Listen to the unabridged sermon here: The Way Down
There’s a scene in The Princess Bride — you know the one — where the pastor stands before the gathered crowd and announces, “Love, true love, is why we are gathered here today.” It’s a great line for a wedding. But it’s also, in its own strange way, the right line for John 13.
Because as we turn to this chapter, we are gathered around something too: love. True love. Except the love we find here isn’t the happy, easy, effortless kind the world likes to sell us. The love we find in John 13 is discomforting. And that discomfort is the whole point.
We tend to measure love by how easy it feels. If the relationship is smooth, we’re “in love.” If it gets hard, something must be wrong. But Scripture tells a different story. The love of Jesus is self-sacrificial. It asks things of us that the world calls shameful. It is not the love of greeting cards. It is the love of a cross.
We Are in the Upper Room
Everything up to this point in John’s Gospel has happened in public — Galilee, Jerusalem, Capernaum, one sign after another performed in front of crowds. But starting in John 13, the scene changes entirely. For five chapters, we are no longer out in the world. We are in an upper room. It is Jesus and his closest friends, and it is one evening — his last evening.
That’s worth sitting with. Everything in John 13–17 happens in a single night. We will spend weeks unpacking it, but the disciples heard all of it in a matter of hours, on the last night before the cross. These are, in a very real sense, Jesus’s final words. And maybe more than anywhere else in the Gospels, this section is written for the church — for us, gathered around the table, being reminded of who we are and what family we belong to.
“He Loved Them to the End”
It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave 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)
Don’t read past that too quickly. Throughout John’s Gospel, the refrain has been “his hour had not yet come.” Now, finally, it has. This is the hour glory breaks into the world — not through power as the world understands it, but through a cross. Everything in these five chapters points there.
The phrase “to the end” (telos in the Greek) carries a double meaning. It means “to the end of his life” — all the way to the point of dying. But it also means “completely, fully, ultimately.” Both senses are true here. Jesus loved his own all the way to death, and he loved them completely, with nothing held back. That’s the shape of his love: unconditional, without strings, and because of that, uncomfortable. It doesn’t walk away when things get hard. It stays, and it costs something.
Jesus Washes Judas’s Feet
The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas… to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. (John 13:2–5)
In a first-century home, foot washing was a servant’s task — and by most accounts, it fell to the lowest servant in the household, often a Gentile slave, since it was considered beneath even Jewish servants. Feet were dirty. Sandals and dust and open roads made sure of that. So when Jesus takes off his outer clothing, wraps a towel around his waist, and kneels at his disciples’ feet, he is stepping into the place of the lowest person in the room — deliberately, knowingly, and in front of everyone.
Peter’s reaction makes sense: “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” And when Jesus insists, Peter swings the other way — “Not just my feet, but my hands and my head as well!” Peter wasn’t embarrassed about his feet. He was embarrassed for Jesus. This didn’t fit who Peter believed Jesus to be. Lords don’t kneel. Masters don’t wash.
But here’s what’s easy to miss: Judas was still at the table. He hadn’t left yet. And Jesus washed his feet too.
Jesus knelt before the man he knew would betray him and washed his feet anyway. Not accidentally. Not because he hadn’t figured it out yet. He knew. And he served him anyway.
That’s the first thread of what this “way of Jesus” looks like: it serves all. Not just the faithful. Not just the ones who deserve it. Our calling isn’t to serve only the people we’ve decided are worth it — it’s to serve everyone in the room, including the Judases among us.
An Honor Given to a Betrayer
“I am not referring to all of you… Very truly I tell you, one of you is going to betray me.” … Jesus answered, “It is the one to whom I will give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” Then, dipping the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas… As soon as Judas had taken the bread, Satan entered into him. (John 13:18, 21, 26–27)
This moment carries a cultural weight we usually miss. At a first-century table, the host would honor a guest by handing them the choicest piece of food — the best bread, the best dip. It was a public gesture: this one is honored.
