Bonded by Bread

John 17:17-24, Ephesians 2:8-10, 14-22

On the night before his arrest, Jesus prays. Not a quick prayer. Not a safe prayer. Not a prayer for comfort or protection. Jesus prays for unity.

Our reading from John’s Gospel comes from Jesus’ farewell prayer, spoken on the edge of betrayal and crucifixion. In that moment, Jesus does not pray that the disciples will all agree, and Jesus does not pray that they will avoid conflict. Jesus prays that they may all be one.

Jesus prays to God,
“As you are in me, and I am in you, may they also be in us. I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know.”

This is not a call to sameness. It is a prayer for relationship, a unity rooted in our life in Christ. And Jesus names why this matters: “so that the world may know God’s love.” Unity, for Jesus, is not about internal harmony for its own sake. It is about witness.
That matters, because we live in a world shaped by division.

We live in a country where disagreement is often experienced not simply as difference, but as threat, where political, cultural, and social divides are reinforced by fear. Our choice of news channels and the algorithms of our news feeds heighten this apprehension, making us prone to confirmation bias, paying attention to what confirms what we already believe and dismissing what challenges those beliefs. Over time, this does not just shape opinions. It builds walls.

And the church is not immune.

Christians are divided over theology and scripture, over worship and culture, over gender, sexuality, and identity, over politics, and still, painfully, over race. Sadly, “Sunday morning is still the most segregated hour in America.” The church does not stand outside these tensions. We live inside them.

I saw a small but meaningful example of this just this week.

After consulting with our Session, I shared a denominational call to prayerful action in response to the recent violence in Minneapolis. The next day, a member of our congregation came to my office with questions. We did not agree about how the situation should be understood or where responsibility should fall, but we sat together and talked, not with anger or suspicion, but as people of faith trying to follow Christ.

We listened.

We spoke honestly.

We disagreed.

And we left that conversation still united in our love for our church and our commitment to one another.
I walked away grateful, grateful for the courage of the conversation, for its sincerity, and for what felt like a holy moment. The Spirit was at work, not erasing difference, but holding us together. That conversation helped me hear Paul’s words to the church in Ephesus with fresh clarity.

Paul writes to a community deeply divided between Jews and Gentiles, people shaped by different histories, cultures, and fears. Jews understood themselves as God’s chosen people, formed by laws meant to preserve identity in the face of oppression. Gentiles did not share those practices or that story, and many viewed Jews as barbarians. Each group saw the other as a threat.

Paul names this reality honestly, and then he makes one of the boldest claims in the New Testament:
“Christ is our peace. In his flesh he has made both into one and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility.”
Christ does not simply manage conflict. Christ does not ask one group to absorb the other. Christ creates something new, one new humanity.

In Christ, difference is not erased, but hostility is. Notice how Paul speaks about this reconciliation. It happens in the flesh. It costs something. The wall is not negotiated away; it is put to death.

Paul also shifts his grammar as he writes. He speaks in the past tense: you have been saved by grace; the wall has been broken down. Then he moves into the present perfect: through Christ, we both have access in one Spirit.

Reconciliation is ongoing.
Unity is still being forged, even now.

“So then,” Paul writes, “you are no longer strangers and aliens, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.”

Not strangers.
Not outsiders.
Family, all adopted in Christ, all beloved children of God.Built together. Joined together. With Christ as the cornerstone.

This is what unity looks like in God’s kingdom, not uniformity but belonging, not sameness but shared life. Peace for those who are far off and peace for those who are near, for those who feel at home in the church and for those who never have.
This matters for us, because it is often easier, even comforting, to divide the world into “us” and “them,” to see the other through the lens of fear, to assume the worst, and to let suspicion become habit. But the gospel insists that God’s household is larger than our comfort zones and sturdier than our divisions.

Throughout Scripture, God consistently works through those we least expect: through Joseph, a brother betrayed and sold into slavery, who becomes the one who saves his family and a nation; through Ruth, an immigrant widow, an illegal alien, who becomes the great-great-great-great-great grandmother of Jesus; through Matthew, a tax collector, a despised enforcement officer of the empire, who becomes a disciple of Jesus. Over and over again, God transforms outsiders into bearers of grace.
Which brings us to the Table, where we are transformed and made one, bonded by bread.

When reconciliation feels impossible, when fear feels louder than faith, when the dividing wall feels too high, we return to the Table. We do not come because we agree. We come because Christ invites each and every one of us, no matter who we are, or what we have done, or what we carry, citizen and immigrant, documented and undocumented, saints and sinners, those who are far off and those who are near.

Here, we are united with God through Christ and bonded to one another as Christ’s body.
Bonded by bread.

The bread is broken, but not divided. Shared, not earned. As we share it, we are reminded that closeness to God is not achieved by conformity or control, but by grace. By this bread, we are being built together into a dwelling place for God’s Spirit, so that the world may witness and experience God’s love.

So we come to the Table again today, not because we are worthy, but because Christ is faithful. Not to erase difference, but to bear witness that Christ’s peace is stronger than the walls that divide us.

“That we may all be one, so that the world may know.”

May it be so in your life, in the life of your families, in the life of our congregation, and in the life of Christ’s church.