Reader’s Guide: “The Word for Today” Thursday, April 10, 2014 Read Psalm 22 There are many places that we could turn in the OT to investigate how the first followers of Jesus both read the OT through the lens of the experience of Jesus’ death and resurrection and then shaped their stories on the basis of what they read in the OT. Of all those places it is likely that Psalm 22 was the most valuable to them and shaped their understanding more than any other part of the OT. Christian readers cannot read Psalm 22 without visualizing Jesus on the cross. So many things in Psalm 22 touch the story of Jesus –the mocking and surrounding of this suffering one, the dividing up of the victims clothing among themselves, the agonizing cry of despair (not part of John’s story, however) are the most compelling. In different ways, Psalm 22 proved of great value to both Mark and the traditions that follow him in Matthew and Luke and also to John and those who followed his view. I have speculated, along with most other interpreters of the gospels, that a “Passion Narrative” likely preceded both Mark and John. That two very different gospel stories should have merged into one basic story with the same order lead one to such a conclusion. That suggests, of course, that Psalm 22 was valuable to those earliest Christians who preceded both Mark and John. In the traditions that both received they likely found language linked to Psalm 22. How valuable it must have been to those earliest followers, who were almost exclusively Jewish, to find the story of Jesus in the words of the OT – in a psalm like Psalm 22! We can treasure this psalm too.