The Church of the Resurrection Welcomes You!

This is such an exciting day! First Holy Communions are always exciting.  Sometimes a first communion will happen all of a sudden – and nobody knows exactly when to expect it – but sometimes on a Sunday that seems just like any other Sunday, a child will come to the altar rail and all of a sudden, for the very first time, hold out their hands to get some of God’s very special  bread, maybe bouncing up and down a little bit or craning a neck to see what is happening behind the altar rail, because they are drawn to the Lord Jesus like a magnet, and because they  want so very much to “taste and see that the Lord is good.”  And whenever that happens, whenever children hold out their hands for the bread because they want to, so very much – well, hurray and thanks be to God, we’ll put some of God’s very special bread right there in the palms of their hands.  Or sometimes, like today, a child has waited patiently until she is sure it’s the right time to ask for God’s special bread, and we all get to wait with her.  Maybe WE get to bounce up and down on our feet a little bit, and crane OUR necks over the altar rail to see if she’s coming yet.  Either way, it’s a great reason to celebrate, and we’re so, so happy that LaQuan is with us today to get God’s very special bread – and maybe God’s extra special wine, too, if it’s OK with her grownups – for the very first time.

Before we get to that part – before LaQuan comes to the altar rail to get God’s special bread – I have a story for you.  It’s a true story about a boy, a boy who was born a long time ago in England, a boy with a name we don’t hear very much any more.  His name was Basil.  He lived in a kind of house we don’t see very much any more, either, a great big house with lots of rooms, including a very small room close to the kitchen called a pantry.  A pantry is a place to store food until you need it.  This time of year you’d probably find lots of apples and pumpkins stored in a pantry.  Sometimes very big houses with lots of special rooms (like pantries) have lots of people with special jobs living or working in them.  In Basil’s house, there was a cook. She was an excellent cook who made The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever. In Basil’s house there was also a woman called a governess. Her job was to help Basil’s parents, who were very busy people, take care of him.  Today we might call her a nanny  or a mother’s helper.  Basil’s governess took her job very, very seriously,

Now, when Basil was a little boy he loved God.  He loved his God a lot, and trusted God, too.  He was very glad to know how much God loved him back.

But then one day something happened.  The cook made an especially fine batch of her extra-good chocolate chip cookies.  She put them in her very best cookie jar and stored them in the pantry.  Basil and his governess watched her do it, watched her put these extra good cookies into a cookie jar and store them away.  Basil’s governess thought this was a fine time to teach young Basil a little discipline, so she told him, “Basil, you will NOT put your hand into that cookie jar.  Those cookies are ONLY for dessert on very special days, and I’M the one who will decide when you get to eat one.” To make sure Basil got the message, she added, “Remember, God is always watching you. God will know if you take a cookie. And God won’t like it if you do.”  When she said that, something happened inside young Basil – who was more or less shaking in his shoes – and instead of trusting  in his heart that God was a loving, trustworthy friend, Basil started THINKING in his head that God was some sort of very big and important policeman, watching for his every fault, keeping track of every little mistake he made.  He still loved God, but from then on he was afraid of God, too.

Young Basil grew up.  He joined a monastery, and he became a priest.  He even became the most important priest in England.  But for the longest time, he still kept being afraid of God.  Finally, God felt so sorry for Basil that God gave Basil a special gift, a special grace.  One day, Basil said, he realized that if he had gone into the pantry and reached into the cookie jar….

..and if God had REALLLY been watching him…

God would have said, “Son, why don’t you take another one? They’re really good!”

Maybe it’s the part about the cookies that let me know that THIS is the perfect story for LaQuan to hear – for all of us to hear – on the day she has her first Holy Communion.  Maybe it’s because the bread we will put into her hands looks like a very small, very thin cookie.  It doesn’t TASTE very much like a cookie – it doesn’t taste like much of anything at all – but there’s something about that shape that just gets us thinking “cookie”.  Something that helps us remember, deep inside our hearts, that our God, our Jesus, is all about good times and good friends and yes, even all about good cookies.  About how good it feels to be able to gather around a table with people we love, and eat good things together.

And  for Jesus, is it about rules, and living up to somebody else’s ideas about being good and behaving ourselves?  Not so much.  When you read your Bible, you will discover that Jesus was always getting into trouble with people who were worried about rules and worried about good behavior and worried about getting into trouble with God.  There aren’t any stories in the Bible that tell us whether Jesus ever raided his mother’s cookie jar, but I wouldn’t be surprised, especially if he wanted to share some Very Excellent Chocolate Chip Cookies with his friends.

Today, Jesus wants to share something even better than a Very Excellent Chocolate Chip Cookie with his friend LaQuan, and with us (because we are his friends, too).  That little cookie-shaped piece of bread we will get is packed full of the very best things in the world.  Packed full of the love Jesus has for each and every one of us.  Packed full of mercy, and grace, and compassion, and forgiveness, and joy, stirred with the wind and baked with the heat of his own spirit,  and even – tucked away deep, deep inside where only our own spirits can find it – seasoned with a bit of His very own Spirit, too.  This is good bread we’re getting, holy bread, bread full of Jesus.

When we eat God’s special cookie-shaped bread, and drink God’s special wine, we know that God will always be close to us, caring for us, loving us, no matter what happens to us and no matter what we do.  And because this bread is bread full of Jesus, we know that when we leave this church building we can share the life of Jesus, and the love of Jesus, with the whole world.

Oh, there’s one last thing.  Remember Basil?  And remember how God said something to Basil, something about going ahead and taking another cookie?  Well, I’d like to say something like that to LaQuan, and to everyone else here, too.  After you’ve eaten God’s very special bread today – that very special, cookie-shaped bread – please come back and do it again, over and over again for as long as you live.

Taste, and see that the Lord is good,
Now and forever, AMEN.