Jesus In the Super Bowl (Advertisements)

You know the commercial. Black and white photos of sad dogs and mangy cats in chain link pens,– subtle hints of animal cruelty. 90’s balladier Sarah McLachlan singing her hit song “Angels” as viewers are invited to donate to the ASPCA. “Will you be an angel for a helpless animal?” The free t-shirt and wristband don’t hurt the pitch either.

The famed “Angels” campaign for the ASPCA aired in 2006, but anyone of any age gets the reference. The ads are a paragon of sentimentality, a naked appeal to emotion that forces the viewer to either open their wallets or change the channel. Don’t write it off just because it’s a modern day meme: the ASPCA raked in $30 million with Sarah McLachlan’s help. That’s $52.5 million in today’s dollars. I’m told we hit close to that number when we parodied the advert last year as a part of our end-of-year fundraising appeal.

The SPCA Angels advert hits this sweet mark between effective and derisive. Everybody knows about it, most people roll their eyes at it, and yet, it was remarkably successful at its intended goal. It’s reminiscent of the famous line from the Pirates of the Caribbean movie: a disgusted British officer lays into captured pirate Jack Sparrow, “You are without a doubt the worst pirate I have ever heard of,” to which Sparrow responds playfully, “But you have heard of me.” You and I might change the channel, but advertising firms would kill to have this kind of brand recognition for their campaigns. And the ASPCA takes their payday all the way to the pound.

So what might we say about an advertising campaign designed to put Jesus in a similar spotlight?

We’ll find out soon enough. If you haven’t heard, a non-profit Evangelical group has purchased two commercial slots in this Sunday’s Super Bowl broadcast, the most-viewed television program in America. The group is called “He Gets Us,” and over the past few years, the group has worked to leverage the best marketing practices for the sake of the kingdom. You can find them at sporting events, you can find them on social media. Putting an advertisement about Jesus in the Super Bowl has been their moonshot for the past few years, and it looks like the eagle is going to land this Sunday.

I’m the social media guy for Mockingbird. I have a professional background in PR and marketing. Each year I write a pop-psych analysis of the Super Bowl commercials for the site, a marketing genre I firmly believe illuminates the real State of the Union. And at first, I have to tell you, I absolutely hated the idea of putting Jesus in the Super Bowl. 

Jesus seems like such an outlier from the realm of Pepsi ads, cryptocurrency pitches, talking animals, and car commercials. As the old Sesame Street game goes “one of these things is not like the other. One of these things doesn’t belong.” The plan seemed so overtly American and wasteful, a radically expensive way to avoid talking about Jesus with people next door. The parody adverts write themselves: “The Flying Spaghetti Monster gets us too” or “Darwin gets us more than Jesus.”

Most of all, I was worried that this would be another culture wars pot shot that I would have to talk about (or avoid talking about!) in my capacity as a head pastor. It would become another distraction, alongside other distractions like political presuppositions, anti-intellectual reputations, and clergy scandals that derailed conversations about the God-Man himself. “Yeah” they’ll say. “Jesus is cool and all, but what about those Christians who bought the TV ads?”

You’ll notice my concerns are past tense. After a little research and some personal soul-searching, I think my problems with the campaign have more to do with me than the campaign itself.

For example, the campaign’s emphasis that “He Gets Us” sounded at first like the moralistic therapeutic deism that drove me out of my non-denominational evangelicalism. But the copy on the website and the follow up connections highlight mercy and grace and forgiveness and death and resurrection, the heart of the Christian faith that sustains me to this day. Let’s not neglect the fact that “He Gets Us” is one of the key points of comfort offered in the book of Hebrews (4:15).

Then, there’s the politics side. The vast majority of the project’s donors are silent, the exception being the (in)famous Hobby Lobby family, who claimed they chipped in to pay for the ads. The political side of things is neutral to non-existent, highlighting themes in Jesus’s life that affirm and challenge both sides of the political aisle. If there’s some secret bait-and-switch in the campaign that would suddenly reveal a political party preference, I don’t see it. The follow-up material in the campaign claims it wants viewers to interact with the Nazarene himself without any Washington D.C. overtones.

Perhaps my favorite aspect of the campaign is that it invites local churches to be a part of the mission. People who follow up on the campaign have the opportunity to text with a local Pastor or church member about what they saw on the TV. The “He Gets Us” team knows that 90 seconds worth of TV ads doth not a disciple make — but they can be the catalyst for that journey. I signed up for the program to receive texts from people looking to talk more about Jesus, and I’ve gotten two “bites” already. Who knows what Sunday will bring?

So after some research, I changed my mind. “He Gets Us” seems like a genuine effort to cut through 21st century noise and spark interest in Jesus by people who can say the historical Christian creeds without crossing their fingers behind their back. 

It’s not like Jesus isn’t in the Super Bowl anyway. After the game, there will certainly be dozens of players who thank God alongside their family and their coaches and teammates. That conversation already started this year with Patrick Mahomes crediting the heavens for a recovered ankle injury. I’m also recalling the year 2013, in which one Baltimore Ravens player said that the Super Bowl victory was God’s way of vindicating himself from a double murder investigation. His exact words were: “God doesn’t use people like that [criminals] for his glory.” Those may have been the most blatantly false and unbiblical words uttered in the history of sports media — the Bible explicitly says that God does indeed use murderers for his glory — but my point is that the Super Bowl is already starting conversations about spirituality and faith without the prompting of the “He Gets Us” campaign.

Any conversation about the adverts will eventually turn to the question of money. It will surely be said with righteous indignation: “They could have spent that money on the poor!” It’s a view that’s expressed in the Bible, but sadly, it’s only expressed by Judas Iscariot and Jesus’s other enemies. I’m not sure Jesus is going to turn down an extravagant and sincere act of public devotion, regardless of how expensive it proves to be (Mark 14). 

There’s a scene in the Gospel of Mark where Jesus’ disciples discover that other people outside of their entourage are using Jesus’s name to cast out demons. Incensed by this development, they bolt to their rabbi and complain, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” The problem isn’t that these other people are doing something wrong — the problem is that they are other people, unknowns, outside of the purview and control of the main group of Jesus’s disciples.

Unexpectedly for his day and for our day, Jesus has zero problem with the situation. It turns out Jesus wasn’t nearly as much of a snob as the disciples were. “Don’t stop them” says a non-anxious messiah “for the one who is not against us is for us.” Unlike his disciples, who are obsessed with control, Jesus is not worried about the situation. If they’re sincere in their faith, the demons will be cast out, and if they’re insincere, they’ll be exposed for it when the demons aren’t cast out. And here I am fretting away about 90 seconds of TV ads because a bunch of Christians over there are trying something big and bold for Jesus that I’m not involved in and I have no control over.

So, even in this pastor, the “He Gets Us” campaign has brought about repentance and a renewed faith that Jesus knows what he’s doing. If that’s what it’s done for a Christian of two decades, let’s see what it’ll do on the biggest stage of America. Some people may change the channel. Others, of course may end up in the arms of a very real angel …