Knowledge by Ritual Series 1/2 Communion  Introduction:  How do you know the sky is blue? I know you can see it, but how do you KNOW that it is blue? How do you even know what blue is? It’s hard to explain right? Well, I’ll give you the answer. we know because someone helps us to know. Parents spend hours and hours and hours teaching their children colours, or letters, or numbers. Parents put all that work in so that kids KNOW these things. But if you asked the kids “how do you know what blue is” they will usually say “ I just do”. They are oblivious to the countless hours you put in to teach them. (typical) They think that the knowledge they possess is just natural  The truth is this, Knowing anything for certain is difficult. To know something means you have to learn it again and again and again until it finally sticks to you. The Bible is really aware of this problem. A  lot of the bible talks about how people know anything. In fact the first three chapters of the Bible are all about who can know what and why that is. If you look throughout the Bible there is a lot of instruction for how people can know things are true. This is where it gets really…weird. Because we’ve been taught that for use to know something, it has to be scientific. It has be a repeatable experiment with physical effects on our world. If we can see it, it can be true. The Bible, it doesn’t really act that way. The Bible holds that we can know things through rituals. In fact the Bible believes that rituals and rites are the best way for people to learn. It is only by ritualizing something important that people will come to know the truth of a matter.For the next two weeks we are going to look rituals in the Bible, specifically communion and baptism. These rituals are still core to our church today. Well other rituals have been dropped over the centuries, these ones have endured the test of time.Section 1: What is a Ritual?So first question first, What is a ritual? Is it a bunch of mystical words?When I think of rituals I think of the scene from the temple of doom, where the priest is chanting over and over again as people watch quietly in anticipation. Honestly, that’s a really poor picture of what a ritual is. Like most things, Hollywood distorts reality.Instead a ritual is a normal daily practice that is strategically deployed. So teaching our children how to know colours is a ritual. You sit down with them again and again until they can know the difference between red and blue. What is the normal practice of a game is strategically deployed to give knowledge. In the Bible this happens all of the time. normal practice are turned into reminders of important ideas.Passover for example, is basically a ritualized bbq. Passover was a festival ritual to celebrate God “passing over” the Israelites. When the Israelites were slaves back in Egypt God sent a plague to punish the country. Anyone who believed in God would sacrifice a Lamb and paint their door with it’s blood. Those houses were spared “passed over” well every other family lost their firstborn sons. So God instated the ritual of passover. Once a year, when everyone was collecting the spring barley harvest, the people of Israel would come together and sacrifice lambs together. The whole city would come together and would kill the lambs, drain their blood, cook them over a fire and eat together in remembrance of God passing over them. That the judgement of God had skipped them. It’s just a big old bbq. The difference between passover and an ancient bbq wasn’t big. It was something they did all the time. Just like their isn’t a big difference between baptism and a shower. The difference is that a ritual points something bigger.Section 2: Why have rituals? So you might be asking about now, why any of this matters? Why do we need to have rituals? Even communion. Why do we have to seat down once a month to eat bread and drink juice together. Can’t