Sermon Summary (July, 2 2005)

This week we had communion service (or Lord's supper), so I gave 0.5 of a sermon. In the Adventist church we do a footwashing service (John 13) as well as the partaking of the bread and (sweet) wine, which adds about 25 extra minutes to the service. Therefore, everything else gets shortened a bit, and my sermon becomes a sermonette.

In the gospel of John the Last Supper is not recorded as such; John focused on the footwashing instead. But we do find the bread and wine mentioned in John 6 where Jesus tells his followers that they have no life in them unless they eat His flesh and drink his blood. The Jews then ask how Jesus can expect to feed them His flesh?

This is the ultimate question. Without a connection with God, we have no life in us, and that connection was severed when Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and lost access to the tree of life. We became zombies--alive physically but dead spiritually.

Jesus' cross was our second tree of life, but in order for his sacrifice to do any good we must internalize (eat) it. This is the essence of "communion", the restoration of our relationship with God, an abiding relationship where He lives in and through us. That's what the communion that the service symbolizes.

"He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him." John 6:56