Children's Time: All the Bread in the World (Oct, 6, 2013)

Good morning.

Today, I have brought a bag. Let’s see what I have got here.

Whole wheat flour.  

Salt.

Honey.

Yeast.

Warm water.

What can we make with these?  

(Bread. Brown Bread. Whole wheat bread. ….)

Ah, I see one more thing left inside the bag.

Sweet Rice. Can you imagine what we can make with sweet rice and water?

When you grind it into rice powder, and mix it with warm water until it’s the same texture as play-doh, and steam it,

You can make a rice cake.  

Today is Worldwide Communion Sunday.

This means that many, many churches around the world are sharing in communion together. 

It happens on a lot of Sundays by coincidence, but today we’re doing it together on purpose. So, the churches in Asia actually had their communion maybe eighteen hours ago, and the churches in Europe had their communion about eight hours ago, but the churches in Los Angeles and Seattle and Mazatlan are having their communion at just the same time as us, and we’re all thinking about all the other churches around the globe, sharing our communion and our love of God with each other. 

Many Protestant churches, like the United Church, usually have communion with regular bread. The Roman Catholic Church has communion wafers that melt on your tongue. Some Korean churches I know celebrate communion with rice cakes, because they want to honour the fact that Koreans eat cooked rice every day; Koreans believe that rice is a gift given from heaven.

Can you name some different kinds of of bread?

When we have communion, it doesn’t matter whether we have it with brown bread, white bread, pita bread, naan bread, (the names of breads the children mention) or even with rice cakes. What is important is that each time we take communion, whatever the bread’s shape and flavour is, we remember that God loves us. The most important thing is that the bread is broken and shared and by sharing it, we become one family in God’s love. Will you pray with me?

Dear God, Thank you for bread. Thank you for rice cakes. Thank you for loving us all the same, all around the world. Amen.