Social Media is not only full of hot topics but is also a hot topic itself these days. People are deleting their social media accounts, limiting their usage, engaging in discussions about how is our humanity represented by our online discussions.

This love-hate relationship seems to stem from our awareness that social media can stir us to positive or negative actions. The glow of the screen putting a barrier between us and ‘the other’ which gives us permission to say things that we would never have said face to face.

Whether for positive or negative, social media gives us opportunity to enter into new engagements with people we may otherwise never have met or spoken with. Doors are open to us to expand our reach and to align ourselves with people we agree with and who click ‘like’ for us.

Gathering together, whether online or in living rooms and coffee shops, brings us into modes and conversations where we find our common ground. We discuss, we dissect, we talk around and through an issue until we reach a satisfactory, or not so satisfactory conclusion. This full-bodied discussion usually leads us down a path of determination, either in our beliefs or our actions.

We get stirred up together as we stir our coffees, don’t we?

As I was reading this morning in the book of John, I came to the passage where Jesus was brought before Pilate and was sentenced to be crucified. In this discourse (John 18:28-19:16) there are varying groups of people who come together and are stirred up, the priests, the Jewish people, and the Roman soldiers.

It was this last group that caught my attention. Usually we focus on the Jewish people or the priests and leave the Roman soldiers to their ‘under orders and uninvolved’ selves. But when I read the account of the Roman soldiers’ actions, something struck me that hadn’t before.

Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe and went up to him again and again, saying, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they slapped him in the face. John 19:1-3

The Roman soldiers had orders to flog Jesus to punish him in a brutal way that some prisoners didn’t survive. But they went beyond that. They saw someone, convicted, looking at a life-sentence, and they took it upon themselves to go beyond.

In Jesus’s pain, they mocked him. They mocked him for his claims, they mocked him for his downfall. They made fun of him, off script and unnecessarily.

And they did this for their own pleasure.

As they did this to Jesus, they didn’t do it for the benefit of his accusers. In the same account in Matthew 27:27-31, we see that this mocking, ridicule, and abuse happened in their company, and not for the benefit of the crowd.

It was their pleasure to mock him in the midst of his being accused.

When we read this we are appalled. We see senseless abuse and dehumanizing of Jesus, our Savior. We look at the Romans and secretly believe, I think, that we would never do what they did.

So often when I read scripture and think ‘I would never do what they did, say what they said’, that is when God speaks to me very clearly. ‘Yes, you have’.

There are times where I am guilty of dehumanizing people in the middle of accusations against them. The detachment allowed in the latest news story makes it so easy to hurl thoughts and place mocking robes on people I don’t know. I can think ill of them and lose sight of their humanity as I read the storm around them.

Some are guilty, some are not. But isn’t it so easy to sit on my virtues and think myself better than them?

How we treat those in the middle of their lowest points shoes so much about us. Our ideas of justice and mercy come to the surface through our words and thoughts. We acknowledge that sometimes people are guilty of horrible things. Sometimes people face harsh consequences for those actions.

Does our response to them reflect righteous anger or do we slip into kicking people when they are down for our own pleasure and feelings of righteousness?

People deserve consequences but they don’t deserve our mocking voices. 

When we ridicule, demean, make snide comments, raise eyebrows and shake our heads at the actions of our neighbors, we are not seeking God’s justice. God’s justice is seen through the grace and mercy of the cross. Acknowledgement of sin, consequences of that, and the promise of forgiveness and redemption.

I haven’t read yet in Scripture where God gives us free reign to pour bile on people who have wronged us, or people who we don’t know that we perceive of having wronged someone we don’t know.

We are to be advocates, not abusers.

We are to seek justice and also love mercy.

We are to call out the best in others, but also call out the best in ourselves. This may mean checking what stirs inside us, whether we discuss it over coffee or in online forums.

As I look at my own actions and impulses, I am reminded that Jesus himself taught me, taught us, that we are to be peacemakers and full of mercy. To mourn with those who mourn, to love others even in their lowest point.

I, We, are called to better than mocking. We are called to better than dehumanizing. We are called to guard our tongues, to see justice and pair it with mercy. To strive to show Jesus, in all his fullness, in our thoughts, words, and actions.

Would I rather be known as one of the Roman soldiers, mocking and jeering, or would I rather seek to be like Jesus, still loving a sinner, like me?