Being Made One
In this sermon, we explore how Jesus continually makes room for those others overlook, reject, or keep at a distance. From Matthew’s table to a grieving father and a suffering woman, Matthew’s Gospel reveals a Jesus who stops, notices, and restores people to community. As loneliness and division shape so much of modern life, we are invited to practice fellowship—a table where mercy is shared, burdens are carried, and all are being made one.
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
There’s something vulnerable about sitting down at a table with people, isn’t there?
Not just eating near people.
But really sitting down.
Passing dishes.
Serving yourself or others.
Reaching for seconds.
Laughing too loudly. Chewing too loudly.
Lingering long enough for conversation to flow, stories to emerge. Or letting silence settle without the need to fill it.
At some point in life, most of us discover that tables can be holy and dangerous places.
Because tables reveal us.
Who belongs.
Who feels awkward.
Who gets centered.
Who stays on the edges.
And tables reveal how we sort people.
The successful ones there.
The ones who just get along here.
People like us, those easy to have conversations with, nearby.
People who make us uncomfortable at a distance.
Maybe it’s preference.
Maybe it’s something else.
This morning’s Gospel begins in such a place: a table…
or at least on the way to one.
Jesus sees Matthew sitting at the tax booth.
And remember what this means: a tax collector was seen as compromised. Collaborating with empire.
Profiting while their neighbors struggled.
Distrusted. Probably resented.
A kind of person “respectable religious folks” had clear opinions about. But Jesus sees him.
He doesn’t ignore him, he doesn’t just tolerate him, he doesn’t lecture him. He sees him. And simply says, “follow me.”
An invitation.
Then, almost immediately, Jesus is at a table with sinners.
It’s this act of fellowship and connection that upsets the Pharisees: Why is he making them part of us?
And Jesus points back to Hosea:
“I desire love, not sacrifice; knowledge of God, not burnt offerings.” Relationship, not performance.
A fellowship built on a different type of worthiness.
With a dinner, in a home,
people gather. They eat. They make room.
Theology isn’t explained. Discipleship probably isn’t understood by everybody. But in that fellowship, something new begins to happen.
As we were sitting down and mapping out the summer—
Charis circles, Sunday Suppers, our Fellowship of the Ring study— we noticed this theme emerge, a season of fellowship.
So we made shifts in the liturgy and in the prayers, a season of being made one.
Sounds sweet, doesn’t it?
Because, sure, “being one” sounds beautiful until actual people are involved. People with wounds.
People and politics.
People processing grief.
People with histories.
People who irritate us.
People we misunderstand.
People who misunderstand us.
Unity is lovely in theory.
Fellowship gets complicated the moment someone serves their plate beside us. Yet, Jesus keeps gathering folks who don’t necessarily make sense together.
Tax collectors and fishermen.
Those with unwavering faith, those who doubt.
Courageous women, insecure men.
Those desperate and those who are self-assured.
A community of those who probably would have never chosen one another.
But Jesus says: Come closer. Sit together. Learn to become one. Not identical. Not without disagreement. Not losing ourselves. But woven together. Made one.
Matthew interrupts this story with two others:
A leader comes kneeling before Jesus; his daughter has died.
A woman comes near and touches his clothes.
Twelve years of bleeding. Twelve years of being treated as untouchable. Two desperate ones and their stories coming together.
A frantic and grieving father.
A woman exhausted by suffering and isolation.
Both interrupting Jesus.
Both risking embarrassment and rejection.
Both desperate for wholeness.
And Jesus stops. Notices. And makes room.
Again (and again) in today’s Gospel, Jesus’s compassion interrupts efficiency. He refuses to move through suffering too quickly.
He creates space for folks and their desperation.
He restores health, but also community.
I think we understand this more than we want to admit.
We live in an age of distance.
We live carefully curated lives.
We experience endless opinions.
Loneliness is hidden under our excessive busyness.
Folks ghost one another and cut others off at the slightest strain. And despite being connected all the time—
social media and small computers in our pockets—
folks are actually asking:
Where do I belong?
Who would notice if I wasn’t there?
Whose table has room for me?
If we are the Body of Christ, then the Church becomes practice for a necessary kind of fellowship.
Fellowship isn’t perfect, it isn’t effortless.
It’s practiced.
Like Bill preached about last Sunday,
discipling is a type of learning.
Learning mercy, learning patience, learning how to eat at a table together. And I’m learning that this type of learning holds a lot of uncertainty. It’s less like winning of arguments and standing your ground and more like pouring a glass of water or passing bread.
It’s less like wrestling with making sense and organizing our boxes and more like leaning into conversation and pulling up another chair.
Because in Matthew’s Gospel, being made one looks suspiciously like dinner, in a home.
A meal with people who may or may not fit together but somehow do. A table where tenderness outweighs judgment.
A place where sinners are welcomed, the grieving are noticed, and health is restored.
The world has too much noise, too much division.
So for the rest of our time together this morning,
be present, listen to the prayers, feel the liturgy.
Come.
Sit.
Eat.
You belong here.
We are being made one.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Brandon Nonnemaker
June 7, 2026