He Loved Them to the End

"Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end." --John 13:1

Life with Jesus was life immersed in the gracious love of God: Embracing, drenching, challenging, shocking, thrilling, strong yet tender love; destabilizing them in one way while deeply rooting them in another; moment by moment love, decision by decision love, coming their way; life-changing, transforming agape love--the kind that asks nothing in return.
When Jesus gathers with his disciples for the Passover, he knows that "his hour has come," the time he has been preparing them for is here. And how do the twelve arrive? Hopelessly wrongheaded, it would seem, their heads full of assumptions about their own privilege in God's emerging kingdom, bickering with each other over what positions each will hold in the new administration, blissfully deaf to the passion of his sharing. Later in the evening, as Jesus pours out heart and soul to the Father in prayer, the ones who share life with him fall asleep. But they are not hopeless . . .
Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. Jesus sees them quite differently than they outwardly present themselves. He knows them, and it is his commitment that they will someday know themselves as well, and as lovingly, as he knows them.
He gets down and washes their feet. Each one of them. And he beckons them to learn how to do the same for one another. John says that Jesus washes the disciples feet "knowing that he had come from God and was going to God." In other words, the humble footwashing is a deep expression of God.
The word translated "end" is telos in the NT Greek, indicating completion, fulfillment, wholeness. Jesus loved them to completion, loved them to fullness, loved them wholly.
Jesus loves us all. He loves us to the end of our misconceptions; he loves us not just in our stubborn illusions, but to the end of them; to the ends of our inattention and sleepiness, to the end of every betrayal and denial, to the end of every barrier--and beyond! He loves us into the wonder of our true, God-made, Spirit-inspired selves. God loves us beyond every end . . . to the new beginning, to new life in the risen Christ. He loves us this way,and shows us how to do the same with one another. Because such love is the defining characteristic of believers.