Scripture is full of hyperlinks. Recognizing references to earlier stories expands the current story and seeds future ones. The stories together build an interlocking structure between events, people, and Christ himself as the architect, the cornerstone, the builder and the temple itself where we all come to worship.
One example is Christ calling from the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Yes, this is a real cry of anguish in the physical moment; but it is also a quote from Psalm 22. A Psalm Jesus knew (and helped write). Of course, as Mark records this cry from the cross, he and Jesus are both ‘hyperlinking’ their audiences back to the entire song. Jesus is shaping the meaning of what is happening in this moment on the cross by placing himself and everyone around him into the story within the song of Psalm 22.
Jesus, his family, his friends, his enemies, his culture were all immersed in the Psalms. This was the water where their imaginations swam. Quoting a specific passage was to bring-up resonance from the past into the present. We do the same thing with pop-culture references all the time. To be with friends in conversation and say, “My kingdom for a horse, “ or “Call me, Ishmael,” or “what’s up, Doc?";” we are not just quoting, but expanding the moment by calling on the shared experiences of our audience with Shakespeare, Melville, or Warner Bos. We’re inviting them to bring their memories into the conversation, to being new layers of meaning to the topic at hand. If timed well, and the audience is actually familiar with the sources in the ways we assume, then we create a resonance that vibrates between the experience of the audience, the original content’s role in culture, and the present conversation. We connect past experiences across the audience into a new shared experience between ourselves and those who ‘get it’ - those who ‘catch’ or understand the reference. A few simple words say far more than just the dictionary definition of the words themselves.
When Jesus quotes Psalm 22 or any passage of scripture, it is worth going back to the sources and read the entire sequence; knowing the gospel writers had limited physical room on scroll nd may be asking us to bring a larger experience to the current moment where Jesus is speaking and we are reading.
When we take the hyperlinks into mind as we read, interesting insights and patterns begin to emerge. For example: compare light, water, and wind between Isaiah and John. As another emample, consider how Mark quotes Jesus reciting the first part of Psalm 22; but John quotes Jesus reciting later parts of Psalm 22. John leaves out the ‘foresaken’ cry, but highlights the ‘thirst’ and the ‘finishing - he has done it’ ideas - also both from the same Psalm. is John trying to expand Mark’s scene for us? is it possible that Jesus recited the whole Psalm from the cross and each author was led to choose the quotes that best represented the themes developing in their own work? Did they both expect their audiences to ‘get’ the reference and bring all of Psalm 22 to bear on this moment in their narratives?
Whatever the case, bringing our whole selves to our reading and using our imaginagtions to consider the whole selves of the people were are reading may help us recognize more of the depth and scope between these familiar stories. We infer from these quotations, these ‘hyperlinks, ‘ that Christ found all of Psalm 22 meaningful and worth contemplating. Quotations like these build resonances for us between the gospels and the prophets and the Psalms - as they all mirror each other.