U2 Song: "Until the End of the World" In Three Reflections

Part I – The Psalm of the Betrayer

“Until the End of the World” imagines Judas speaking to Jesus, his words woven from memory, guilt, and longing. The song moves through moments they once shared. Eating and drinking together. Walking side by side. All before Judas shattered it all in the garden. Judas speaks as if still trying to justify himself, or perhaps to explain something even he does not fully understand.

Like the laments of the psalms, Judas’ voice here is unflinchingly personal. This was not a crime of ideology or politics. It was a breaking of friendship. The psalmist’s confession in Psalm 51“Against you, you only, have I sinned” echoes faintly here, though without the full repentance that restores the soul. Judas admits the betrayal but cannot yet imagine grace.

The song’s imagery is drenched in Scripture: the meal they shared, the wine that would become a covenant, the kiss that sealed the arrest. In Judas’ voice, we hear the torment of one who remembers love yet believes himself beyond its reach. He is haunted by the past, trapped in the moment when friendship and treachery became the same act.

Part II – The Psalm of the Betrayed

If Judas’ voice is one side of the story, the psalms give us the other: the voice of the one betrayed. David knew that voice well. So did Jesus. Psalm 41:9 names it directly: “Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me.” That is the heartbreak embedded in the song’s “We ate the food, we drank the wine.”

Psalm 55 deepens the lament: “It is not an enemy who taunts me, then I could bear it… But it is you, my companion, my familiar friend.” The wound here is not simply the arrest, but the breaking of fellowship. The kiss in Gethsemane was the cruelest part, a counterfeit gesture of affection that delivered death.

Yet the psalmist, and Jesus Himself, take the wound to God. Psalm 69 says, “Reproaches have broken my heart… But as for me, my prayer is to you, O LORD.” This is the path Judas’ voice never takes. Where Judas circles endlessly inside his own guilt, the betrayed entrusts his cause to God.

Part III – The Psalm of the Redeemer

The gospel does not end with betrayal or with the hurt it causes. It ends with the Redeemer, who steps into the chasm between betrayer and betrayed. In Psalm 85, mercy and truth meet. Righteousness and peace kiss. At the cross, Jesus takes the kiss of treachery and transforms it into the kiss of reconciliation.

For Judas, that door was still open, though he could not bring himself to walk through it. For Peter, who also betrayed with his own words, it became the way back to life. The risen Christ restores the fallen disciple not with condemnation but with a question: “Do you love me?”

This third voice is the one that changes the story. The betrayer may find grace. The betrayed may find healing. And the world, until its end, is invited to believe that love can survive even a night in the garden.