Recent Post on my home-page.php

I’d like to display the most recent post on my “home-page.php”. I’ve read multiple posts on this topic and haven’t had any luck yet with what I want. I do not know PHP, and rather not use widgets. I got close to what I wanted by using:

<?php query_posts(‘showposts=1’); ?>

But, it repeated itself and made my sidebar disappear.

I’d rather just have an Excerpt of one or up to 3 posts.

Any help appreciated.