This Present Darkness

Reference

John 9:1-7

Sermon Discussion Questions:

1. Read John 9:1-7. How does Jesus' response to His disciples' question help us understand why bad things happen?
2. What does Jesus mean by "night is coming, when no one can work"?
3. Read Matt 5:14-16 in tandem with John 9:3-4. What ought we be doing while it is day time?
4. How can we respond like Christ to the dark events of this past week?

The first amendment of our constitution lists both freedom of speech and freedom of religion because our founding fathers believed that Truth was self-evident. We do not coerce belief because Truth will testify to itself, so if we remain free to debate and dialogue we will arrive at truth. We do not need to bludgeon each other into submission with violence or coercion; if we have different beliefs, one of us (or both of us) are wrong and through rigorous discussion and debate, we will grow in understanding. But people don’t feel like that is true anymore. Because free speech and debate only help move us towards truth if we are a certain kind of person—a person who is willing to submit to Truth, to admit we were wrong, to listen with humility. One of our our founding fathers, John Adams explains: “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

What happens to us if we become an immoral and irreligious people? If we lack that shared commitment to Truth? Then Truth is transformed from something worthy of the definite article: the Truth, and instead becomes possessive: my truth. The sky is reduced to an umbrella, and your umbrella and my umbrella are not the same. And if I cannot persuade you with Truth, then all I have to change your mind is force.

We have lived long in a culture that lives as if Truth is just an expression of individual preferences and so the use of force to coerce belief has become common place. Policing speech is a good example of this. Arguing with someone that they should be more polite or respectful is not the same thing as cancelling someone for their speech. The former is arguing within the moral/religious framework (Good people don’t talk that way, and I know that you and I want to be good), the latter is just a raw appeal to power (I will get you fired and silenced because you and I do not believe “good” to be the same thing).

In 2024, two attempts were made on the life of Donald Trump. In 2025, Minnesota Democratic state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were fatally shot by a man who had a hit list of 45 other Democratic politicians he intended to kill; an arsonist set fire to the Pennsylvania governor’s residence with Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro and his family inside; an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer was shot and injured outside a detention facility in Texas; the New Mexico Republican Party headquarters was set on fire; and a shooter attacked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters. And this week, while debating at a university in Utah, conservative activist Charlie Kirk—in the presence of 3,000 students and his wife and children—was killed.

But Kirk’s death has struck a chord that is difficult to describe. If I were to try to explain it rationally, I would try to say that his death feels so different because he was not an elected official. Kirk was a private citizen who had no direct hand on the levers of policy and law, but whose main aim was to persuade people through debate and free speech. To kill him was not only to say that politicians who wield power can become targets, but citizens who wield ideas can become targets. And if you can be killed for the ideas you have and the speech you make, then what is to become of our country?

I am not terribly familiar with Charlie Kirk. Prior to his death, I had only seen one interview with him. But since his death, I have tried to get a better handle on his beliefs—and it appears that he was deeply, thoroughly Christian and his Christian faith seemed to inform much of his political activism and beliefs.

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 6 Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud 7 and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing. - John 9:1-7

Why do bad things happen?
Who can fix it?
What can we do?

Why Do Bad Things Happen

We all want explanations for why bad things happen. In the face of tragedy and loss, we all are left wondering “Why?”

Here a man who has been blind from birth is seated along the path of Jesus and His disciples. And the twelve have a framework in place to make sense of why this suffering has occurred: either this man or his parents sinned, therefore this curse of blindness is here. There is a kind of Biblical logic here. Sin brings suffering. And all suffering, and illness, and death came into the world through sin—the sin of Adam and Eve ushered the curse into the world. And the Bible does teach that, You reap what you sow. Paul warns the Corinthians that some of them are sick and have died because of how they have profaned the Lord’s Supper in 1 Cor 11.

But that doesn’t mean that all suffering and loss can be neatly pinned on someone’s individual sin. Jesus teaches us that sometimes, evil and suffering occur for mysterious reasons that cannot be traced back to a sin in the individual, but can be traced forward to a glorious end. This man was born blind, not because of his sin or his parents, but because God intended to display the works of God through this man’s blindness.

Which tells us that sometimes tragedy, and evil, and suffering occur so that God might display His superabounding goodness in how He responds to the evil. And here is a hard truth to wrap our minds around: in God’s providence, He permitted the curse of Adam to affect this man’s eyes so that He would be blind for his whole life—which is an enormous amount of suffering—so that this moment of healing could happen; so that works of God might be displayed in him. His lifelong disability was not meaningless or pointless, but has been folded into the promise of Romans 8:28: “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”

Is that fair?

