A good surgeon, before the surgery, will tell you what you will feel like afterward.

A good contractor, before lifting a hammer, will help you see what things will look like after all those walls are smashed.

A good disciplemaker will explain at the beginning the struggles that will come in the middle.

The goal is to reduce the impact of surprises. The goal is to say, “when that blows up, it’s normal.”

I’ve been struggling with John 13-17 for months. I kept trying to think of it as the things Jesus said last, as if they were the most important. I was, I suppose, using the image of a last lecture.

I think I was wrong.

Jesus knew, and says, that he’s coming back. He will see them shortly, in fact. And he’s giving these instructions not as a list of rules but as a way of helping them know how to think when things go crazy, when things change. Because things are going to change. And it reads not so much as a lecture as a transcript of a conversation without the benefit of facial expressions or geography. There is repetition that doesn’t fit a lecture, but does fit chattering distracted disciples.

So I’m starting to think of this as expectation training, as not a list of what to do, exactly, but of how to interpret and respond to what happens.

I’m going away, but don’t handle that the way you normally would. I mean usually, when someone passes away, they are gone. Everyone you have ever known, except for Lazarus, is dead and will stay that way until some abstract resurrection (though as you know the Sadducees don’t even believe in that).
But, dear friends, when I’m gone, I’m not dead. When I’m gone, I’m out of town.