“Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” The criminal, being crucified alongside Jesus, can’t help himself from joining in the mocking.* Even as he begins to suffocate under the weight of his own hanging body, he uses his precious breath to harangue Jesus, sneering and snarky to the very end.
Snark is interpersonal junkfood: we know we shouldn’t indulge but it just feels so good. We love to have the pithy, snide undercut, wrapping our insults in wit so everyone will notice how clever we are (if not how mean).
Last spring, an image went viral in which a threatening letter from the US Secretary of Education to Harvard had been marked up to correct the abundant grammar errors within. When I saw the post, my immediate reaction was to howl with laughter; the sight of all that red pen was so satisfying. But the satisfaction didn’t last. It took only a moment before I felt just as disgusted with the corrections as I was with the letter. What is the point of this?? I thought. We’re focused on being the grammar police when the real authorities are kidnapping immigrants, dismantling science, and destroying institutions?!? Like the criminal, we look around at the mess we’re in and find nothing left to hold onto but our own brittle sarcasm.
David Denby wrote presciently in 2009, “A future America in which too many people sound mean and silly, like small yapping dogs tied to a post; in which we insult one another merrily in a kind of endless zany brouhaha; in which the lowest, most insinuating and insulting side threatens to win national political campaigns — this America will leave everyone, including the snarkers, in a foul mood once the laughs die out.”
We are living in that future and the foul mood is clearly the least of it. We are in a bad way, but perhaps the other criminal can show us the way out: Jesus, remember me, he says. When things are grim, the answer isn’t meanness. Our salvation will not be found in the smartest, most biting take-down of our enemies. The answer, as always, is to look to Jesus. Our snark can’t save us, but our hope just might.
-- Erica Lloyd, Seekers Church
For More...
Every sermon and spiritual blog about snark and sarcasm I came across points to the epistle of James, Chapter 3. Read it here.
