Sermon – March 15th, 2026
Hope Lutheran Church, Port Coquitlam BC
John 9; Ephesians 5:8-14
Theme: “A wake-up call”
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Introduction – (Gets a mug and a thermos with hot water) What I have here will change your life — if you don’t like coffee. I found a way that you can at least have a taste of it without compromising your dislike for it.
(Pours hot water) Here it is. Want to try?
(Waits for reactions) What? Isn’t this coffee? Well, I know this is plain hot water, but come on — this is 50% of coffee, isn’t it? Coffee is water and ground coffee. So you have to concede that this is at least 50% coffee. Now, here’s a mug, and coffee is frequently savoured from mugs. That adds to my thesis. Then, think about it — ground coffee is just a few yards from here, in the kitchen. That should count too. Plus: I am using the word “coffee” to describe what I have here, so you shouldn’t be so closed-minded or judgmental — you should just accept my use of the word.
Still not convinced? Good — because you shouldn’t be. No matter the mental gymnastics I do here, this is not coffee. Period. Coffee is not something you can have 50% of. You either have it or you don’t.
What I’m doing here is commonly called Confirmation Bias. I have a thesis, an idea, and I use whatever is at hand to confirm it to myself. In this sermon, I call it Selective Blindness — we close our eyes to what is inconvenient and look only at what we want to see.
Let’s see how it happens in the Gospel today, and how Paul helps us stay grounded in the full counsel of God.
- The Sleep of Confirmation Bias
In John 9, there is a blind man who meets Jesus and is healed. Praise God — what a miracle! We would all be happy about it, right? No. The Jewish leaders are not happy. A man recovers his sight, and all they want to do is find theological failure in what happened right before their eyes. They practice Selective Blindness. The text shows it happening on at least three levels.
In dealing with Scripture. “Who sinned so that he was born blind?” ask the disciples. “It must be a fraud, for He does not keep the Sabbath,” say the Pharisees. When Scripture is used correctly, it interprets itself — and the outcome is good. When it is misused — filtered through tradition, the spirit of the moment, cultural preferences, our mood, or our desires — the outcome is harmful. The Word is the power of God for salvation when handled rightly; when misused, it becomes a tool for condemnation.
In dealing with a person. “You were born in sin and you wish to teach us?” Sometimes our blind spots in the Word lead us to arrogance or contempt toward others — especially those who don’t share our exact convictions. We must not concede an inch when it comes to right teaching. But we must also take care that a wrong application of right teaching doesn’t wound people and drive them away from the presence of Christ.
In dealing with Jesus. “Give glory to God.” The leaders might have accepted Jesus — given him some honor, even — if he would just change a little to fit their mold. This is how the world treats Jesus. And sometimes it is how even Christians are tempted to treat him. “Okay, Jesus — you are love, you bring peace, you want people to be well — all of that is wonderful. But could you please stop talking about…” — and here we fill in whatever the spirit of the age is demanding we soften or silence: heaven and hell, salvation exclusively through Christ, the Triune God, what love really means, the beginning and end of life. The world wants us to stay asleep — or to reshape Jesus into a mold of our own making.
Before we move on — don’t let the Pharisees take the heat alone. When was the last time you questioned an opinion you hold strongly? Or noticed a Bible passage that makes you uncomfortable and… moved on? That’s me. That’s you. The 50% coffee cup is in our hands too. This is us. We are sinners under constant danger of reading Scripture poorly, and therefore of distorting who Jesus is and failing to love our neighbors with the fullness that Scripture — both Law and Gospel — demands of us. Like the Pharisees, we are tempted to use tradition or the spirit of the moment to stay in the dark, because the dark may be comfortable.[1]
A man is born blind, and Jesus heals him. Praise be to God. What, then, is the cure for our own selective blindness when it takes hold of us?
- The Wake-Up Call
First, we are reminded of our condition: we were lost sinners who could not see the path to God. Jesus comes and heals us — He elects us, chooses us, calls us to belong to Him. Now, by faith, we see. We see Him. We see truth from the Word.
Or, to use Paul’s language: he has awakened us from our sleep and given us eyes wide open to the wonders of his love. Jesus identifies himself as the Light of the World. He is the sun rising to end the night. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. Try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord — for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true.[2]
He calls us now to live our faith in the world. Last week we spoke about how you can sleep in peace when you are in Him. Today we are reminded that in our waking hours, we need to be fully awake. How does that happen?
