Super Bowl ad about Jesus loving people? Cue the outrage
Attacked from the left, and attacked from the right, the ‘He Gets Us’ feet washing video’s hyper-partisan response says more about us than the ad itself
A scene from “He Gets Us”, the Super Bowl ad featuring people of different backgrounds and perspectives caring for one another by washing feet.
I grew up in a family that didn’t watch the Super Bowl on Sunday, and that still feels right to me. While respecting the family-gathering intentions of friends who make different choices, I still think there’s something even more beautiful and wonderful to be found in laying these things aside on the Sabbath. My friend Debi woke up Monday morning to watch the Super Bowl with her father (avoiding anyone who would tell her the score).
Regardless of your take on the Super Bowl or the Sabbath, it’s still worth taking a minute to watch one unique Super Bowl ad from a group called “He Gets Us,” which tries to help modern audiences see the relevance of Jesus’ message to the world.
The ad features consecutive scenes with two people stereotyped as having deep-set suspicions towards each other — a police officer and a young Black man, a priest and a gay man, a suburbanite and a migrant, a protestor and a woman outside a family planning clinic. In each case, though, one is depicted washing the feet of the other — culminating with the message, “Jesus didn’t teach hate. He washed feet.”
Hopefully, you got to watch this before encountering the passionate commentary it sparked afterward. Some on the left attacked the ad over a report that Hobby Lobby helped fund the campaign — insisting that “a conservative, right-wing agenda” drove the entire campaign. (The He Gets Us website makes clear that funding came from a new nonprofit organization called Come Near, which is not affiliated with “any single individual, political position, church, or faith denomination.”)
Others were quick to lament the expense of any super bowl ad ($7 million for 30 seconds), which puts a hefty $14 million price tag on the 60-second spot.
Still others on the right worried the video minimized Jesus’ focus on repentance itself — insisting that the love being taught implied wholesale acceptance of anything someone is doing in their life. “Jesus told sinners not to sin. He didn’t wash their feet to endorse their sinfulness,” wrote conservative influencer Seb Gorka. “And he definitely would never endorse the murder of the unborn. Because that is intrinsically Evil.”
Calling the ad “heretical (expletive),” The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh said, “Putting out an ad that invites narcissistic, prideful, unrepentant sinners to come and get their feet washed is bad, actually.”
I’m not persuaded this is what the video creators were trying to convey at all. In fact, if we want to take their word for it, this Christian organization wasn’t at all trying to misdirect people away from Jesus’ teaching.
Rather, they were trying to point people back to the second great commandment to “love your neighbor,” especially now “with an upcoming election year that will be filled with division and derision.”
As the organization’s website explains, it decided to draw on the story of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet as a “perfect example of how we should treat one another, even those people with whom we don’t see eye to eye.”
The intrigue of seeing such counter-cultural illustrations of Jesus’ “unconditional love, kindness and generosity,” the campaign spokesperson said, was hoped to draw people deeper into the gospel message, and in a way that could potentially “disrupt ... preconceived notions.”
But some still wondered, is feet washing even appropriate for those living contrary to God’s teachings? The video creators reminded people that “astoundingly, Jesus washed Judas Iscariot’s feet, the one who would betray him for 30 pieces of silver,” along with Peter, who would soon deny the Lord.
“He wasn’t making choices there at the table about whose feet he was going to wash,” campaign spokesperson Jason Vanderground told Fox News Digital. Even amidst “different beliefs and strongly held convictions,” he said, “there’s still a way that we can treat each other that transcends all of that.”
In this, this Christian group clearly hopes to channel the same “who is my neighbor?” question that Christ did, and spark heightened exploration of “how each of us can love our neighbor even as we have differences and serve one another with more kindness and respect,” as Vanderground added.
This starts to sound a lot more like what Russell M. Nelson, President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints taught last April: “Let us show that there is a peaceful, respectful way to resolve complex issues” — modeling how “dignified dialogue” can be used to “manage honest differences of opinion.”
In fairness, the ad could have perhaps driven home its point more effectively if those washing the feet — and getting washed — had more consistently spanned both directions of the sociopolitical spectrum (a policeman or suburban mom’s feet getting washed too).
And it’s worth highlighting the many meaningful questions about the ad that were raised in thoughtful ways:
Whatever the ad’s flaws, it’s clearly been effective in drawing attention to Jesus Christ — despite (and perhaps because of) the controversy his message has always engendered.
I can’t help thinking of the story in the Book of Matthew, where a woman came to Jesus at the house of Simon the leper in Bethany, pouring on his head “an alabaster flask of very costly fragrant oil.”
Onlooking disciples were “indignant,” saying “Why this waste? For this fragrant oil might have been sold for much and given to the poor.”
Jesus’ response to this ancient outrage seems to me a perfect response to those scandalized by 60-second spot that didn’t manage to unfold the entirety of the gospel message.
“But when Jesus was aware of it, He said to them, ‘Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a good work for Me.’”