The first three quarters of the game were dominated by defense which made it slow and dull.  Let’s face it, the goal of the defense is to ensure nothing happens. So, I was scrolling through Facebook and Threads as the teams played when I noticed an interesting phenomenon after the ad played. Most of my Christian friends hated it.

 

By Kellie Schorr

I don’t have many boy crushes but Arnold Schwarzenegger in the winter of his life is one of them.

So it was no surprise when my “Top Commercial of the Superbowl” vote went to State Farm’s Like a Good Neighbaaa.  One that didn’t make my list was the “Jesus Washed Feet” ad from the He Gets Us campaign—however, it is the one I have heard the most about.

In the ad, a series of pictures featuring a diverse group of people in pairs—stereotypically seen as being on opposite sides of an issue—with one washing the feet of another, is shown while the INXS song, Never Tear Us Apart plays.

At the end, the message in big bold capital letters reads: “JESUS DIDN’T TEACH HATE. HE WASHED FEET.”

The first three quarters of the game were dominated by defense which made it slow and dull.  Let’s face it, the goal of the defense is to ensure nothing happens. So, I was scrolling through Facebook and Threads as the teams played when I noticed an interesting phenomenon after the ad played.

Most of my Christian friends hated it.

  • They hated the cost of it (“7 million could feed a lot of hungry people!”)
  • They hated the oversimplification of it (“This isn’t the WORK of Christianity. It’s magical thinking.”)
  • They hated the Servant Foundation, the sponsors, who accept money for the ads from Conservative, Evangelical churches who perpetuate the very hate they claim not to espouse.
  • Some hated the message because it was “Woke” and proudly proclaimed, “Jesus only washed THE DISCIPLES’ FEET.”

Most of my GLBTQ and non-Christian friends liked it.

  • Some liked the affirmation that hating other people isn’t a spiritual good.
  • Some enjoyed seeing a different message than they are used to experiencing.
  • Some hoped their conservative parents/friends would be influenced into being more accepting.
  • Most enjoyed seeing it, even though they didn’t trust or believe churches would follow the message.
  • Many just felt “Well, it least it’s not saying they should harm us.”

Reading two very different views of this 60 second spot, it dawned on me they came from opposing lenses.

-Christians thought the message was for non-Christians to bring them toward Jesus.
-Non-Christians thought the message was for Christians to make them nicer people.

How you felt about the ad absolutely depended on which lens you were looking through. That was the real lesson here—we are not divided by what surrounds us, but it depends on how we look at it.

Two Women:  The Alabaster Box and The Mustard Seed

In the Bible (Luke 7:36 – 50) there is another story of feet washing and a woman with an alabaster box full of expensive perfume. A religious authority figure invites Jesus to dinner and a woman appears carrying a box of perfume. She is unnamed and the only thing we know about her is that she is called “a sinful woman” (some people read this as meaning she was a prostitute but truthfully, both then and now, anything could get you called a “sinful woman” so let’s not get all slut shamey about this).

She begins weeping in the presence of Jesus, and washes his feet with her tears, drying them with her hair, and soothing them with the oil. He forgives her “sins” and wishes her a life of peace.

It is an incredibly beautiful scene.

The owner of the house hates this with every fiber of his being. Hates. Hates. Hates. Jesus points out that she has treated him with respect, compassion and devotion, where the house owner did not. He may be a follower of all the religious rules, but she has the better intent.

The story shows generosity and relationship are more important to Jesus than judgy authorities and their social codes.

In Buddhism one of my favorite stories of women features a grieving woman who is sent on an impossible mission to find a mustard seed.

When a woman’s son dies, she refuses to let the child go, instead carrying the dead body around with her, weeping and seeking any help she can find.  She comes to the Buddha and asks him to bring her child back to life.

He tells her he can make a medicine that will bring her son back to life, but first she must go into the village and come back with common mustard seeds. However, they must be given freely to her from another person, and they must come from a household that has never been touched by death.

She runs to complete this seemingly easy task.

“Do you have a mustard seed that you can give me?,” she would ask, and people would readily agree. Then she would ask, “Has this house known death?” and the owner would reply, “Oh, yes.”  House by house she would go and hear the stories of a dead father, a lost mother, a child taken by illness, or a friend who died in an accident. She journeyed through the entire village into the night listening to the experiences of others and grieving with them.

The next day she went back to the Buddha. He asked for the seeds and she said, “I do not need that medicine. I have learned that death comes to everyone, and it has come to my son.”  She agreed to his funeral rites and became a student of the Buddha.

We are not Divided

Both women shine light on the understanding that generosity, compassion, and connection are the path instead of rules, judgement and denial. In fact, it is the idea of separation (the religious man felt better/separated from the sinful woman, the grieving mother felt separated from others in her mourning) that proves to be the most harmful thing of all.

The reaction to the Superbowl ad, whether you saw it with happiness, skepticism, cynicism, or indifference, doesn’t mean we are “divided”—it means we are all looking at it through our own lens, a lens made from our experiences, assumptions and ideas.

In that, we are together.

What this ad really teaches us is that we need to stop using the word “divisive” when we refer to something where people have opposing opinions. That word has become a catch-all for anything that is not universally accepted or rejected.

“That movie was divisive.” “The speech was divisive.”  “The commercial was divisive.”

No.

Thinking differently than someone else does not divide us. It simply means our perception is different. Though we understand things differently, we are still and always will be connected.

Knowing that will empower us to do the most important thing of all—be a good neighbaaa!

 

Photo: Pixabay

Editor: Dana Gornall

 

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How to Create Positive Change in a World Divided

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