Paul calls us to be awake in God’s Word and in the practice of faith. In practical terms, this means:
Bible open. This sounds obvious, but it’s the place to start. You cannot be shaped by something you are not in contact with. Staying in constant contact with the Scriptures is not a religious duty to check off; it is how you keep hearing the voice of the One who called you out of darkness in the first place.
Bible in context. Reading the Bible in context means letting Scripture interpret Scripture, rather than using a text as a pretext for our own thesis. That is precisely what the Pharisees were doing — they had verses, they had arguments, they had chapter and verse. What they lacked was the honesty to let the whole counsel of God speak, not just the parts that confirmed what they already believed. A verse pulled from its context can be made to say almost anything. That’s not Bible reading — that’s the 50% coffee cup again. When we read in context — paying attention to who is speaking, to whom, in what situation, and how it fits the whole story of Scripture — we protect ourselves from the very selective blindness this sermon is about.
Bible in real life. The Word is not meant to stay on the page — it is meant to walk with you into your Monday morning. Into a hard conversation with your teenager. Into a decision at work. Into a moment where you have to choose between what is easy and what is true. And here is where patience also comes in. On topics that Scripture leaves room for dialogue, we can disagree with grace, listen without contempt, and trust that the Spirit is at work in others too. What we guard carefully is the clear teaching of the Word. What we hold with open hands is our own certainty on the questions that are genuinely open.
Here’s a very concrete way of doing so: Before you get angry at the world or a neighbor, ask: “Have I let the Word speak to this, or am I just holding my 50% coffee cup?” .
There is no substitute for studying your Bible. Knowing more about Jesus. Knowing more about how the Word applies to your life. Jesus is the Truth standing before our eyes — not just part of it, but the Truth you need. There are gray areas, for sure. Not every single moral question is settled, and we need patience and understanding in our dialogue with one another. But we don’t want to look at only part of the truth and claim it to be the whole. . From that angle, I could “prove” that the Bible says “there is no God” — until you see the full verse: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.'” (Psalm 14:1). Context changes everything.
- The Cost and the Gift of Waking Up
The Cost: Waking up comes with a cost. Like the blind man who was put out of the synagogue, standing in the light may leave us without a welcoming place in the eyes of the world. That is a real loss — community, belonging, familiarity. Jesus doesn’t pretend otherwise.[3]
The Gift: But notice what the man gained. Jesus walked back to find him personally. When the world shows you the door, Christ is already on the other side of it. You don’t wake up into isolation — you wake up into him.
Compassion, Not Contempt. And being awake doesn’t make us better than others — it makes us grateful. That gratitude removes arrogance and replaces it with compassion for those still asleep. Instead of contempt, we carry the same light that once found us in our own darkness and offer it freely to others.
Conclusion – So here is a little play on words to close with. The Portuguese word for coffee is café. And the Portuguese word for faith is fé.
You want to stay awake? For your daily tasks, maybe coffee is what you need. But for your spiritual life, what you need is fé — faith. Jesus pours his grace into your heart through faith, and that changes everything. Instead of Confirmation Bias — picking and choosing what we want to see — we are grounded in the Full Truth. Not a partial truth. Not a 50% cup. The whole thing. And that Truth is not a system, not a set of rules, not a theological framework. That Truth is a Person: Jesus. And he is ours — by fé.
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[1] -The blind man was so grateful for what Jesus done for him that he did not shy away of giving a powerful witness before powerful people: He is a prophet. Gratitude for what Jesus did, does and will do for us is the only real “strength” that can prompt us to give our powerful witness before a world growing hostile to the Christian faith: Jesus is the Lord. And what happens when we confess that Jesus is the Lord and that the Bible is His word? Hostility and enmity with the World.
-A beggar comes before the Pharisees and turns the tables. A “criminal” dies on a cross and turns the world tables. Jesus.
-God’s works and wonders are frequently hidden in our world, so He uses ways to make them known, as in the sign performed by Jesus. When you are facing difficult times, don’t look back for a cause, a sin, a mistake, a punishment. Look forward, to what God is making, to what he promised He Will make and what you know that will happen. Look to Scriptures and to Jesus In Christ the Light of the World.
[2] Looking at this map of Ephesus , we see a city that looks a lot like Port Coquitlam. It’s busy, it’s successful, but it’s a place where it’s very easy to fall into a spiritual sleep. Paul writes to them—and to us today—not to scold us, but to give us a wake-up call. He wants us to stop settling for the ‘50% coffee’ of a distracted life and start tasting the fullness of His grace.
[3] Waking up leads, at times, to hostility. Like the blind man who became aposynagogos — put out of the synagogue — standing in the light may make us apopolitikos: without a welcoming place in society.
