Getting Greatness

Armodoxy for Today: Getting Greatest

The Superbowl is much more than a football game, it is an annual display of athletics and dramatics, from the celebrities who attend, to the celebrities who perform at the half-time event.

The Superbowl is now over and one team has been declared as the greatest. Roughly 76,000 people attended in person and millions watched it as a broadcast on television and streamed over the internet. Interspersed throughout the game, creative and unique commercials debut during time-outs and breaks in the play.    If you were there in person, you may have spotted the President of the United States and if you watch on television you may have caught my boss being featured on one of the commercials. The ad in question starts off with guitar strums and a vocal by Johnny Cash, singing “Personal Jesus.” The question that came on the screen is this: What is Greatness? Next, pictures of people helping people in all types of situations fade from one to the next. People reaching out, hugging, engaging one another in times of need. And a slide appears with the words, “Jesus showed us what greatness really is.” Without getting preachy, the commercial ended with a message that “Jesus gets us. All of us.”

This is the third year that that the Christian website, He Gets Us, set up a beautifully orchestrated campaign of pictures and sayings of Jesus to bring the point home that He gets us! It’s a simple message that Jesus is alive and well and talking to the world today. And this year’s message was especially poignant: Jesus showed us what greatness really is: it’s in the serving and caring of others. And people listened ! I know because last year, immediately after the ad aired, both sides of the political spectrum – the left and the right – criticized the advertising of Jesus in this manner. Yes, just as he did 2000 years ago, so too now, Jesus is shaking up the establishment. On a day when the “greatest” team and players are singled out as champions, Jesus gives us a message of finding greatest in given, sharing, serving, in one word, loving others.

The challenge now comes to us. If Jesus “gets us” we need to “Get Him!”

Let us pray, “O Jesus, You humbled Yourself, as Lord and Creator, You came to give us an example of serving others, and doing so in humility. Help me to get you. Help me to put my ego to one side so I may help and care for others in humility and in kindness. Amen”