I can't stop watching this Kia Superbowl commercial on YouTube. It all was filmed in West Point, Georgia, right where I used to live and pastor. The scenes and places were so familiar. I drove by the Kia plant every day, I ate at Roger's BBQ, the restaurant in the opening scene, and I smiled at the boy narrator's thick Southern drawl, so slow and so familiar. The commercial made my eyes swim with nostalgia.
But I also felt a deep rush of anger as I watched the commercial. Repeatedly, it implied that all that was worth knowing or caring about these people was that they make Kia cars.
That is what big business often does. People are valued only for what they buy and make, not for who God created them to be.
The commercial reminded me of what my task was there as a pastor, what my pastoral task always is, what the calling of the church is. "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me, to preach good news to the poor," says Jesus (Luke 4:16). In a world that tells lies to and about the poor, the unknowns, Jesus and his followers speak good news.
"We are not famous," the boy narrator of the commercial begins. But God says God knows the number of hairs on the heads of each one of those factory workers.
"There are no statues built in our honor," the boy intones. But God built a priceless statue in their honor, a cross by which they would be saved.
"We're just a small Georgia town of complete unknowns," the boy explains. But the Son of God was born in a small Palestinian town of complete unknowns-- Nazareth-- and shows up again and again in ordinary places.
"The closest thing to a world stage is 81 miles away in Atlanta tonight," the boy adds, referring to the Superbowl, of course. But to God, the God of love higher than any height and deeper than any depth, the life of each person on that Kia assembly line is a whole world, worth the life of Jesus Christ.
"We are not known for who we are. We hope to be known for what we do, what we build," the boy says, the slow southern drawl elongating the last word into two syllables as the camera pans over the new Kia SUV. "This thing we've assembled, it has a chance to be remembered. No, we aren't famous, but we are incredible. We build incredible things." But what finally matters in God's eyes is not the job a person has. To God, we are known for who we are. A Kia worker barely making ends meet just may be incredible, not for making a stupid SUV that will one day be a rusty pile of junk, but because he or she is incredibly generous, or kind, or faithful.
Then the SUV plows through a river as the music swells, with all the beauty and drama of a baptism. But in God's eyes it isn't an SUV but people, even each and every weary and overwhelmed shift worker, who are beautiful.
Loudly the world proclaims the messages the Kia commercial does. Nothing matters about you except where you work and what you buy and how much money you've got. As I watched the commercial, underneath the anger I felt my heart swell. My calling, the church's calling, is to speak loudly against that whirlwind the gospel to every unknown we can find. Jesus' mission to preach good news to the poor and proclaim the year of Jubilee... and the fact that I get to be a part of it... now, that's incredible.
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