Is it fair that two children will now grow up never having remembered their father? A wife is deprived of her husband?

For God to allow suffering, evil, and tragedy to occur, but promise that through it He will bring about something better through the display of His own goodness? Well, that depends entirely on the quality of what is “better.” By the end of this chapter, this blind man has not only his physical eyes but his spiritual eyes opened and he believes in Christ and in believing receives everlasting life, the promise of life forevermore with God.

What will heaven be?

I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for…that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened. (The Brothers Karamazov)

Who Can Fix It?

The passage begins with Jesus approaching the man: “As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth.” John 9:1

It then concludes, rather bizarrely, with Jesus making mud with His saliva and applies it to the man’s eyes before sending him away to wash. The forming of the mud probably is an echo to Genesis 2:7, where God uses a mixture of water and dirt to form Adam out of the clay. Jesus could be demonstrating that He shares an identity with the Lord God who made Man, who originally shaped and fashioned the eyes and knows how they operate. We cannot be certain, but what is certain is that only Jesus is capable of doing this.

Later in the chapter, the blind man will report to the Pharisees that never in the history of the world has a blind man been healed (John 9:32), but Jesus has healed him.

But that makes Jesus’ comment before the miracle curious:

We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” - John 9:4-5

Jesus seems to allude to a limited amount of time: “while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work.” What does that mean? Two things:

It refers to Jesus’ time before His crucifixion. The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. 36 While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” - John 12:35-36 So, after receiving the morsel of bread, he immediately went out. And it was night. - John 13:30
It refers to the Spirit-filled ministry of the Church

After Jesus dies, He resurrects at dawn on the third day. Night is broken.

Jesus says “we must work”—why does he say that? The disciples don’t participate in the healing of the blind man. In fact, in John’s gospel, the disciples don’t participate in any of the miracles that Jesus performs (unlike the Synoptics).

Jesus says “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Is Jesus not the light of the world anymore because He is not walking bodily on the earth?

Jesus goes on to teach His disciples that because of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in them, He will be with them always, He will make His home with them, and then after His resurrection He commissions them and sends them out into the world just as the Father sent Him (John 20:21).

“You are the light of the world.” - Matt 5:14

When Saul is persecuting the church Jesus rebukes him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting ME”

We are the body of Christ

The Church is the visible, physical manifestation of the light of the world, of Jesus Christ here on earth. And we must work, because it is daytime right now, but night is coming when no one can work any longer. The Last Day, Judgment Day is coming, when our opportunity to respond to the blindness and suffering and unbelief of the world will pass.

What Can We Do?

Be Angry

Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, - Eph 4:26

The verse is often read as “don’t be angry.” But the verse doesn’t say that; it says the exact opposite. It says “Be angry…and do not sin.” There is a danger with anger in how it can quickly find a channel of expression through sin—and apparently it is something that we should put a time limit on how long we let ourselves experience anger. Yet, God commands us that we ought to feel angry. Angry at what?

Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. - Rom 12:9

We should feel hatred and anger towards evil. We should hate what God hates and love what God loves.

In Perelandra, C.S. Lewis describes the experience of the main character, Ransom, who finds himself in hand-to-hand combat with Satan incarnate, when suddenly he is overwhelmed with an experience of total rage:

Then an experience that perhaps no good man can ever have in our world came over him--a torrent of perfectly unmixed and lawful hatred. The energy of hating, never before felt without some guilt, without some dim knowledge that he was failing fully to distinguish the sinner from the sin, rose into his arms and legs till he felt that they were pillars of burning blood.

It is perhaps difficult to understand why this filled Ransom not with horror but with a kind of joy. The joy came from finding at last what hatred was made for. As a boy with an axe rejoices on finding a tree, or a boy with a box of coloured chalks rejoices on finding a pile of perfectly white paper, so he rejoiced in the perfect congruity between his emotion and its object….He felt that he could so fight, so hate with a perfect hatred, for a whole year.

Fight the right enemy

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. 11 Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. 12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. - Eph 6:10-13

Ransom’s experience of lawful hatred is aimed at Satan. Our battle is not against our political enemies, not against those who persecute us, not against those who view Charlie Kirk’s death differently than we do. Our battle is against the spiritual forces and entities that are blinding the lost and perverting them into wickedness.

Love your enemies

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. How? Remember how God in Christ treated you. While we were enemies, Christ died for us. We can extend grace and mercy and forgiveness to those who hate us because that is what God did for us.

Join the Church

…so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. - Eph 3:10

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. - Heb 10:24-25

Pursue ordinary faithfulness