Jesus Gets Us, But Those Guys Don’t Get Him

“Jesus didn’t teach hate. He washed feet. He gets us. All of us.”

You’ve seen those words flash across your screen recently if you watched the Super Bowl and didn’t skip out for a bathroom break or a beer run during the commercials, which would have been a more productive use of your time. They were part of the much discussed “Jesus commercial” that aired during Super Bowl LVIII.

If you did not see the commercial and you really want to, it’s embedded below. At only one minute, it won’t waste too much of your time, though it’s not something I could recommend for your edification. What I’m writing here assumes that the reader has seen it.

The point of the ad seems simple enough. Jesus isn’t about people hating each other, but loving each other. He understands us, identifies with us, and wants to build bridges between us so that there is only “us” (not “us and them“… get it?). Christ-like people are willing to “walk across the aisle,” to go to the “other (even bad) side of the tracks,” to reach out to “the other,” etc. The ad spot depicts several pairs of people who might otherwise be enemies, the one washing the other’s feet, a Middle Eastern and Christian sign of humble service and courteous hospitality (one that Saint Benedict’s Rule prescribes for the Abbot to administer to guests).

The commercial uses sappy pop music to generate feel-good emotions with lyrics that have all the profundity of a low-budget Valentine’s Day card for people who can’t afford Hallmark:

Don’t ask me what you know is true. [I] don’t have to tell you I love your precious heart. I… I was standing. You were there. Two worlds collided […music swells to a climax…], and they could never tear us apart. […Lots of unpleasant low-frequency distortion as words quoted at the top flash on the screen….] We can live for a thousand years. [Strangely abrupt cut off.]

Some people objected that the commercial seemed to approve of certain sins, or promote some sort of indifferentism towards evil. I don’t think that was its purpose. It seemed to me that the basic concept of Jesus wanting to spread love and unity was the real message.

In as far as that goes, it’s true. But it doesn’t go very far. Among the unanswered questions are …

• Is Jesus God? … One of the Holy Trinity?
• Do his teachings matter?
• What did He do besides not hate people and wash their feet?
• How do we benefit from the fact that “He gets us”?
• What does His getting us demand of us other than washing the feet of people we’re otherwise inclined to dislike because they’re on the other side of some line that divides people?
• How does Jesus want us to be united, to tear down walls and such, besides by washing each others’ feet?
• How would the producers of this ad explain texts like Matthew 10:34-35?¹

Sure, I realize that a one-minute commercial can’t exactly ask or answer every important question about Christology, Trinitarian Theology, or Ecclesiology (that’s what Ecumenical Councils are for, not Super Bowls), but, as it stands, this multi-million dollar commercial leaves off essentials in its effort to tear down walls separating people. Far from helping the viewer to “get Jesus” at all, the commercial leaves us wondering if He was an indifferentist guru who set about to unite humanity by establishing a podiatric hygiene movement.

From the written records we have, Jesus washed feet exactly once, at the Last Supper. It was the occasion when He offered the First Mass, communicated His Apostles with His own precious Body and Blood, and ordained them to do exactly the same “for a commemoration of [Him]” (Luke 22:19), which words were explicitly sacrificial and liturgical in character, so that the Church Fathers didn’t at all miss the point when they applied them to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

If you don’t get that, you don’t get Jesus… even if He gets you.

* * * * * * * * * * * *