Cookies!

I’d like to tell you a story about the best baker in all the world.

He could do wonders with flour and butter and eggs and salt. He made French pastires filled with custard and covered with chocolate. He brought Italian biscotti to that perfect balance of sweetness and crunch. He could turn out a Japanese mochi that danced with tart and sweet.

He made apple pies. Lemon cakes. Liliko’i tarts. And, of course, because no baker’s repertoire is complete with them: malasadas.

He knew he was the best baker. He had time and he had the means, so he traveled all of the world, and all over the world he’d sample pastries, and pies, and breads, and filled buns. He ate tres leches cake in Mexico, and sesame cake in China.

And wherever he went, he never tasted anything without knowing – because he’d tried it – that he’d made one that was better.

The trouble was, he was the only person who knew this. He was the only person who ever tasted what he baked, or fried, or steamed.

I’ve never known why this was so. Maybe he was shy, and didn’t want to embarrass himself (as if he would). Maybe he was just plain greedy and selfish and didn’t want to share. Maybe he wanted us all to be healthy and didn’t want to feed us so much sugar. I don’t really know.

But he was the only person who ever tasted what he made.

So… Let me tell you about the second-best baker in the world.

She, too, made amazing cakes, and pies, and tarts, and rolls, and pastries, and (of course) an astounding malasada. Hers weren’t always the best – I know, for instance, that the best squash pies are made by someone who lives in Norwalk, Connecticut – but on the whole, she was the best baker that anybody had every known.

You see, everybody believed that she was the best baker in the world, because she shared. When she made cookies, other people got to eat them. Her cakes got cut up and shared at parties. They went far and wide.

People tasted her glazes and their eyes would glaze over in wonder.

They’d go pie-eyed in astonishment at a bite of her pies.

And as her pastries disappeared, those who enjoyed them wore grins pastried plastered all over their faces.

Now, if I could choose between being one of them or the other…

If I could choose between being the best baker in the world and never seeing the joy on another face from tasting my work, or being the second-best baker in all the world and sharing widely, I know exactly which I’d be.

I’d be the second-best, and I’d share.

May all of us always, always, choose the same.

This story was told in worship during the installation of the Rev. Eric Anderson as Pastor of Church of the Holy Cross UCC in Hilo, Hawai’i, on September 10, 2016.

Lava enters the Pacific Ocean in August 2016. Photo by Eric Anderson

This week I’m not going to tell you a story about a sport that you don’t play (or that I don’t play), so we don’t have to worry about not knowing the rules.

Instead, I invite you to use your imagination. That’s something all of us can do.

Imagine the ocean, the seas of this planet, as if it were a person: someone who could think, someone who could feel, and someone who could talk.

Imagine the ocean rising up all around the earth as the skies poured with rain for years and years and years.

Imagine the ocean flexing its currents as they started to move about.

Imagine the ocean, as its surface climbed higher and higher above the sea floor, wondering aloud if would cover all the earth.

Imagine God looking over it all, and saying, “No. I think not. There won’t be quite so much water for you, Ocean. There will be dry land in the world.

“But…

“Even on the highest peaks, Ocean, there can be water.

“Even on those highest peaks, Ocean, water will fall in rain or snow. In fact, the highest summits of Earth will always wear a crown of snow.

“Above those highest peaks, Ocean, clouds may float: your water, suspended in mid-air, raining down from time to time to return to you again.”

And so, to this day, the Ocean drinks in the rain and snow that falls above land or sea. And to this day, the Ocean grumbles at the shores, constantly reshaping and reforming the boundaries of the land, hoping, perhaps, to one day cover all the globe.

And to this day, slowly but surely, land still rises higher in places, pushed from below by currents of rock.

And to this day, in other places the currents of rock run down the mountainsides, where they may reach the ocean and win new land from the sea amidst a scarlet glow, and the water hisses and fumes.

And to this day, God looks upon land and ocean, and smiles.

Why yes, I do have United Church of Christ themed sunglasses. Why do you ask?

Before worship began, I wore these sunglasses as I walked down to church from my house. And they worked really well. I could see where I was going, and I wasn’t squinting in the bright sunlight. That’s pretty cool.

Now, however, I’m wearing them here in the church. And it’s not working so well. In fact, I can’t see very well at all.

If anybody’s looking to sneak out without my noticing, this is probably a good time.

In fact, is anybody still here?

When I take them off: Look! There you all are!

In bright daylight, the sunglasses help me to see.

But in a darker place, taking the sunglasses off helps me to see.

There are lots of things in life that are like this. They work in some places, and they don’t work in others. You have to try and see what helps in this situation, but don’t assume that what works now works then, and that what didn’t work then doesn’t work now.

Life can be complicated.

One thing always works, though: seeing the world through Jesus. Seeing the world through the love and kindness and compassion that he showed. Seeing people around us as beloved by God. Seeing the world God made as lovely and precious.

It’s better than sunglasses in a dark room.

It’s even better than sunglasses on a bright sunny day.

There was a boy who loved the card trading game Yu-Gi-Oh. He loved the time with his friends, he loved the play, and he loved the cards themselves, with their figures and monsters.

He’d save his chore money to buy new expansion sets of new cards, and then he’d do more chores so that he could buy more cards.

He’d trade cards he had many of for other cards he hadn’t obtained.

And then he’d gather his friends, and the games would begin. It was fun.

Over the course of a few weeks, though, things changed. He came to think more of the cards than of what he did with them. He played less, and traded more. His trades grew more self-serving, and downright shrewd. He managed to talk his friends into exchanges that worked for him, and not for them.

When they actually stopped trading and played, he won more and more often as his increased collection of “special” cards gave him more and more of an advantage. It wasn’t much fun for his friends when he had all the winners and they didn’t. He hardly noticed that when he brought out his cards that suddenly they were busy, or wanted to do something else, or just hadn’t brought their cards that day. It allowed him to scan through his collection instead.

Until one day, as he was laying out his cards on a table, and wanted to point one of them out to his friends. When he looked up, there was nobody there. Nobody would enjoy it with him.

He thought hard about that.

A few days later, he brought out his special cards, and one by one, he passed them around to his friends. One for you, one for you, one for you, one for you… until they were all shared.

And then: they could play. And it was a good game.