The mission of Jesus was, in essence, the building of community: a community that embraced people of both genders, of different classes and religious backgrounds, of different nationalities and ethnicities. Although at its heart it was a Jewish vision, it was also universal in its scope and it’s potential. The Messianic beliefs of prophets like Isaiah foresaw a time when the world would be united and at peace, gathered together on God’s holy mountain. It was such beliefs that inspired Jesus and his central teaching that the Kingdom of God was not only coming, but that it was already here in the hearts of the loving community he sought to build. It was talk of a Kingdom that upset the Romans and it was why the Romans killed him. It wasn’t Jews who killed him, as anti-Semitic Christians have claimed down the centuries, although in the turbulent Judaism of the First Century there would certainly have been factions who weren’t sorry to see the back of him for reasons of their own. A gospel of peace, justice and reconciliation; of a community that transcends the hostile divisions to which human beings are so often addicted, didn’t go down well with many people in the First Century any more than it does with too many people today.
The vision of the Kingdom that moved Jesus challenged traditional notions of loyalty. The community he created was wider than nation or sect, it superseded the claims of kingdoms and empires, and it also superseded the narrow claims of tribe, clan and family. In Mark’s gospel we read that Jesus’s own family tried to “take charge of him” because they feared that he was “out of his mind”, But when he heard this, Jesus simply set out a new definition of what family meant. Looking round at the men and women gathered round him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my brother, my sister, my mother.” (Mark 3: 34-35). This is not an outright rejection of traditional family ties, but it does say that the universal ties and values of the Kingdom of God must take precedence. The new community that Jesus proclaimed was something radical, something that required people to challenge and set aside those long-held beliefs and loyalties that conflict with the gospel of love.
We can see Jesus building this new community through what few records and remembrances we have of his ministry. But as it approached its end, his community faced an existential threat. He entered Jerusalem to make a claim to Messiahship, or so it seemed to his friends and enemies alike. But it was as a humble Messiah whose vision of a restored Israel was of a repentant, peaceful nation whose role was to initiate the Kingdom of God, and so lead all nations and peoples into a new world. War and conquest would have no part in this and at its heart would be that loving community which he had initiated.
The trouble was that it all went wrong. Not only did Jerusalem not rise peacefully to follow him, it conspired against him, its many factions rejecting his vision as a threat, either to the ever-fragile stability of Palestine on which their own positions rested, or to their own plans for revolt, insurrection and revolutionary violence. The Romans simply saw him as yet another dangerous troublemaker, dismissed with contempt by the governor of the province. And worse still, cracks appeared in the very community he had gathered round him. The Last Supper was, perhaps meant as a celebration, a sealing of the community. Like the earlier gathering, at which Jesus had envisioned a new kind of community, it wasn’t a traditional family gathering. And although it is usually thought of as being an all-male affair, it seems inconceivable that his devoted women disciples were not represented there too. But also there was the traitor Judas Iscariot who had, perhaps, become fatally disillusioned with Jesus and had turned against him. Also there was Peter, the right-hand man who, a few hours later, would deny that he even knew Jesus. And there were the other ten of the Twelve Apostles who, after Jesus was arrested, “all deserted him and ran away.” (Mark 14: 50). Perhaps only the women remained by him, just as they were to stand by him at the Cross and at the Tomb. Jesus was broken on the Cross, and so too was his community. Perhaps this, above all, lay behind his desperate, desolate cry on the Cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me.” (Mark 15: 34). Not much seemed to be left of Jesus, his vision and his community. And yet it wasn’t the end, and those women were to prove crucial in ensuring it wasn’t. But that hope lay beyond the grief and horror of Good Friday.
In that darkness the Kingdom of God must have seemed a hopeless folly, just as in today’s darkened world it may seem so. But it’s always seemed that way. And yet the vision of the Kingdom keeps coming back. People inspired by it keep trying to build it, a little at a time, in their own lives and in the communities they create and nurture. It is not in glorious triumphs that the Kingdom is built, but in faithfulness amidst the bloody ruins of humanity’s hopeless folly – in the small triumphs achieved in the shadow of the Cross.
Clifford Reed, Good Friday, April 3, 2026
Ipswich Unitarian Meeting House 