Fourth Sunday of Easter

Preaching Commentary

Context

Signs and Dialogue

There’s a reoccurring pattern in Johns’s Gospel in which Jesus performs a sign, which is followed by dialogue and then commentary from Jesus that provides the theological framework through which to interpret the meaning of the sign. One occurrence of this pattern is found in chapter 9 of John’s Gospel. There, Jesus heals a man who has been blind from birth, the sixth of the seven “signs” Jesus performs in this Gospel. The blind man is eventually driven out of the synagogue after being healed by Jesus. But at the end of chapter 9 (vv. 35-38), Jesus finds the man and asks him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The man responds, “Who is…