It’s Not the Blind Who Cannot See

Sarah Hansman

Today’s reflection is from Sarah Hansman (she/her), a queer Catholic, a doctoral student in theological ethics at Boston College, a hospital chaplain,  and prison minister. Sarah is passionate about bringing together the worlds of theology, ministry, and community organizing. Her interests include the role of imagination in shaping moral agency and lay authority especially as it pertains to sex and gender, immigration, politics, and carceral justice.

The liturgical readings for the Fourth Sunday of Lent can be found by clicking here.

In today’s liturgical readings, we hear a lot about sight, light, and vision, but I want to propose that the heart of these stories are not seeing, but listening. 

Our first reading shows us that God has a preferential option for those on the margins. David wasn’t even invited to the banquet at which he would eventually be anointed king. But God invites Samuel, and us, to see as God sees. Don’t judge one’s appearance or position, look into their heart. How does the church fail to live up to God’s call when encountering LGBTQ+ people?

Our second reading calls us to be “children of the light.” Shame—as LGBTQ+ people learn early on—does not come from what is open and visible but from what is hidden in secret. Everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light. The truth about ourselves, brought into the light of day, casts off the weight of shame.  

And today’s Gospel provides us with an extended story about a blind man, who is made to see, but still isn’t heard. 

In Jesus’s time, people believed that illness and disability were caused by sin. The Pharisees’ initial question about the blind man was already steeped in this prejudice: “Who sinned?” they ask, “This man or his parents?” Where should the blame go? Jesus, however, defies their question: no one is to blame. Quite the opposite in fact. God will be “made visible through [the blind man].” This man, who others view as a product of sin, becomes a conduit of God’s revelation.

Yet even after Jesus restores this man’s sight, the Pharisees remain confounded. They question the healed man again and again, but they do not believe him. The Church’s teachings on sex and gender have long acted as the Pharisees in today’s gospel: claiming moral authority, deciding who is a sinner and who is intrinsically disordered, failing all along to truly listen to the testimony of queer, trans and non-binary folks. 

The blind man’s neighbors even question his identity, doubting that he is who he says. His first testimony is simple, “I am.” This is me. I don’t know how or why this happened to me but I know who I am. They don’t believe him.

Then the Pharisees ask him, “What do you have to say about him, since he opened your eyes?” But their question is fruitless as they do not believe his answer (that Jesus was a prophet) nor his lived reality (that he had been blind and gained his sight). 

So they turn to his parents who say: Let him speak for himself. He is of age, listen to him.

The man, who has been calm up to this point, assured by the truth of his experience and who he is, suddenly seems impatient. “I told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again?”

Despite the fact that the Pharisees were the ones who called him to testify, they ridicule him when he begins to speak his mind: “You were born totally in sin, and are you trying to teach us?” How dare you? They are only looking for one answer, and unless they find it, the authentic testimony of this man goes unheard. Their hearts are closed off to true encounter. “Then they threw him out.” 

Even living authentically as “children of the light,” LGBTQ+ communities too often face experiences of being questioned, publicly humiliated, and cast off by faith institutions we love. While we may not feel shame about our truth, others try to diminish our light. It can be exhausting and demoralizing. But like the now-seeing man, this isn’t the end of our story. 

Jesus, as he so often does, goes and finds the man and turns the paradigm on its head. It is not the blind person who is a sinner, but the person who claims sight. If you, like the Pharisees, think you can see, if you assume you know someone or something without truly listening, you’re wrong. But if you, like the now-seeing man, bear witness to your truth, your faith, and your identity, you make God visible. 

In this fourth week of Lent, and in this particular moment of scapegoating, blaming, and shaming, can we be like the now-seeing man? Can we be authentic about who we are, ignore the ridicule of others, and so be cleansed of shame? Can we engage humbly in relationship and be open to the mystery of another? Can we remember, when we are cast off or thrown out, that Jesus comes to find us outside the Church walls? 

—Sarah Hansman, March 15, 2026