4 Lent Year A 3/15/2026
1 Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 23; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41
Rev. Mark A. Lafler
Ephesians is a letter in the New Testament with themes of Christian unity, grace, the church, and spiritual warfare.
In our reading today we get a small reading from Ephesians that includes a quote…
The 14th verse reads:
Therefore, it says, “Sleeper, awake!
Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
It’s a quote of some sort…
It has overtones from the Old Testament Book of Isaiah…
…wake up and shout for joy… (Isaiah 26.19)
And
Arise, shine, for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. (Isaiah 60.1)
But it’s not a direct quote…
And many scholars believe that the quote was from a primitive baptismal hymn of the early church.
So as the new convert comes up out of the water the person is greeted with…
“Sleeper, awake!
Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
A sacramental emergence from spiritual sleep or spiritual death into the light of life.
I know my own conversion had this type of tone to it…
Back on June 25, 1993, my life was forever changed by the grace and mercy of our Lord.
I grew up a preacher’s kid…
and I lived up to the reputation that many pastor’s kids have…
which is not a good reputation…
I was running away from my Christian upbringing…
And doing all sorts of things that weren’t good or wholesome.
But soon after I graduated from high school, I attended a youth event on a Friday night…
Where it seemed to me that the speaker was talking directly to me…
as if no one else was in the room…
As if he knew all about my life…
Which he didn’t because he was a guest preacher.
I went to him after the meeting…
We talked…
And he invited me to pray with him that night and ask Jesus to transform my life.
And Jesus did!
The Holy Spirit came into my life, and I have never been the same since.
It was as if I was asleep and I woke up from a really long dream…
Jesus became real in my life…
The people that knew me could have easily sang this ancient baptismal hymn:
“Sleeper, awake!
Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
God through Jesus Christ is still changing lives today.
Bringing us from darkness to light.
Just as Jesus did with the blind man in the Gospel narrative today.
Bringing him from darkness to light.
From being blind to being able to see.
And even as the leaders questioned the man…
Wanting to find accusations against Jesus…
The man who once was blind became a follower of Jesus…
And he confessed:
“Lord, I believe.” And then he worshiped Jesus.
Jesus came into this world to rescue people who live in darkness and bring them into his marvelous light.
He made the way for us to be forgiven of our sins…
Through his passion and death on the cross…
Through his rising again on that Easter Sunday…
He rescues us from sin and death…
Showing us mercy…
By his grace through faith…
So that we can have a hope in this world…
The Christian hope…
That we will live with Jesus forever more.
As it says in the anthem of our burial liturgy:
I am Resurrection and I am Life, says the Lord.
Whoever has faith in me shall have life, even though he die.
And everyone who has life, and has committed himself to me in faith,
shall not die for ever.
In John 8:12, Jesus said:
“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
And perhaps these words of Jesus are the words that St. Paul had in mind as he wrote our text from Ephesians, saying:
Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light.
Live as children of light.
— for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.
Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness,
but instead expose them.
As people of the light…
As the people of God…
This speaks to the cultural moment we live in.
You know, it seems to me that from the COVID year, 2020,
through today our world has been…
Shall we say… unsettling…
I am sure there are other words we can think of…
But it’s been challenging.
There are all sorts of political, cultural, international challenges to deal with…
Let alone all the things in our own life…
In our own families and communities.
And yet Paul in our text encourages us to focus on what is…
good and right and true.
This can be a real challenge in the world…
Between the reality and horror of war…
The hardships… the way people can be treated…
When the cultural moment gets difficult…
When it becomes all the more challenging and sometimes evil…
People usually respond in three ways.
First, some people see the world and want to go hide…
They pull away from society…
They go into flight mode…
They want to protect all they have and the people around them.
They withdraw…
Put their head in the sand and ignore the plight in our world.
Others, they see the things they disagree with in the cultural moment and instead of fleeing they choose to fight.
Whatever it is that has their disdain, they want to march out and fight it.
Stand against the wrongs…
Making many of these things their primary focus…
We see this on both sides of the political spectrum in our day.
Still others, see the difficulties in the cultural moment and choose to not want to cause a stir…
They tolerate what happens…
Trying to avoid any tensions…
They just try to keep the peace without speaking out…
And just accept what the cultural moment brings.
We see these responses to the times we live in.
To the challenges that we face.
As so many choose between fight or flight…
Or just flowing the flow.
And yet there is a fourth way…
A more biblical approach to the challenges in our world.
Jesus does not call us to flight or fight…
He does not call us to accept, approve, or tolerate everything our culture does.
He calls us to be in the world, but not of the world.
In the final prayers of Jesus in John 17, our Lord prays:
I have given them your word and the world has hated them,
for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world.
My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.
They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.
Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.
As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.
(John 17.14-18)
You see, we are called to live in the tension between the world we live in and the light of Christ.
We are called to remain faithful in the light…
Having faithfulness to God’s Holy Word…
Faithful to the mission of Jesus and the leading of the Holy Spirit…
While we walk in the darkness of our world.
To live out what St. Paul writes in Ephesians:
… the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.
Jesus rescues us from darkness and makes us light so that we can be the light in this world.
- R. R. Tolkien, the Oxford Professor, known for his famous trilogy The Lord of the Rings, wrote about the challenging moments that life brings.
He was a devout Roman Catholic Christian who also (early in his life) served on the front lines during World War I.
He knew the horrors of war…
He suffered a severe case of Trench Fever…
And lost most of his childhood friends in the war.
And this reality of his faith and lived experience makes its way into his books.
In the first book of the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo Baggins is given a great task to destroy a very powerful ring that the dark lord is trying to get.
In the book it seems that darkness is closing in…
When the world of Middle Earth is beginning to fall part…
Frodo laments to his companion Gandalf.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times.
But that is not for them to decide.
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
Friends, we don’t get to decide what happens in this world…
We do get to choose to live faithfully in the light of Christ.
And because of the grace of Jesus…
Empowered by the Holy Spirit…
We shine the light in this world with all that is good and right and true.
So that, many will come to faith…
And be baptized into the name of Jesus…
Where the song will be sung:
“Sleeper, awake!
Rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”
Amen.
