In the end, Christ was not crucified because He washed the feet of the marginalized and disenfranchised. He was not crucified because He said, “He Gets Us.” He was crucified because He preached a message that every single man, woman, and child must repent and believe, or they shall perish in Hell forever. That is the message this world despises, and ultimately, why the He Gets Us Super Bowl commercial, and ministry as a whole, falls woefully short. Even more sadly, all of this message is lost on an unbelieving world—not simply because the message wasn’t actually preached, but they also have no concept of the significance of Jesus Christ washing the feet of His disciples.
By now, the He Gets Us Super Bowl commercial has been a topic of much contention amongst Christians and non-Christians alike online. The commercial itself is simple and artistically done—showcasing several photos of people washing the feet of those whom society might consider those on the “outside.” In the end, the only text offered up is equally as simple, “Jesus didn’t teach hate. He washed feet. He gets us. All of us.”
The intended message is not all that hard to miss for those who understand what Jesus did as He washed His disciple’s feet just before His death. It was an act of selfless servitude, demonstrating the very reason why Jesus Christ came in the first place. His life was one wherein He emptied Himself to serve the sons of men, even Judas, who would later betray the Messiah for a measly sum of 30 pieces of silver. While all authority and power had been granted to Jesus Christ by the Father, He humbled Himself in the form of man and took on the apron of a slave.
It is no wonder why the image of the very Son of God washing the feet of His disciples has remained as such a powerful reminder of Christ’s humility and love. And yet, this same image adopted by the He Gets Us campaign that recently aired during the Super Bowl, for all intents and purposes, has caused no shortage of outcry. What should be a relatively simple message to convey has become a point of controversy—not in the broader public, but amongst those within the church.
Many have been quick to say the controversy in the church is much the same as it was when Jesus upset the religious leaders of His own day. The purported rationale has been that just as Christ upset the status quo in the synagogues, so too does this message in the church today. In fact, you might just find a fairly large contingent of people who would argue that the modern-day church is not much different than the whitewashed tombs of Jesus’s own day, with the Pharisees and Sadducees.
To be sure, there is some warrant for this charge when one considers particular examples of blatant hypocrisy—but that is the ill-defined problem of our day, isn’t it? Much that gets labeled as “hypocrisy” isn’t such at all, but rather, it is the oft-cited reason for why Jesus’s own Words are rejected and labeled, as in the He Gets Us commercial, as “teaching hate.” And that’s the rub. We have not reached a point where the Son of God is taking on human flesh once more to reveal just how short we’ve fallen from understanding His holy Word; we’re at the point in our society where we have two functionally (and ontologically) different gods we worship. One is the true Christ, one is not—and both sides argue over who is getting the details right.
What I would argue is that the same root reason why people fawn over depictions of Christ in popular culture (e.g., The Chosen) is the same issue we find present here. There is a wide-sweeping epidemic of biblical illiteracy, and the people behind ad campaigns like ‘He Gets Us’ intentionally play at this ignorance. This is not a new phenomenon, when we consider how Christians have been portrayed in popular cinema for the past several decades. The popular portrayal is anything but a genuine Christian who actually seeks to live in submission to God’s Word. Rather, they are often portrayed as bigoted, backwoods idiots who can’t string a few coherent sentences together—and they’re massively hypocritical to boot (Picture Angela from the American version of The Office).
Now, again, some of this might be warranted when you look at the masses of American Evangelicalism who have claimed the Christian faith, yet seemingly done nothing to be in submission to Christ. I find it much like the teenager in my high school days who carried around a skateboard, but couldn’t even ollie—the one we colloquially called a “poser.” The problem is not that such “posers” exist; they do in virtually every clique in life. The problem is that they tend to take the predominate focus when it comes to the Christian world, almost as if it is an “easy out” for those who wish to turn their noses up at the Christian faith in general.
The interesting dilemma to me though is that the Jesus portrayed by “the posers” that the broader public despises—is the exact same portrayal of Jesus they wish to laud in the public square. This is the Jesus who is light on sin and judgment, heavy on grace and love—but not a grace and love that actually requires justice—it is a grace and love that requires a tailor-fit God who essentially adopts the same quasi-standards of morality that mankind does (provided He changes with the times, of course). He is not the God who is jealous, just, holy, and requires justice be met—He is the God who “Gets Us,” and He Gets Us in such a way that we never actually come to the point of repentance and faith.