Prepare: Bring a single Communion wafer or a piece of the communion bread that you use in worship.  Make sure that it’s not enough for the people gathered.  This will work even better if you can move the children’s sermon to right before Communion.

Gather everyone together by announcing that you have food for everyone!  Once the children gather with you start counting them with a look of concern on your face.  If you are in your main worship space start counting the rest of the congregation, too.

Uh Oh . . . I don’t think that I have enough!  All I have is this one communion wafer!  I guess we could divide it up into  little pieces , , , 

But, this does make me think of the Gospel story we hear today.  It’s a story about Jesus feeding thousands of people with almost nothing.  Jesus blesses just a few fish and a little bread and sends his disciples out to feed them.  When they are done feeding them there are more leftovers than when they started!  I don’t think that is going to happen with this one wafer today.  I think that if we break this in half that just two people will get half a wafer.  No one will be full, and there won’t be any leftovers.

The miracle for us today is not that this one little wafer could feed us all, but instead the love, mercy, and grace that we receive through Jesus.  The food in the story gets passed from person to person and with each person who is fed there is more food!  The Good News of Jesus’ love is the same.  The more we pass the Good News, the more people who are fed with God’s word, the more Good News there is to spread around!

That’s our miracle today.

Good and gracious God, your Good News is a miracle to us.  Teach us to tell the stories to the people around us.  Teach us to live out the good news in our lives. Amen

You are filled with God’s love.

 If you can put the Children’s time right before Communion you are all set!  If not, try a blessing that get’s passed through the congregation.  Here’s how it works.  You bless two children.  They each then bless two more people, who then blesses two more, and two more, etc.  The blessing starts slow, but grows fast, and there are blessings left over at the end, way more than there were at the beginning!