March 15, 2026 "God Looks on the Heart"

4th Sunday in Lent

1 Samuel 16:1-13

Psalm 23

Ephesians 5:8-14

John 9:1-41

Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ,

grace and peace to you

from the one who looks on the heart amen.

“How long will you grieve over Saul?”

 the Lord asks the prophet Samuel

at the beginning of our first reading for today,

God has removed favor from Saul as king of Israel

 and is preparing to anoint another,

and Samuel is having a hard time making the transition.

 Which is kind of funny

 because Samuel was opposed to the Israelites

 having a king in the first place,

but they begged and begged

and to appease them

God had Samuel anoint Saul,

 and Saul became Samuel’s idea of what a king looks like.

but now Saul has messed up

and God is proposing to do something different

 and Samuel has become attached to the way things have been

 and is now struggling to come around to the new thing that God is doing.

Samuel does follow God’s instructions,

 going to Bethlehem and inviting Jesse and his sons to a sacrifice.

 God has told Samuel that the new king

will be from among Jesse’s sons,

and when he sees Jesse’s oldest son he thinks “‘Surely his anointed is now before the Lord.’ But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him, for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’”

 and of course the rest of the sons parade by

 and God doesn’t choose one

until the youngest is brought in from tending the sheep,

 and then God has Samuel anoint David,

the least likely brother,

to be the next king.

The way this story is told

always makes me chuckle a little bit

 because we have God emphasizing heart over appearance

 but when David is brought in he is described as “ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome.”

seemingly contradicting God’s statement,

I’ve always wondered if after David was established as the greatest king of Israel

someone went back and added that,

like yes God looked at his heart but he was good looking too…

but that’s besides the point,

 the point, the good news

 is that God does not see as mortals see

 but the Lord looks on the heart.

And this opens up way more possibilities

for God to act in the world

because it means God is not limited by human definitions

of who is in and who is out,

who is good or bad, worthy or unworthy

in fact God tends to choose to work with those

 who have been deemed on the outside of a community, or unworthy

 often for circumstances out of their control.

We see this in our gospel for today,

Jesus and his disciples are walking along

 and encounter a man blind from birth,

a man who has been deemed other from the very beginning.

 And the disciples treat this encounter as a jumping off point

 for a theological discussion asking: whose sin caused this affliction in this man?

Note their assumption that his blindness was caused by sin,

that it was deserved in some way,

to which Jesus responds: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”

 Jesus changes the paradigm

It’s not about what the man or his parents have done

It’s about what God is doing.

Then makes mud,

spreads it on his eyes and tells him to go wash in the pool of Siloam,

 and when he follows Jesus’ instructions

he comes back able to see,

 and that’s where his troubles really start

because now he no longer fits in his old place,

the neighbors ask how this came about,

 and he tells them

and they decide that’s too improbable,

this must be a different man

who just looks like the blind man who used to beg,

 and when he insists that it really is him

they take him to the Pharisees,

who interrogate him, trying to put him back in the box of sinner

first because Jesus broke the law by healing on the sabbath,

then by questioning his truthfulness in saying who he is

 until his parents can affirm that it really is him

and even then they continue to badger the man

 trying to get him to admit that Jesus is a sinner

until he snaps and lays it out for them

 “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”

And here the man confesses the truth,

 the truth seen with the eyes of faith

 of the new thing that God is doing.

And the Pharisees reject the truth

“They answered him, you were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us? and they drove him out.”

 They have become so entrenched in the way things have been

 that they fail to see the new thing God is doing right in front of them,

 in fact, they reject it

and here the work of God is revealed,

the obliviousness of the insiders who claim to understand

verses the outsider whose experience of God has led him to faith,

a faith which he proclaims,

a faith for which he is driven out.

And Jesus comes and finds him

affirms his faith,

and reveals himself as the Son of Man,

and the man believes and worships him.

In the pool of Siloam

 Jesus gave this man the eyes of faith

the ability to perceive the revelation of God

 through the eyes of God

rather than the eyes of the world.

In the pool called “Sent”

Jesus didn’t so much heal a man

 as created a disciple

one who came to believe in him,

worship him, and publicly proclaim him.

This is what Jesus does for us as well in the waters of baptism.

 God who does not see us as others do

but looks on our hearts

 washes us and gifts us with the eyes of faith,

 so that now we too may see as God sees,

 God who looks on the heart.

And with the eyes of faith

we are then sent into the world as disciples,

 not so that we can continue to create insiders and outsiders,

or judge who is a sinner,

or hold onto the way things have been

 but to witness to the works of God,

 the new things God is doing.

And yes, sometimes, like Samuel

we learn one way of God doing things

 and we think oh good, this is how it is,

but then God does a new thing

 and we struggle to adjust,

 and God looking on our hearts acknowledges our grief

and brings us back to the font

 to remind us of the gift God gave us.

 Then God brings us to the table,

feeds us with God’s own self

 and renewed, fed, and forgiven

God sends us back out to encounter the world with the eyes of faith,

and when we look we cannot help but proclaim

“I believe.” Amen