“So what do we do now?”

To-do list people ask that question all the time. Not all of you are to-do list people.

But, there are big moments/events/transitions that lead most of us to ask that question.

• The baby is home from the hospital
• The funeral is over
• The annual concert is complete
• We can take masks off
• The wind that we have been leaning into for days or months or years has stopped and we are now asking,

“What do we do now?”

John 17 comes from Jesus’ prayer on the night before he died.  In fact, hours before he died. In fact minutes before he was arrested.

At the last supper, Jesus started teaching his disciples their last lessons. Kind of a review of what he had been teaching them all along. At the end of that teaching, he starts talking to God.

It’s a kind of conversational summary, at the end of his teaching and caring ministry. He’s telling his father, and us, how he’s leaving that part of his work.

And it gives us a framework, when we are thinking about what might be next, for thinking about what God finds important.

I’m not giving you the whole sermon. I’m giving you some points to guide your reading of that text. And to shape your thinking for the week ahead.

• Jesus took care of the people God entrusted to him.
• Jesus taught everything of God that he knew.
• Jesus expected trouble.
• Jesus devoted himself to God for the wellbeing of others.
• Jesus knew that there is a time when we are done.