couldn’t see. They didn’t understand. They had a different vision of the world, a different understanding of who God was.

But then they began to see Jesus.

And that changed them.

He says they once lived in darkness. But now, because God has given them grace, because others have witnessed to them God’s love and welcome—through actions, through words, through stories of how God had been present in their lives—they now have the capacity to see more clearly.

Paul elsewhere uses the image of seeing through a mirror dimly. But here something has shifted. Something has been revealed.

Now let me pause here for a second.

I think a lot of us have been convinced—I'm not quite sure how—that we're supposed to have some dramatic spiritual “aha” moment. Something like Paul being knocked off his horse by a blinding light.

But most of the people we talk to don’t actually experience it that way, right?

For many people it’s slower. It’s a long process. It’s conversations with friends. It’s moments of doubt. Sometimes it’s shaking your fist at God. Sometimes it’s sitting quietly and hoping you might hear something.

It happens in many different ways.

But what Paul is getting at here in Ephesians is that when we begin to see differently, our lives begin to change.

Being able to comprehend the way of Jesus comes from the saving work of Christ. That’s a Lenten theme, isn’t it? We spend this season trying to understand the gift of the cross while we wait for the resurrection on Easter morning.

Our eyes are lifted to the cross before us.

And our lives become a response.

And this is really the key: our response always comes after grace.

We often get this backwards—especially during Lent. We take on practices of prayer or we're giving up something like chocolate because that's evidently the key to spiritual enlightenment, right?  And it can start to feel like if we just do the right things, we’ll finally earn our spiritual “aha” moment.

But that’s not what Paul is saying.

What Paul is saying here is that God’s grace, God’s love, God’s mercy comes first.

It precedes your life. It precedes your actions. It precedes anything you get right or wrong.

God’s love is bigger than all of that.

Bigger than our shame. Bigger than our failure. Bigger than whatever we think we have done that disqualifies us from being loved.

The message of the Gospel is that God loves us.

And that love comes first.

That’s the “aha” moment.

This is that ‘Amazing Grace’ moment — when you realize the GRACE THAT SAVED A WRETCH LIKE ME was already there..

This is Paul’s moment.

This is the moment where you go, wow, wow, God loves me no matter what.

And once that realization begins to dawn on us, we have to set aside a very common modern idea about God—the idea that God blesses us if we do all the right things.

God is blessing you right now.

All the time.

But the light awakens us to a different part of the story. It’s like that grace has been running quietly in the background of our lives all along, and suddenly we notice it.

Suddenly we see it.

Suddenly we realize that God has been present with us the whole time.

The world opens up.

God’s love reaches for you long before you are baptized, long before confirmation, long before you ever think to respond.

God’s love precedes everything.

Which is why, in this church, we don’t panic about exactly when someone gets baptized. You can be baptized as a baby or baptized when you’re seventy. God loved you the whole time anyway.

You are loved.

You are forgiven.

You are embraced by mercy before you ever act.

And if that’s true—if God seeks us before we respond—then perhaps we can begin to respond the same way.

This is the tricky part.

God desires for us to respond to the grace that God gives with grace for one another. 

To respond to the forgiveness God gives before we act with forgiveness, no matter what. It's not our forgiveness we're acting as. We're taking hold of the forgiveness of the cross. 

That's what we offer. My forgiveness will come along sometimes really long time later. 

To respond with mercy by offering mercy. These are the acts that are pleasing to the God that we believe in. And God's justice is all messed up and we should name that instead of trying to fit our justice into a divine scheme of things. God’s justice is not the justice we often imagine.

God’s justice looks like this: the guilty are loved.

The prisoner on the cross beside Jesus is told, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

The sinner receives mercy.

The undeserving receive love.

“Sleeper, awake,” Paul says. “Rise from the dead and see, and Christ will shine on you.”

This is a completely different game we’re playing. This is a completely different way of living.

Paul says: Be blinded. Be blinded by this light.

God actually hopes and desires you’ll join that story—not the story the world tells, but the story where people encounter you, hear your life, hear your long journey, and discover within it a little bit of light.

A little bit of life and love.

A little bit of mercy.

A little bit of forgiveness for themselves.

And that’s really what we are meant to offer: lives of light.

Now we will not always get it right.

We will make mistakes.

And that’s okay.

It’s OKAY.

It’s okay to make mistakes because the God we believe in is big enough to love, to forgive, and to offer mercy for every broken piece of our road.

And every now and then, by that grace, someone else begins to see the light of Christ too.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.