Jesus takes that gesture and gives it to Judas.
Think about what that means. He hands the seat of honor to the man about to betray him. No wonder the other disciples were confused — they’d just watched Jesus honor someone, so surely he couldn’t mean that person would betray him. It didn’t compute. This was an intentional act of grace toward someone who hadn’t earned it and wouldn’t return it.
Did Judas deserve the foot washing? The honored bread? No. He deserved, by any human accounting, to be exposed and sent away. Instead, Jesus says, in effect, come in, let me wash your feet, here is the best of what I have. Now go and do what you must do.
And it didn’t “work.” Scripture tells us that the moment Judas received that honor, Satan entered him. Grace extended doesn’t guarantee grace received. Sometimes we extend love to someone and it doesn’t turn them around. That’s not a flaw in the love — that’s just what it costs to give it freely. Grace offered without condition is still grace, even when it isn’t returned.
A New Command
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34–35)
Loving people wasn’t a new idea — it runs through the whole Old Testament. What’s new here is the shape of the command: love one another as I have loved you. No conditions. No strings. Self-sacrificial, all the way to the cross.
That’s hard, because everyone in the room is a little broken. Everyone does something that offends us or hurts us or makes us think, yeah, I’ll pray for them, but I’m not washing their feet. To love the way Jesus loved is to love without waiting for someone to earn it — and to actually deal with the hurt between us instead of sweeping it under the rug.
That last part matters more than we usually admit. It’s easy to bury small offenses and pretend they didn’t happen. But those buried things don’t disappear — they pile up until there’s a bump under the rug nobody can ignore anymore, and eventually somebody trips over it. Most blowups didn’t start as blowups. They started as one small, uncomfortable conversation that never happened. Sacrificial love means having that conversation before it becomes something bigger.
And notice what Jesus says will mark his disciples to the watching world: not billboards, not slogans, not clever campaigns — but how well they love one another. That’s still the best evangelism strategy there is. Not a program. Not an ad campaign. Just people loving each other well enough that it’s visible.
Peter’s Promise, and Ours
Simon Peter asked him, “Lord, where are you going?”… Peter asked, “Lord, why can’t I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.” Then Jesus answered, “Will you really lay down your life for me? Very truly I tell you, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times!” (John 13:36–38)
Peter means it. And Peter will fail. We know how the story goes — three denials before the rooster crows. But what’s beautiful is what comes after the resurrection: Jesus doesn’t discard Peter for failing. He restores him. He offers grace, forgiveness, and a way back.
That’s good news for the rest of us, because we’re a lot more like Peter than we’d like to admit. We commit to loving sacrificially and then, under pressure, we fail at it. The way of Jesus doesn’t just call us to love — it also holds out restoration when we inevitably fall short of that call.
The Way Down Is the Way Through
The way of Jesus is rooted in a discomforting love. It’s a love that serves everyone, even the ones who will betray us. It’s a love that extends grace without guarantee of return. And it’s a love that commands us to love one another sacrificially — even when it means dealing honestly with what’s broken between us.
We want a shortcut. A program, a strategy, a magic bullet that gets us to loving community without the discomfort. There isn’t one. The only way is the way of the cross — the way down, before it is the way through.
Questions for Reflection
- Who is the “Judas” in your life right now — someone you’d rather exclude from the table than serve? What would it look like to wash their feet anyway?
- Where have you swept a hurt or offense under the rug instead of having the uncomfortable conversation that could have stopped it from growing?
- When was the last time your love for someone cost you something? What did that cost reveal about the shape of Jesus’s love?
- Like Peter, where have you promised more than you could deliver — and where might you need to receive the same restoration Jesus offered him?
A Prayer
Heavenly Father, give us the courage to take up this challenge — to love the way Jesus loved. Let us serve all, even those who would betray us. Let us extend grace without condition, knowing it may not be returned. And let us love one another sacrificially, trusting that even when we fail like Peter, your grace is enough to restore us. Amen.