Justine Sacco was communications director of a New York-based internet firm.
She was off on a family holiday in South Africa. Shortly before she boarded her
11-hour flight from London to Cape Town she sent this short message to friends
on Twitter: 'Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!'
This puerile comment linking AIDS with race had enormous consequences. During the 11-hour flight to South Africa, unbeknown to her, she became an internet phenomenon with her offending remark retweeted over 2,000 times.
Sacco became notorious in just hours for her ignorant comment on AIDS. Although she deleted the offending message it was too late. She had become a hate figure on account of this comment in bad taste about both AIDS and Africa and was dismissed fro her job in Public Relations.
Sacco's story is picked up and featured in Jon Ronson's story of the disproportionate weight of such online humiliations in his recently published book 'So you've been publicly shamed' which received cover in the BBC Start the Week programme three weeks ago.
Shame is the social aspect of guilt. We are in a quite new scenario with online shaming as it's absolutely free and at no moral cost to those who effect it hidden away behind a million screens.
The consequences for guilty parties such as Justine Sacco are, needless to say, immensely harsh and disproportionate. Ironically when it comes to sexual immorality in the West people are said to have lost shame. The treatment of individuals such as Justine Sacco by social media frenzy shows us shaming is alive and well and on the internet. So much so that someone said 'Twitter is no place for a human being'. Certainly no place for someone who tries a racist joke.
Whereas the physiological response to shame is to hide your head when you transgress on the internet with a joke that lands badly, it's said to be at least a year and a half before you can come back online.
This image of the disproportionate weight of shame and the implacable contempt behind it might help us see the awesome wonder of the Good Friday sin bearing of Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Man.
Christ committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth. Saint Peter says in his first epistle, Chapter 2. When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. 1 Peter 2:22-24
This puerile comment linking AIDS with race had enormous consequences. During the 11-hour flight to South Africa, unbeknown to her, she became an internet phenomenon with her offending remark retweeted over 2,000 times.
Sacco became notorious in just hours for her ignorant comment on AIDS. Although she deleted the offending message it was too late. She had become a hate figure on account of this comment in bad taste about both AIDS and Africa and was dismissed fro her job in Public Relations.
Sacco's story is picked up and featured in Jon Ronson's story of the disproportionate weight of such online humiliations in his recently published book 'So you've been publicly shamed' which received cover in the BBC Start the Week programme three weeks ago.
Shame is the social aspect of guilt. We are in a quite new scenario with online shaming as it's absolutely free and at no moral cost to those who effect it hidden away behind a million screens.
The consequences for guilty parties such as Justine Sacco are, needless to say, immensely harsh and disproportionate. Ironically when it comes to sexual immorality in the West people are said to have lost shame. The treatment of individuals such as Justine Sacco by social media frenzy shows us shaming is alive and well and on the internet. So much so that someone said 'Twitter is no place for a human being'. Certainly no place for someone who tries a racist joke.
Whereas the physiological response to shame is to hide your head when you transgress on the internet with a joke that lands badly, it's said to be at least a year and a half before you can come back online.
This image of the disproportionate weight of shame and the implacable contempt behind it might help us see the awesome wonder of the Good Friday sin bearing of Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Man.
Christ committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth. Saint Peter says in his first epistle, Chapter 2. When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. 1 Peter 2:22-24
Taking a
contemporary incident reflecting our so-called culture of contempt gives
insight into the soul of Good Friday which is the soul of our Saviour. The
choice of second reading from Hebrews Chapter4 for this solemn Liturgy reveals
that soul as it retells Gethsemane in these verses. In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications,
with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and
he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a Son he
learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he
became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.
Justine Sacco bore
immense opprobrium from all over the world through Twitter for her one sin. Jesus
bore opprobrium not on account of anything sinful in him but on account of your
sins and my sins and those of every age and place stretching back beyond
recorded time.
Before the days
of mass media Jesus in his divinity engaged not just the sinful space of the
world his flesh inhabited, the taunts and desolation chronicled of Good Friday,
but being the same yesterday, today and for ever Jesus engaged with the
iniquity, guilt and shame of all ages
right up to the 3rd April 2015.
And all of this
he engaged once and for all in his humanity, in his soul, with loud cries and tears…[and in] … reverent submission. Words
crack in expanding upon the cosmic and human significance of the bearing of our
sins on Good Friday. Jesus, as Scripture makes plain, bore things in the depth
of his human soul that, through his divinity apply to souls in every
generation.
John Henry Newman
in Dream of Gerontius composed this
verse for the hymn ‘Praise to the holiest’: O
generous love that he who smote in man for man the foe, the double agony in man
for man should undergo. On Calvary Christ bears a double agony of body and
soul with cosmic significance.
Two weeks ago the
birds fell into confusion and began to roost in the Churchyard at nine in the
morning with the darkening from the solar eclipse. Darkness over the earth and
an earthquake gain mention in Matthew’s account of today which brought the
eclipse by death in sin bearing of the Son of God.
In the medieval Dream of the Rood we find a poem that depicts
the darkness of this afternoon and searches as far as words can search into the
sin bearing of Good Friday:
The Hero young – He was Almighty God – did off his
raiment, steadfast, stout of heart with valour, in the sight of many men, he
mounted up upon the lofty gallows, when he would fain redeem mankind. I
trembled – the Cross speaks
in this poem - I trembled when the Hero
clasped me. Yet dared I not incline unto the ground, nor fall upon the face of
the earth, but I must needs stand firm. As a cross was I lifted up; I bore
aloft the righteous King, the Lord of heaven; I dared not bow me down. They
pierced me through with darksome nails; on me the scars are manifest, the open
woeful wounds. I… beheld the Lord of hosts stretched out grievously. Darkness
had compassed about with clouds the body of the wielding God, that lustrous
radiance. Wan under heaven shadows went forth. And all creation wept, wailing
the slaughter of its King. Christ was on the cross.
This afternoon
Christ is on the Cross since, in Pascal’s words, Jesus is in agony until the
end of time.
What was given
once for all today is presented forever in its goodness to God and the world.
We are come to say
thank you for God’s bearing human agony in body and soul, his saving
accompaniment that reaches down the ages and right into our hearts this
afternoon to free us from the oppressing weight of sin and fear and sickness
and death and the devil.
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so
that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. John 3:16
The power of sin,
fear, sickness, death and the devil is overcome in all those who welcome Jesus
our Redeemer, who bore the weight of shame, suffering, dying and rising for our
rescue.
O come to my heart, Lord Jesus, there is room in my
heart for you!
Great sermon, John. Thanks
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