Full disclosure, I didn’t watch the Super Bowl. I kept an eye on the score, and watched some highlights this morning, but I chose some other ways to occupy my time on Sunday. But one thing I did notice was the controversy and conversation around the #HeGetsUs ads. These short advertisements highlight modern human experiences and remind the viewers that Jesus faced and faces the very things we and our neighbors are going through on a regular basis.
Jesus was a refugee.
Jesus loved his enemies.
Jesus was a rebel.
Jesus knew anxiety.
He gets us.
The overall message of the campaign is thoughtful and relatively theologically inoffensive. But the ads have sparked some outrage because of where the funding has been traced back to. Folks online and in the media have been quick to point out that the #HeGetsUs campaign is funded in part by conservative and anti-LGBTQ organizations including The Servant Foundation and Hobby Lobby CEO David Green. [1] That the dollars used to create this ad campaign came from individuals and organizations so publicly committed to excluding and targeting entire communities raises concerns about the integrity and motivation of the message. And folks have rightly been helping to connect the dots between funders and the campaign.
Honestly, I have some complicated feelings about these ads. One the one hand, I agree with my friends who are angered by what seems like a disingenuous marketing campaign by an element of the church that frequently fails to embody the Jesus they name in the ads. On the other hand, the message of the ads and the theological impulse is one that I think resonates and truly names the solidarity and presence of Jesus in the midst of some of the most challenging human experiences.
However, I think my bigger question is about the efficacy and ethics of mass marketing Jesus. To be clear, the Holy Spirit does her work where, when, and how she’d like to – and I am not going to dismiss the possibility that people’s curiosity will be piqued by the ads, and may lead some folks to revisit or discover for the first time, the story of Jesus. But, I’m uncomfortable with the pattern of commodification in the American Christian church, and these ads play into that pattern.
The story of Jesus is compelling and connecting, not because it tells us about Jesus, but because in it’s telling we encounter the living Jesus. We need another person to speak that story to us, because as Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in Life Together “…the Christ in [our] own hearts is weaker than the Christ in the word of other Christians.” Might that word come to us through a Super Bowl ad? Sure. But in my experience, it most often comes to us in the interaction and intimacy of people in community, face to face. In my opinion, the market and mass media is the enemy of intimacy, and intimacy is a fundamental element of the evangelion.
Additionally, the two ad spots for the #HeGetsUs campaign cost about $20 million, which is no small pittance. #HeGetsUs, as a campaign especially highlighting folks on the margins, feels disingenuous at best when devoting such resources to marketing. Is this in fact good stewardship, or is this one more way the church reveals its preoccupation with it’s own image and survival? I think that’s a fair question.
At the end of the day, I don’t feel overwhelmingly one way or the other. But I do think there are some real questions for the church to wrestle with about stewarding resources, sharing the story of Jesus with integrity, and the power of intimacy in the work of evangelism. I pray that the #HeGetsUs ads connected for some folks and inspired them to wonder and pursue the Jesus the campaign points to. I’m reminded of Jesus’ words to his disciples in the Gospel of Mark, “…no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us.” The Holy Spirit is in charge of the telling and the hearing. So, despite my complicated feelings, I have faith that in God, this too will work together for good.
Photo by Melanie Deziel on Unsplash
