Jesus came back to the Super Bowl again this year.
You may recall that I wrote about the He Gets Us ad campaign right around this time last year. 2024 was no exception, with a reported 20 million spent on airing two ads during the famed football game.
If you didn’t catch the advertisement, “He Loved Those We Don’t Value” appeared in the first half:
The ad includes a series of still life images, light-enhanced to look like a cross between a Norman Rockwell and a Thomas Kinkade painting.1
You can tell the agency behind the campaign has done their homework to make the scenes relevant to American culture: a Latino policeman washes a Black man’s foot (in the middle of an urban alley, no less, while lights flash in the background). An older white man washes an older Indigenous man’s feet on unpopulated, supposedly native land. A white woman washes a young white woman’s feet in front of a Family Planning Clinic, while protesters holding “Save the Unborn” signs stand in the background.
Additional images happen between a white man and an Asian woman protestor at an oil refinery, a worn and tattered “clean air now” sign perched nearby; between what appears to be a teenage runaway, baby in arms, and a white woman who washes her feet; and between a priest who washes the feet of a male roller skater presumed to be gay.2
“Jesus didn’t teach hate. He washed feet. He gets us. All of us.”
In all of these images, I suppose one thing is clear: the campaign seeks to make the person and teaching of Jesus relevant to generations that increasingly believe Christianity itself irrelevant. He Gets Us seeks to “move beyond the mess of our current cultural moment to a place where all of us are invited to rediscover the love story of Jesus.”3
The second ad, “Who is My Neighbor?” is much the same:
A third of the length of the first commercial, this one asked a simple question:
“Who is my neighbor? The one you don’t notice/value/welcome,” the final string of words changing by the second while the first part of the sentence remained the same.
The invitation at the end of the ad included a simple CTA (Call to Action) to visit this specific campaign on the website, followed by one word: Jesus.
Fifteen seconds in length, only six images were featured, including (but not limited to) a worn and bearded white man with smoke seeping out the side of his mouth, a woman with tattoos on her face who also appears to be drugged out, and a distressed, supposedly unhoused person, begging through a car window.
All of these people are our neighbors, the message reminds the viewer.
And yes, Jesus did spread a message of love — a message of loving God and loving neighbor that seemingly played on repeat on second century Jewish phonographs.4
But I venture to say that Jesus also rallied hard against capitalism, including capitalism that seeks to profit on appearances of inclusion.
Jesus overturned tables of the money changers and pushed aside benches of those who were selling doves.5 He told a rich man that the only way he would have treasure in heaven was if he sold everything he had and gave all the money to the poor.6 And he quoted the prophets when he said, “You will always have the poor among you, and you can help them whenever you want to.”7
Jesus had a lot of things to say about money,8 which is why I wager to guess that he wouldn’t have been too pleased to see himself the star of another round of multi-million dollar ad campaigns.
I tend to be of the mindset that God needs not a marketing team to make God’s self known. Jesus need not be bought and sold to the masses, because Jesus isn’t something (or someone) that needs convincing. Jesus is enough, in and of himself.
Jesus doesn’t need a 45-second spot in the Super Bowl, even if the financial backers behind the He Gets Us campaign disagree.
Since last year, He Gets Us has quietly changed course. Now led by the nonprofit Come Near, the organization is woefully (and I’d argue, purposefully) unclear in making clear who they are. Led by an unnamed team of experienced marketing, innovation, and nonprofit leaders, they are “committed to sharing the life and love of Jesus in thought-provoking new ways.”
No longer visibly backed by The Signatry, a global community and ministry known for its support of conservative causes, we don’t know if billionaire David Green, founder and CEO of Hobby Lobby, is still backing the ad campaign today.
Last year, Green was the only donor to claim ownership toward the campaign — but given his ties to religious freedom protections at the hands of the LGBTQ+ community,9 one has to wonder if He Gets Us merely changed backing hands for the sake of appearances.
A year ago, it was hard to find anything about the campaign. Various media outlets had written about He Gets Us, but the organization itself was largely (read: purposefully) mute on the subject.
The team took a different course of action this year, addressing — and dare one say, capitalizing on — nearly every concern they received.
Google “He Gets Us” and the first website (of paid, sponsored content) is “He Gets Us has an agenda,” which leads directly to their website. When asked the question, “What is your stance on the LGBTQ+ community?”, they are clear in stating that Jesus loves gay people and trans people. They are not clear, however, in what is not said in the next two sentences: “The LGBTQ+ community, like all people, is invited to explore the story of Jesus and consider his example of unconditional love, grace, and forgiveness of others. No matter who you are, YOU are invited to explore the story of Jesus and consider what it means for your life.” Too often phrases like this are used to get people into the door: belonging is implied, but belonging comes with its own set of caveats — including the caveat to give up status as an LGBTQ+ individual.10
The bottom line is that the group is purposeful in what they do not say.
They’re purposeful in not naming their financial donors,11 just as they’re purposeful in not naming the marketing, innovation, and nonprofit leaders12 behind them. They’re purposeful in what they do and don’t say in their answers, and they’re purposeful in the fact that they’re spending millions of donor dollars to promote a man who very well would have chosen all that money go to the poor.13
After all, Jesus doesn’t need an ad campaign, even if some of us tend to disagree.
Photographers, do tell me what this filter or style is called!
Is this man gay? It appears that this is the intended belief about this man, although we are entirely making assumptions based on appearances when we say or believe this. Ironically, in a conversation with Ross Murray, founding director of The Naming Project, there is not a rainbow flag in that image. The image of the two hillbillies could also be gay, although the audience does not automatically believe that about them in the same way.
https://hegetsus.com/en/about-us
Not really a thing, y’all. Harp or lyre might be more appropriate to the times.
Mark 11:15-18
Matthew 19:21
Mark 14:7. This comes from Deuteronomy 15:7-11, which then follows with the command: “You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.”
Of course, Jesus also tells a story about investment, of a man who goes away for a long vacation. While he’s gone, he gathers his servants together and gives the servants three different amounts of money to do with as they please. Two of the servants double their money, but the third man digs a hole in the ground and buries his master’s money. The third man, as it goes, is reprimanded for his choice, rebuked by a furious master. Is this actually a capitalistic passage?
https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1074&context=lawreview
One might be invited to explore the story of Jesus, but too often, the story of Jesus will come with invitations to belong if you do X, Y, and Z — which in the case of the LGBTQ+ community often means renouncing or giving up this part of one’s identity.
Is Green still a donor? We don’t know.
If we could see the “marketing, innovation, and nonprofit leaders” behind the nonprofit, we’d have more of a clue what they do believe about who’s in and who’s out. “Nonprofit leaders,” in this context, often refers to pastors …who don’t want assumptions about their belief systems made about them.
I wrote quite a bit about where all that money could have gone instead on last year’s post.