NOTES for Joh 13:21-30

Believers, and also unbelievers, often have to hear something like this: the main problem for a person is that he cannot meet God or Christ personally. If only everyone saw with their own eyes, then there would be no unbelievers; everyone would believe. But here is the situation of the Last Supper. Judas not only sees Christ face to face, but also breaks bread with Him. One could hardly be closer or clearer. And yet he does not change at all. He does not begin to trust the Teacher more than before. And he certainly does not repent of anything. On the contrary, he goes and does what he intended to do. And, strange as it is, Jesus tells him to do it quickly. What is this: a desire to dot the i's as quickly as possible? Maybe.

But another possibility exists: Judas is being given one last chance. Jesus, of course, perfectly understood what Judas intended to do: He sees the human heart through and through, as God sees it. Judas's plan was not a secret to Him, as it was to His disciples. But Jesus understands something else too: a person has a chance for repentance and conversion until the very end. Meeting God face to face, of course, by itself does not guarantee a good outcome. Just as fellowship with Jesus at one table and the breaking of bread with Him did not lead Judas to a good outcome. But such a meeting can become a moment of decision. And what it will be depends on the person's own choice. Meeting God only gives this choice form, makes it visible and conscious for the person himself.

And then a person has a new chance for repentance and conversion. Of course, there are no guarantees that he will use it. There are no guarantees at all in spiritual life. But if there is a chance, it must not be taken away from a person. And Jesus leaves Judas this last chance. He says to him: act. Do what you have planned. Of course, this is not approval of betrayal. It is rather a push that brings a person out of stupor. Since you have decided, do it.

Such words usually bring a person out of spiritual stupor and indecision. And he begins to act. Then there is also a chance that the person will change his mind. That he will change his decision, even at the last moment. Judas did repent, after all; he directly told the high priest that he had betrayed an innocent man. True, he said it too late, when everything had already been done. The decision came late, and the repentance was incomplete. This incompleteness led Judas to suicide. But he received his last chance. And he used it as he wanted and was able.

Jesus has gathered His disciples for the final meal, the meal of the covenant. He gives them a new law unlike the old one. His commandment concerns love within His community. It is so easy, after all, to love those who share your beliefs, your brothers...

But the Lord tells them that one of them is a traitor. His commandment now becomes almost impossible to fulfill: how can they love one another if any one of them may suddenly prove to be an enemy? Each tries to distance himself from the dreadful stigma of traitor, but Jesus stops them. He predicts that they will all prove unfaithful—and very soon, before morning.

The disciples, and after them all believers, are not divided into good and bad, faithful and unfaithful. They are united by one human weakness and one incomprehensible commandment: to love one another without trying to guess who will prove to be an enemy, and to imitate the love of the Teacher, who loves them unconditionally.

Today's reading helps us understand more deeply the nature of the Kingdom and its difference from our world, which has not yet been transformed. The passage concerns Jesus' words at the Last Supper, commonly called the ‘commandment of love’ (verses 34–35). At first sight, these words seem somewhat strange. Indeed, what could the apostles have found new in a call to mutual love? The need to love one's neighbour is spoken of extensively in the Old Testament, in the writings of learned rabbis and in the teachings of Torah teachers. Yet Jesus' words contained something no one before Him had spoken of. It is no accident that the call to mutual love comes immediately after His words about the glory with which the Father is glorified in the Son and the Son in the Father (verses 31–32). ‘Glory’ here evidently means God's presence, which accompanied the Jewish people throughout their history, beginning with the Exodus, and dwelt first in the Tabernacle and then in the Temple. It is no surprise that the Kingdom too is permeated by this presence. Yet it was Jesus' disciples who were to carry the Kingdom into our world as it undergoes transformation; this task was entrusted to the apostles and to those who would become their followers (John 17:18–21). And apparently the easiest way to recognize Jesus' disciples is by those expressions of love which are the signs of the Kingdom brought into the world by the Saviour. Of course, such expressions of love were known in the world before Christ's coming. In the biblical understanding, love is above all not emotion but an attitude toward another. The one who loves is not the one who admires or delights in the beloved, and certainly not the one who flatters them, but the one who wishes them good—not merely in words, of course, but in deeds. In the Kingdom, however, love becomes something more than a simple attitude. Any relationship involves interaction with the one to whom we relate, and interaction is possible only within a particular medium that carries it. In our world, not yet fully transformed, that medium is the realm of the psyche, associated with expressions of our inner life that do not go beyond the existing order of things. So-called earthly love is only a glimmer of the Kingdom penetrating a world afflicted by evil and sin. But Jesus speaks of a love that can be regarded as a manifestation of the Kingdom itself, a love that forms, so to speak, the very substance of the Kingdom. Human beings are incapable of such love; it can be received only as a gift conveyed by the Saviour from the Father. But a person can become a bearer of this love in a world awaiting transformation and renewal, and it appears that this is precisely what Jesus calls His disciples to do. He calls them to receive the Kingdom, to enter it, to make their home in it and, while living in the Kingdom, to carry it with them and reveal it to the world. This is the Church's principal and sole task. Everything else is only a means of accomplishing it.