Hello dear reader, been a while but here I am now all agitated about the recent “HeGetsUs” advert that aired during this week’s SuperBowl. It’s already generated considerable discussion in evangelicaldom. Not sure what I’m talking about? Well watch this…

Now that’s a very well put together ad. Lots of great (presumably AI-generated) images and a simple message – Jesus preaches love (expressed in the action of washing the feet of others), not hate.

At first glance, who could disagree? Wouldn’t you be picky to do so? Wouldn’t it actually just be making the point that is implicit in the video – that there are some Christians who aren’t very Christlike; they’re the haters and Jesus wasn’t like that? Which perhaps even ends up making the video a little passive-aggressive in the way that it “lovingly” makes it clear who the haters are.

And it is pretty clear on who the haters (or potential haters) are that Jesus would not approve of. As you work through the video pretty much every washer/washee is an inversion of a classic oppressor/victim pairing that our culture is so increasingly used to dividing everything up into according to the latest diktats from the Critical Theory brigade. Think it through:

• “modern” teenager / “old fashioned” father
• cop / black man
• preppy/cheerleader girl / misfit girl
• white American / native American
• anti-abortion protestor / pregnant woman
• middle class “together” woman / working class struggling woman
• miner / environment protestor
• soccer mom / illegal immigrant
• white American family / muslim neighbours
• two opposing protestors (perhaps the only one in the list where the power disparity is not abundantly obvious)
• two elderly men, one black one white – not entirely clear who is washing who’s feet here
• priest / effeminate (presumably) gay man

I’ve italicised those where the pattern doesn’t hold. But we’ve still got 75% of the images we’re given falling into a stereotypical paradigm. I think the messaging is pretty clear – if you’re on the “power” side of these relationships then you need to take the knee and wash some feet as an act of love – by implication your previous stance is one of hatred. So the cop maintaining the law in a tough situation is hating. The protestor quietly holding up a sign at a clinic and praying that women walking through those doors would turn from being duped into killing their children … well they’re hating too. You get where this is going.

Here’s the image that I would have loved to have seen – someone washing the feet of a MAGA supporter. But would that be a bowl too far? Of all the divisions in the US today, surely that one could have been addressed? But it would break the paradigm for the notion that opposition to the MAGA crowd could be a form of hatred which Jesus would be challenging – well that might be a too big a pill to swallow.

When we actually turn to the Biblical account of Jesus washing feet we see a slightly different theme in view. First we note that it is Jesus washing his disciples’ feet – not a smorgasbord of those who oppose him or to whom he is opposed. Yes, it’s an act of humility (footwashing would have been carried out by a servant) but it’s about Jesus’ call for his own followers to sacrificially love one another.

The washing of Judas’ feet is the outlier here – jarring in its difference to the other disciples since Jesus knows what Judas is yet to do. HeGetsUs makes much of this:

Jesus had washed Peter’s feet, a loyal friend who would publicly deny that he knew Jesus later that very night. And even more astoundingly, Jesus washed Judas Iscariot’s feet, the one who would betray him for 30 pieces of silver.

Here, the victim Jesus washes his oppressor’s feet. But this is not replicated in the HeGetsUs video – no, instead we get oppressor after oppressor humbling themselves to wash the foot of their victim. In other words the video’s images don’t actually match up to the point that they think they’re making. At my most cynical I might suggest it’s another crack at conservative Christians, misusing a powerful Biblical image, and then failing to properly land the explanation because the intent of the video (to have a go at us nasty haters) had been shoehorned into the Biblical text.

So who is it that Jesus really “gets” here? Well one can’t but help think it’s the victims: yeah, Jesus gets that you’ve been badly treated by those haters. But no mention at all of the forgiveness that Jesus brings to each and every one of us that we so desperately need because we’re sinners. Might it be that it’s impossible under this Critical Theory paradigm to even go there? After all, in this space there are only victims that Jesus gets, and then those that victimise them.

The haters themselves, well they need to do better. Jesus gets you in a whole other way. So here’s a work of law for them.

On either side nobody ultimately hears the gospel.

Compare that to this outstanding video somebody knocked up in record time…

Now that’s actually the gospel – a Jesus who saves any who come to him.

But then it could be that I’m simply a hater who needs to be passive-aggressively lectured into doing better.

Or maybe I just think we should be telling people the gospel, not using Jesus as a tool to regurgitate the latest messed-up way of viewing the world. Because Jesus gets all of us. Doesn’t he?