This is a fairly common liturgical response that alludes to the opening preamble of John’s gospel. Those first few verses begin just like the opening of Genesis, with the words, “In the beginning,” and then John goes on to outline another metaphor for creation that begins with a Word and culminates in the springing forth of life, life that will be the light of all people, a light no darkness can overcome.

We say it, but do we believe it? Do we trust that in Jesus Christ, there will be no darkness that can completely overshadow God’s light? Its one thing to claim with John 3:16 that we believe in Jesus and maybe even can say somehow that he’s our ticket to eternal life. It is again another to trust that Jesus opens a pathway of light for our very lives right here and right now. John’s gospel is the last written and the most theologically nuanced of the four. His claim on truth is more than just re-telling the tales of the historical Jesus as powerful as they are. No, this writer wants us to make some sense of the profundity of the change that has taken place because Jesus walked on this earth. He wants us to know that Jesus was in this world, but not of this world – that his light does not get extinguished – ever, and that the peace he gives far surpasses any peace we can existentially know. He is the gospel writer who gives us all the superlatives. In this text, Jesus tells Judas and the other disciples, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them.” And we are to infer from that that those who don’t keep the commandments of Jesus may fall out of favor with the Almighty. This is the gospel, the only gospel in which Jesus makes the claim to be the way, the truth, and the life. If you want to be really, really sure that it’s all about Jesus, and that we better pay attention, my advice to you would be, “Read John.”

But when we do turn to this gospel, is it possible to recognize any hope for flawed human life? I don’t know about you, but I can certainly envision times of darkness that do seem obscured from all light – even the light of God. Wars, tragedies, sometimes even spilt milk seems like too much to bear. I happen to resonate far more with the bumbling of the disciples in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. I like it when the disciples look a bit dense in those stories because you can almost picture Jesus shaking his head and then patting them on the back anyway. I come to John’s gospel with a bit of trepidation, wondering if I can measure up. Will my beliefs be strong enough? Can I trust and love and follow as this Jesus intends? The mystical peace that passes all understanding may be wonderful, but it also may just fly right over my head!

I think that’s why these particular verses about other-worldly peace get so much play time at funeral and memorial services when we really don’t know what else to say. There is little comfort in the unknown. Empirically, we don’t know what happens after death other than what the coroners can tell us. But at the church service, we can say to the family, “Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be afraid,” only because Jesus said it first. We do tremble at the thought of death – sometimes even at the thought of spiders or a big algebra test. Human beings are naturally afraid because we are naturally limited. Death is a probably our biggest limit, though there are others. The telling and retelling of the story of resurrection is in part meant to teach us to laugh at death and to put aside all our earthly insecurities. Death has no greater hold on us than any other transition, but then again, most change is difficult for humans. Jesus intends to ease our minds about our own finitude when he says that life goes on abundantly and eternally even past the expiration dates printed on our tombstones.

And yet, even as religious as we can claim to be, collectively human beings are pretty insecure about a whole lot of things. We certainly fail to live up to our little candle-lighting ritual most of the time. We muddle around in the darkness, and fall into the temptations brought about when we refuse to see God’s light as our guide. Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr is quoted as indicating that in “a culture of insecurity where people feel as if their lives as well as their way of life are at risk intensifies certain temptations.” (Ottati, Theology for Liberal Presbyterians and Other Endangered Species, p. 75) What is meant by this quote is that we multiply, perhaps exponentially, our temptation to sin when we are feeling lost and afraid. It makes us want to shore up all kinds of things by ourselves without remembering that God is our only changeless variable. We’ve seen this time and again in our nation. When a country grows anxious, it fears its enemies and neighbors rather than trying to figure out mutual intentions and reasons for diplomatic solutions. When a family grows anxious, there is more fighting, sometimes violence in trying to “win” someone else’s love. You probably know in yourself that when you are afraid, your decision-making capacity is truncated. But sadly, we have learned to label our fears as a disease and therefore we try to medicate them when the problem is older than that and has roots in our understanding of sin that could potentially help us.

Getting rid of fear is tricky. There are certainly those so anxious about their own lives that medication is the only route to sanity, and yet, for most of us, our fear is more about our lack of trust that God is and always will be present in the unknown. I won’t try to tell you that the darkness doesn’t exist. There are those churches and religious leaders out there who will try to tell you that a life lived in Jesus will simply melt your fears and sadness away. Not true. This isn’t what Jesus is trying to tell us. What he is telling us that the peace he brings will help us in the times of darkness as well as the shiny happy moments. His security is not a promise that bad things won’t happen, but that God sees us past the bad things. The Jesus of John’s gospel promises this peace, full well knowing that he himself is going to be betrayed, denied, taken away to be tried by both government and religious authorities, and then be crucified on a cross by those very people he came to save. It isn’t a pretty picture – certainly it’s a picture that has dark and dangerous tones all through it. But Jesus has this way of looking past the fears to what might come out of it. Did he know that resurrection was on the other side of that dark gate? One can’t tell exactly from reading scripture, but his trust was there pretty completely. He trusted God to be turning even the worst parts of our world toward receiving some good news – that the light brought into this world would indicate life for all people, and that when the darkness comes, the light will not be squashed by it.

You may be experiencing fearful times yourself. Our country is still engaged in warfare half-way around the world with no clear signs of how or when it will end. In our community, sometimes our own jobs feel shaky, and we can sense more grief around the edges as our state struggles for what to do to achieve quality education and health care for all its residents. Families experience anxiety all the time - sometimes they even worry about good things as children leave the nest for college. Our hearts are troubled. Our hearts are afraid. The peace that we long for seems far from us. What can Jesus do to convince us otherwise?

Convincing insecure people to be secure doesn’t happen overnight; at least I don’t think it does. It takes courage and faith to give our fears over to God rather than react, and react, and react some more trying to secure those things that can’t be nailed down. To let go of the reactions that lead us to sin is our aim. To counter fear with trust instead of more fear is not intuitive. It takes learning on our parts. It takes believing just a little more each week that Jesus Christ is the light of our world and that he is the light no darkness can overcome. “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

Amen.