Today is a great celebration at St Mary’s. For the first time ever, we are welcoming a a group of baptised children to receive Holy Communion, after many weeks of hard work and preparation. And we are doing it on the day when we remember how Mary and Joseph brought their son Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem to dedicate him to God. So today we are celebrating the way parents share faith and worship with their children.

I want to spend a few minutes talking to the children and to all of you about why it is the Eucharist that we want to share with our whole church family. Why not just family-friendly services with stories and music and prayers? Why Holy Communion?

As you know, here at St Mary’s we have taken the decision to make even our 9.15 informal service a Eucharist. And that is because it is the Eucharist that transforms our lives, whether we are old or young. Let’s remember that Eucharist means Thanksgiving and it is the proper name for a service of Holy Communion.

Let’s look at what happens when we come to church for the Eucharist. So many things go on that it is important to notice what the structure is, what the things are that we do every single time we gather. Although the music that we sing and listen to is a very important and beautiful part of our worship, today I am going to look mainly at the words and actions.

The first thing we do at the beginning of the service is to greet each other. When the priest says “The Lord be with you” and everyone replies “And also with you”, something special happens. A worshipping community is formed. We are no longer lots of different individuals, friends and strangers, who happen to be in the same building at the same time. Instead, we are a family, gathered together to worship the Lord.

Another thing we always do is pause and remember the things we want to say sorry for. We should not come to receive communion without thinking about the ways we have failed to live as Christians. And then we remember that God loves us, no matter what we do, and God forgives us whenever we ask. We don’t deserve to receive communion, but Jesus Christ invites us to his party anyway.

The next big part of the service is listening to readings from the Bible. Here we are trying to pay attention to what God is saying to us. Listening is a very important skill that we need all the time in our daily lives. We may hear something we really need to hear. The last reading is always from one of the four gospels, so it will tell us something of what Jesus did or said. You know that we read the gospel from the middle of the church. We stand up to show respect for Jesus’ own words. And we actually turn around to hear them – this shows that we need to be converted every day. Conversion just means turning around again to face Jesus and to try to live according to his example.

After we hear the sermon, which should help us think about how the Bible readings apply to our lives, we pray for God’s world and for one another. One of the things that hearing God’s word should make us do is care for each other. When we pray for other people, God often shows us a way that we can do something to help them. But even if all we can do is pray, that is important too. Praying for someone is just thinking lovingly about them and God at the same time.

Then comes the sharing of the Peace. This is the time when we can put into action a lot of the things we have been thinking about. If we are sorry for hurting someone, we can shake their hand and say sorry to their face. If we have been praying for someone, we can give them a smile and a friendly word. Very often sharing the Peace in church will remind us to share peace with someone we see outside of church.
Now we bring the gifts of bread and wine up to the altar, and at the same time we offer our gifts of money. In this way we offer ourselves to God in order to serve him, and we ask him to transform what we offer so that we can share his love with everyone.
Next comes the long prayer of thanksgiving at the altar. In it we praise God for all the good things of creation and especially for giving us Jesus. We ask the Holy Spirit to change the bread and wine into the presence of Jesus, and to change us so that we can be lights of Christ in the world.

Then we come forward and receive communion. This is a very special moment. It is like running into the arms of our favourite person. It is a moment when we know that God loves us more than we can possibly imagine. And so we put out our hands like this to receive this great gift, and we say AMEN. We don’t say thank you to the person giving us communion but AMEN, yes, Lord, to the one who gives himself to us. Afterwards we remember to say thank you for this very special moment of meeting Jesus in communion. And we ask God to send us out to do his work. Today, at Candlemas, we will carry lighted candles in a procession to the font to show that God calls all of us who have been baptised to be his lights in the world.
Whether you are children receiving your first Holy Communion, or parents, godparents, grandparents and friends witnessing this great day, or just a member of St Mary’s congregation who is sharing in the celebration, I hope that today is a day you will always remember. Today, boys and girls, you are princes and princesses in the kingdom of God. So always remember to be thankful, kind, and brave as you light up God’s world.

Amen