A Deeper Belonging
Looking at Hagar’s exile in the wilderness and Jesus’ difficult words of division, this sermon explores how God’s deeper work of belonging often begins when familiar structures of identity fall apart. Rather than preserving our false unities, God invites us into the abundant communion of the Trinity—a life of relationship where no one is disposable and no one is beyond God’s hearing.
The Glimpses of Grace podcast is a ministry of Grace Episcopal Church in Gainesville, Georgia. We are passionate about supporting the spiritual growth of souls, and we hope these sermons and conversations meet you where you are and enrich your soul as we all continue to make meaning in the world today.
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Transcript
In your mind’s eye:
Imagine an old family photograph.
Everyone in close proximity, together.
Maybe it’s a polaroid or a post on Instagram.
Maybe everyone is smiling.
Or wearing matching outfits.
But photographs don’t always tell the whole story.
Behind almost every family picture is a more complicated reality.
Joys and sorrows.
Celebrations, wounds.
Secrets.
Estrangements.
People who aren’t in the picture at all.
We like stories about people coming together.
We like stories about reconciliation.
Our sermons over the past few weeks have been about togetherness, discipling one another, being made one, the love of being companions.
But today’s readings tell a different story.
In Genesis, a family falls apart.
In Matthew, Jesus, again, promises conflict.
Children separated from their parents.
Households divided.
People banished to the wilderness.
This is not that warm, ‘sweet sense of unity,’ coming together, being made one. But I think these texts reveal something we desperately need to hear: Sometimes God’s work of creating deeper belonging
begins when familiar forms break apart.
Hagar knows what it means to be disposable.
She was never actually included.
She was useful (yes, necessary), tolerated.
But she was never fully embraced.
Then she and Ishmael are sent away.
There was no discussion. Just exile.
This is a familiar, heartbreaking pattern in Genesis.
Folks losing what every human being needs:
a place, a future, a community, a sense of being held.
Hagar ends up in the wilderness believing death is approaching. But, “God heard the voice of the boy.”
God heard the voice of a forgotten child.
The discarded family.
God heard them.
One of the tragedies of being human is that we always structure boxes, draw circles.
Inside, outside. Us, them. The chosen, the rejected.
Those worthy, those unworthy.
But the Christian mystery of the Trinity suggests something very different. God is not solitary.
The life of God is communion.
Giving and receiving.
Mutual delight.
A divine dance.
Perfect relationship.
Reality is relational. Everything exists because it is connected.
Nothing can actually exist alone.
Every act that denies another’s dignity or belonging
contradicts the deepest truth of creation.
Abraham’s household was stuck in that cycle, that economy of scarcity. If Isaac belongs, perhaps Ishmael does not.
If one son is blessed, perhaps the other must be sacrificed.
We often think this way.
We imagine life, belonging as a limited resource.
If someone else is welcomed, perhaps there is less room for us. But God’s economy is one of abundance.
And then we hear Matthew’s Gospel.
Not peace but a sword.
Families divided. Conflict. Loss. Disruption.
What do we do with that?
Two weeks ago I preached about being made one.
Beau, just last week, preached about love and being companions on the Way. Jesus can’t mean that division is holy.
The Trinity seems to tell us otherwise.
God’s nature is communion, relationship.
Perhaps Jesus is saying:
When we begin living from a larger sense of belonging in God, the smaller loyalties that define us begin to crumble.
There is a kind of unity that is not actually unity.
A family can appear united because nobody tells the truth.
A church can appear united because the hard conversations aren’t had. Any group can appear united when outsiders are excluded,
when differences are suppressed, when all are made to be the same. This is not communion, but conformity.
This is what Jesus aims to disrupt.
Those false unities.
He refuses to let belonging be built on exclusion.
Peace cannot be maintained by silence.
Jesus preaches a love that refuses to be reduced to false loyalty.
I think we know this.
But we don’t like the conflict that inevitably follows.
Jesus isn’t preaching in support of division.
But Jesus is preaching a truth that unsettles systems that keep us comfortable.
These two readings this morning involve a kind of wilderness. For Hagar, it’s a literal wilderness.
For Jesus’ disciples, it’s relational.
Discipling leads us into places where familiar identities no longer work. Where certainties crumble.
Where groups we thought define us no longer contain us.
But it’s in the wilderness that God opens eyes—
where wells appear, where grace is recognized, where belonging is believed.
What churches need today is not conversion to a set of beliefs task lists, rules, things that give us a false sense of control.
It is conversion to relationship.
Conversion to the Trinity, a dance with the divine.
Conversion to the God whose very being is communion.
If we discover the reality of relationship, everything changes.
We stop asking: “How do I save myself?”
And begin asking: “How do I participate in God’s life?”
We stop asking: “How do I ensure that I’m in?”
with the subtext of deeming others are ‘out.’
And start asking: “Where is God creating connection?”
We stop treating faith as private and possessive.
And begin living it as shared participation and deep groundedness in God.
Hagar sits in the wilderness believing she and her son have been abandoned. Jesus warns his followers that true faith will cost them everything. But neither story ends with isolation.
They end with a larger belonging.
God hears. God gathers.
In a moment we will affirm our faith in God
—the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Giver of Life—
who is always drawing creation toward communion,
toward knowing one another, toward participating in a shared life. Salvation is not escaping the world,
but being drawn into an eternal love.
No one is disposable.
No one is outside the hearing of God.
And perhaps the wilderness is not where belonging ends.
But where God expands it.
Where the circles we have drawn begin to break open.
It’s a place where we become,
where we discover that we truly belong.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Brandon Nonnemaker
June 21, 2026