To The End--October 27, 2023

To The End--October 27, 2023

"Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end." [John 13:1-2]

There is never a point at which Jesus sees that loving us will cost him, and then runs out on us.  There's never an occasion in the gospels where Jesus can anticipate the suffering and sorrow that come as collateral damage for being faithful us, and then he bails out.  And there is never a time where Jesus foresees trouble down the line and says, "This is where I get off," to avoid having to bear it with us.  That's always been the case with Jesus, and it still is.

And if you needed evidence of it, there's this: on Jesus' last night with his circle of disciples (including the one who would turn him in to the authorities by the end of the night), Jesus stared down death rather than running away for his own safety... and he spent the time washing their feet.  He loved, as John the narrator so poignantly puts it, "to the end."

Let's pause for a moment, though, to unpack that phrase, "to the end," because it's not only about a length of time; it's about total commitment and completion.  If your football team scores an early touchdown and then just coasts for the rest of the game, you might say the offense held the lead "to the end," but they could also just be half-heartedly running out the clock with only the bare minimum effort expended.  Saying that Jesus loves "his own... to the end" doesn't just mean that he felt a warm feeling about his disciples right up until he died.  It means he loved them completely, fully, to the ultimate expression.  The Greek phrase John uses ["eis telos" if you want to know the nitty gritty] means something like "to completion" or "to the goal" or maybe something like our English phrase "all the way."]  In other words, God's kind of love is about more than just duration in time, and it's about more than running down the clock. It's about filling even the last minute of the basketball game with unrelenting full-court press.  Jesus' love doesn't coast to the finish line--he runs every mile and every step even though it's a marathon.

And to push that even further, if John our narrator believes that the events of this last night together are evidence of how Jesus "loved them to the end," it's worth looking at what Jesus chooses to do with that last few hours, and in particular, what story John recounts next.  Jesus chooses to model what enduring love looks like for his disciples, not by giving them an academic lecture or decreeing a set of rules, or even by doing some ritual thing that looks particularly religious.  Jesus takes the most menial job there is to be done, and yet a job that calls for a certain tenderness and care, and he places himself in that role--the washer of muddy, dirty feet.  Jesus "loves his disciples to the end" by serving, and by inviting them into that same self-giving service.  It is a moment of humble caregiving, to be sure, and it is also a moment of teaching by example.  This is what enduring love looks like--the commitment to do good to others, even if it means taking the lowliest work for their sake, and then the invitation to others to get to participate in such love themselves.  You know, I suspect, that before the end of this scene, Jesus will tell his disciples (including Judas, who is there in the room and who presumably had his feet washed, too) that they are to wash one another's feet as he has done for them.  The motion continues outward, like ripples on the water, out from that upper room and ever since throughout the growing community of Jesus' followers.  Having been loved by Jesus, we are pulled into the motion to love in his way--serving tenderly and vulnerably.

It's probably also worth considering that when Jesus has just one last hands-on training session like this with his disciples, he uses it to wash feet rather than something more obviously heroic-looking.  Jesus doesn't "love" his disciples by handing them a Roman arsenal to go fight off the mob that will come later that night.  He doesn't pretend that handing them sacks of gold coins will solve their problems, as if "love" is convertible into hard currency. Jesus knows that love isn't reducible to money, power, or weaponry, but it sure does show up in a basin, a pitcher, and a towel--so he uses those in his last lecture.  It's all as if to say, "This is what love looks like--and I invite you into it."

Twenty centuries later, the particulars may have changed.  Washing feet isn't quite the practical help it was in a day of open-toed sandals and dusty, horse-ridden unpaved dirt roads.  But the call to love endures, and so does the call to find ways to love the same way Jesus has loved us: to the end.  We are called, not merely to run down the clock and coast, but to actively find ways to spend our energy, our time, and our resources for the good of others.  We are called to love "to the end" the way we have been loved, while knowing that Jesus has loved us first even before we lifted a finger for him or anybody else.

So maybe today you and I aren't called to a literal basin and towel, but we are called to find whatever humble tools are at hand to give ourselves away for the good of others.  That call doesn't expire or go away, even if the ways we live it out might change.  Today, following the way we have been loved by Jesus "to the end," may we love those God sends across our paths as well, all the way.

Lord Jesus, open our eyes to see the ways we might love like you in this day before us, and then open our hands to take whatever tools--towels, pitchers, or whatever else--we need to do it.