One of my pastimes is playing in a monthly Scrabble tournament with 30 people whom I have gotten to know over the years. This month’s tournament started just after Easter Sunday. As games have been started, I have wished my competitors, “Happy Easter.” One responded, “Happy belated Easter to you too.” I was taken aback. Belated? It was only three days after Easter Sunday, and fellow competitors know I am a pastor; if anyone knows how long Easter is...right?
Easter is a week of Sundays – that is seven Sundays, to equal 50 days.
For the first time in our lifetimes, our 50 days of Easter is much like that of the disciples and friends who had gathered around Jesus at the time of his death. After the death – and especially after Jesus’ body went missing; while rumours of resurrection sightings were growing – the disciples and friends locked themselves behind closed doors. They took shelter and a time of pause. Someone must have gone out to get groceries, necessities, perhaps Thomas was the household designate to do just that. Everyone else ‘stayed the blazes home,’ for it was deemed unsafe to be out and about.
50 days is a long time to be quarantined with a roommate, or spouse, or a few children, or a parent – imagine 11 disciples and the women who had gone to the tomb all together in one space.
I wonder what the routine looked like? Did they set aside time to pray together? To share and study scripture? To sing hymns? How much did they spend reflecting privately and discussing robustly the events of Jesus’ life and death, and now rumours of resurrection? Did they contemplate what next?
Traditional Christian practice has been to spend our week of Sundays reflecting on the biblical rumours of resurrection – the stories of resurrection appearances and experiences. We have the gift of pause, locked behind closed doors, to reflect on Jesus’ life and death, and rumours of resurrection.
At some point, Jesus’ disciples and friends, must have scrolled through the rolodex in their brains to draw on fragments of poems, songs, sayings, scripture, folktales, fables, nursery rhymes; not only to pass the time, but to bring comfort, insight, and hope; as our National Bishop Susan says, words, that “manage anxiety and deepen discipleship.” I wonder if Jesus’ disciples and friends turned to Psalm 16 – a psalm that is suggested may have been a psalm that was a carved inscription – written down- and placed in the Temple where it could be offered over and over again. The repetition of the words was to gain intimacy with the reciter for a time when one might need those very words to live, to cope, and to be healed?
We also have rolodexes – either in the form of magazines that we flip through, or social media feeds that we scroll through. One comes across a funny joke in the Reader’s Digest magazine, or an inspirational quote in ‘O Magazine,’ or we come across memes with a phrase or pic that speaks to us.
When human beings are holed up, there are moments when outside interference, interruption, interjected ideas, inspiration, interpretation are needed just to cope.
Today, outside influence and illumination come to me through Psalm 16. When I heard the words they seemed to infiltrate my system. After hearing them, I felt better than I did before. Come to find out that Peter, Jesus’ disciple, found something in the words as well. Psalm 16 was the basis for his sermon that we heard from Acts – preached in the marketplace in Jerusalem after coming out from behind locked doors. I wonder if this Psalm was recited in their evening prayers. This Psalm was obviously well known to Peter, memorized in fact, and I assume the other disciples and the people who heard him preach it knew it too. The words were recognizable, intimate words --- intimate because they were scripture used and recited. Peter appropriates the words from the Psalm and reinterprets them for his time and place.
Acts 2: 28 records Peter saying: You have made known to me the ways of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence.
Peter has changed the words – interpreted them to relate to the circumstance in which the disciples find themselves, preaching the good news, telling others that Christ is risen.
I prefer the words as written in Psalm 16: 11, You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; In your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
Sitting behind closed doors, I have taken to a morning routine of sitting in my living room, with the faux fireplace on, a candle lit, a cup of coffee in hand --- reading poetry, that of John Donne, or Elizabeth Barrett-Browning; books I received for Christmas. Just reading the poems --- in the cadence I think most appropriate and I plow ahead despite not getting all the meaning; some of the poems I only ‘get’ by a feeling they leave inside me because the text is like reading Greek.
You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; In your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
I find this Psalm phrase intriguing. It feels like it has substance. It seems to be deeper than the words themselves. I can’t explain the words in one go. The words resonate as a sound – a sound of resurrection. There is an intimacy about them a moving forward, along the path of life for the healing of the world.
We have 50 days behind closed doors to reflect on the Mystery of Easter. We have 50 days wherein we will need outside input and inspiration. Instead of absently flipping through that magazine or scrolling through your social media stream, take a moment and meander through the Psalms.
Take a close look at the Psalms in your Bible. For many of the Psalms translations include a short descriptive, a superscription, of what the Psalm is, for instance: Psalm 23 says a psalm of David, Psalm 81 has instructions for the musicians-to the leader: according to The Gittith, Psalm 120-134 are marked Songs of Ascent – meaning they were sung by pilgrims on the way up to the Temple in Jerusalem.
The superscription for Psalm 16 is: A Miktam of David. Psalm 56-60 are also ‘miktams’ of David. These six Psalms are the only time the word ‘miktam’ is used in the Bible.
There is a lot of scholarship and disagreement about the meaning of the word, mitkam. Trying to figure it out, one looks at possible root words that are similar. One considers the time the Psalms were written and what influences the people and their language were under; where the word might be borrowed from.
A plausible meaning for ‘mitkam’ is an epigraph, something that is inscribed, written down in order to be made permanent. It is connected to roots that mean to remember, to recollect.
It is also connected to an ancient word for gold, and for a thing that covers – perhaps a cover of gold, a precious covering. Put all this together. Psalm 16 is a song to inscribe on our hearts and in our minds, words -wisdom- to cover us in a time when we need healing; hope; and resurrection.
You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; In your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
There is something in the words. There is wisdom there. The Psalmist David knew. Peter knew. There is power in the words of the Psalm. There is Mystery ready to break from the tomb and move forward for the healing of the world.
Be covered with the words of Psalm 16, reflect on the ones that sit most intimately with you, and once we break from our time behind locked doors, may we -like Peter- have the words to preach the Good News; Easter resurrection; Easter joy.
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