You're scrolling through social media, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, wherever you waste time pretending you're being productive, and you see it happening. Someone said something. Maybe it was dumb, maybe it was offensive, maybe they just had a bad day and posted the wrong thing. And the pile-on begins.
One comment becomes ten. Ten becomes a hundred. Strangers who've never met this person are suddenly experts on why they're terrible. The jokes start. The memes. Someone digs up something they said five years ago. Their employer gets tagged. And you watch this person, this human being made in God's image, get systematically destroyed by a mob that will forget about them by next Tuesday.
We call it getting canceled. It's entertainment. It's a blood sport played with keyboards instead of swords.
And if we're honest? Sometimes we've been part of it. We've piled on. We've shared the meme. We've enjoyed watching someone get what we thought they deserved.
Two thousand years ago, the Son of God experienced the ultimate version of what I just described. Except it wasn't on social media. It was in a governor's courtyard, on a public street, and on a hill outside Jerusalem. Mark 15 says the whole battalion gathered, roughly 600 soldiers, and they dressed Jesus in a purple cloak, twisted a crown of thorns onto His head, struck Him, spit on Him, and bowed before Him in mock worship. "Hail, King of the Jews."
They treated the Son of God like a meme. A moment of entertainment before lunch.
And the tragic irony is that every single taunt they hurled was accidentally true. He was the King. Their sarcastic bowing was the most honest thing they'd ever do. They were mocking the One every knee will eventually bow before, and they had no idea.
The mob always forgets by Tuesday. But what they did that day, and what it accomplished, is still standing.