Looking at John 6, Amanuel Andarge speaks on Jesus being the bread of life.

This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. ⁵¹ I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.”

John 6:50-51

So, when I think about communion, I always think about it as this magical cleansing time. So we drink green tea and we think that it cleanses our body and just goes through and cleans everything. That’s the kind of thought I had about communion when I took the grape juice and the bread and it goes down and it just cleanses me. And I had always this kind of relationship with communion thinking about the list of things that I need to thank God for. Because like, trust me, I have loads of things to thank God for and I’m sure that all of you have as well.

So, I’ll always have this kind of list I go through. I get in that zone, close my eyes and I always feel like I have to have this list of these things that I need to thank God for. So, when I was preparing for the sermon today, I was reading some scriptures and I came through the passage of John 6. When we take communion, we have the usual scripture of the different gospels where it says about Jesus breaking the bread and giving the wine and then saying, take this as my body, take this as my blood. But I just wanted to focus on the flesh and the body of Christ. And in John 6 verses 50 and 51 says

this is the bread which comes down from heaven that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which comes down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that shall give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.

And I just want to focus on what Jesus did for us. We all know we take communion because we want to remember. It’s time to remember what Jesus did for us because he gave us his life. And we know this, but do we really understand this? He gave us his whole life. He came and he gave us his whole life and the only thing we have to do is accept him as our saviour. That’s the only thing we have to do and all of it, all the sins, all the issues, all the problems, everything is just washed away.

All we have to do when we take communion is remember what he did for us. God gave his son’s life to us. Would you give your daughter or son for someone’s life? I’m sure you wouldn’t. Because we feel that it’s a precious thing for us. So always remember when we come to the table, when we come to share the blood and the body of Christ, that that’s what he did for us, the extent that he went to.

I want to concentrate on the verse where he said, the bread I shall give is my flesh. Remember that when you take communion, it’s not a ritual that we just do because we’re Christians. It’s not because we come to church on Sundays. But it’s not something that we do once a month and it’s done, you know, we’re cleansed and we go away to live our lives. There’s one thing that I want you guys to live with today, it comes from the verse in Acts 2:46 which tells us about the apostles’ lives and how they lived at those times. And there is one thing that struck me a little bit when I read it:

So continuing daily with one accordion in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart.

The one thing that I want you guys to live with today is that communion is not just for church. Yes, we do it in church. But I want you to take the time to do communion at home with your families as well, with your friends, with whoever it is. Come to a table and do communion because communion is not just when you’re in church to remember Jesus Christ, but it is a daily thing.

The people in Acts couldn’t have enough of it! They would do it every day. They would break bread every day. So when we take in the bread, when we take in the blood of Jesus Christ, it’s something that gives us life. Its life poured into us. So we need to do it more and more if you want to have more and more life. When you get tired, when you get frustrated, just put it all on the cross where Jesus died. If we did that once and the next day we do it again, we’ll still have problems every single day of our lives. We’ll still have things that we go through every single day of our lives. And that is the time when we need to remember and come to God and say “God, I remember what you did for me. Thank you”. Have that list like I did.

I’m not against taking communion and asking for forgiveness or repentance. But communion is to build your relationship with Jesus Christ. That’s how they used it in the past and that’s why we need to use it again here. So don’t just wait to do it in church, but whenever you feel there is an issue, whenever you feel away from God, whenever you feel far from God.

So please guys, just remember as we take communion, yes, we’re remembering what he did for us. And please say thank you, keep saying thank you, keep saying I love you, as we say in the song, everything that he did for us, not only died for us, you know, he guides us, he protects us, he looks after us. I have stories to tell about how he protected me and I’m sure you guys have more stories than me. So don’t be shy about thanking him for every single thing he’s done.