SAINT MARK’S SCROLLS - Psalm 150

Read enough of the Bible and you will come across a scroll. To this day, Jewish congregations read the scriptures from hand-written scrolls. The prophet Ezekiel was given a scroll to eat on which were written “words of lamentations and mourning and woe.” When Jesus sat down to teach in the synagogue he read from the Torah scrolls. One of the central images of the Revelation to St. John the Divine is the scroll with the seven seals, but no one knows what is written on the scroll except God. God’s secrets are written on scrolls. And we can write the secrets of our hearts on scrolls too.

During these days of sheltering-in-place and social distancing during the pandemic, we’re inviting everyone in the parish family to contribute to a project called “SAINT MARK’S SCROLLS.: Psalm 150” The project involves a few simple steps:

• • Reflecting on a word or phrase that’s been chosen for the week.

  • Using that word or phrase as part of your prayers throughout the week.

  • Writing the word or phrase as carefully and beautifully as you can on a narrow strip of paper.

  • Coloring the top edge of the strip of paper.

  • Rolling the strip up into a scroll and sealing it.

  • Saving your scrolls in a safe place until we can bring them all together when it’s safe to gather again.

Eventually all our scrolls will be gathered together and placed in a frame, with the colored ends facing out.

Our scrolls will contain the entire text of Psalm 150, written (we hope) many times over. You can choose any word or phrase from the Psalm, and each week we’ll focus on a single verse. You can make as many scrolls as you want, and you can write as much of the Psalm as you want.

We hope this project will help us focus on some very important things during these months that we are separated from one another:

• • This project is a form of prayer and worship. Your scrolls are a focus of your prayer, and, in a way, a record of your prayer too.

  • This is something we can do as a community even while we are separated from one another. Anyone can make these scrolls, and we hope as many people as possible from the wider Saint Mark’s community will participate.

  • Each scroll can be something beautiful, and the final assembly of them all will be beautiful too.

  • Since the scrolls will never again be opened, and they have been blessed by the prayers that went into making them, these scrolls will contain the secret longings of our hearts, offered to God as an act of prayer and worship.

  • Every scroll you bring to us will be used: everyone’s included; nothing’s wasted.

When at last we can come together, we’ll dedicate our scrolls - our long recitation of this Psalm of praise to God, and we’ll rejoice!

150 Laudate Dominum

1 Hallelujah!

Praise God in his holy temple; *

praise him in the firmament of his power.

2 Praise him for his mighty acts; *

praise him for his excellent greatness.

3 Praise him with the blast of the ram’s‑horn; *

praise him with lyre and harp.

4 Praise him with timbrel and dance; *

praise him with strings and pipe.

5 Praise him with resounding cymbals; *

praise him with loud‑clanging cymbals.

6 Let everything that has breath *

praise the Lord.

Hallelujah!